You Might Remember Me The Life and Times of Phil Hartman (11 page)

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Phil’s magnetism, though far more understated offstage than on, proved effective on the dating front within the Groundlings ranks as well. Stewart has called him the group’s “resident sex symbol,” and others concur. Phil was “a jock” on the female front, Jaye P. Morgan says. “He loved women, but he was always in trouble.” Newman employs a marine metaphor: “He was a big fish in a little pond right away,” she says, “because he was really good-looking, very funny, and really, really gifted. And women flock to that.” Even those with whom he wasn’t romantically involved gave him wider social boundaries, allowing him to do and say things that would get other guys slapped or worse. “Hartman would go further than anybody,” Stack says. “But nobody’s getting away with that other than Phil Hartman.” Groundlings co-star Edie McClurg laughingly recalls how Phil “loved to grab my tits.” And because only the ladies’ dressing room had a sink, Phil would “saunter in and start washing up. And you could always feel his eyes looking down the mirrors to see what state of dishabille we were in. He was a horny guy, but not in a dirty way. He really appreciated women.”

Even onstage he retained a certain politesse, making himself the buffoonish target of sexual jokes. For instance, when the va-va-voom-y Carmen Pluto commented on the .45 caliber pistol Chick Hazard appeared to be packing, he replied that it had previously been a .22. The hapless shtick was a ruse, though, as Phil was never hard up for companionship. For a long stretch, friend John Mayer says, he “had a lot of time to freelance. It was like the old Dean Martin saying, where Dean told a reporter, ‘I’ve never chased women in my life. But the way I look, a lot of them chased me. And I have to confess, sometimes I didn’t run fast enough.’ Phil never said that, but I’m sure that was him.” Which is to say, as Mayer puts it, Phil got “a lot of action.” Not that he bragged about it like some dime-store lothario. “I think one of the things that made him charming to the women was that he was discreet,” Mayer says. “He was not the kiss-and-tell sort.”

Only in retrospect have some friends surmised that Phil’s “infatuation with beauty,” to re-deploy Lester Brown’s description, and his predilection for attractive mates from whom he invariably drifted was more than the mere rakish folly of a man who loved women; it was his Achilles’ heel.

Chapter 6

Phil as Kap’n Karl and Paul Reubens as Pee-wee Herman at Roxy Theatre, West Hollywood, 1981. (Photo © Abe Perlstein)

Chick Hazard was but one of several standout characters to stalk the Groundlings stage during Phil’s time with the troupe. A petulant and somewhat effeminate man-child named Pee-wee Herman—created in a workshop led by Phyllis Katz, developed in an outside class led by Gary Austin, and skillfully embodied by Paul Reubens starting in the late 1970s—got his share of spotlight, too. He was based at least in part on a hack comic Austin had seen at the Comedy Store stand-up club, located nearby on Sunset. “He looked like Sirhan Sirhan,” Austin says, and he was less funny.

“At first he was incredibly offensive,” Austin says of Pee-wee, who dressed in a slim-fitting light-gray suit, a red bow tie, white patent leather shoes, his hair slicked like a squeaky-clean schoolboy’s. “He was like a thirteen-year-old spoiled kid. Very aggressive.” Pee-wee even pelted audience members with mini Tootsie Rolls before the character was softened a bit to make him more palatable, and soon he became one of the Groundlings’ biggest draws.

“Paul Reubens had such enormous power as a performer that he was instantly enamored by all the people who worked at the Groundlings,” Phil later said, stumbling over syntax. “Pee-wee was just one of several fully realized characters that Paul could do. His gift was beyond anything I’ve ever seen.” As both Phil and Reubens were drawn to talent, they soon became friends as well as artistic cohorts. In many ways they were yin and yang. As easy as Phil was to work and get along with, Reubens was more temperamental and could be off-putting. They complemented each other well—for a while, anyway. “Paul’s concerns were visceral and Phil was able to stand back,” Tracy Newman says. “He didn’t have that visceral anger.”

In late 1980, Groundling Cassandra Peterson (who would become famous as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark) introduced Reubens to her producer and writer friend Dawna Kaufmann. Kaufmann had showbiz contacts galore. When a late-night sketch-music concept she had developed for CBS fell through, she envisioned staging “a big kiddie comedy show for people of all ages.” But she needed someone to host it. After seeing Pee-wee in action on Melrose, where at first he performed short interstitial bits between set changes, she thought he was the perfect man-child for the job. They met for dinner the next night to talk further, and talk soon turned to action. In December 1980, aided by what Kaufmann says was an $8,000 loan from Reubens’s parents (Reubens himself has confirmed
a
loan but not the amount), they began the process of casting and work-shopping their new venture—what Kaufmann described to
Inside Pee-wee’s Playhouse
author Caseen Gaines as a “live pilot” they hoped would catch the eyes of industry muckety-mucks and become a weekly late-night series. Phil was the first to come aboard, as salty dog sailor Kap’n Karl—named after Kaufmann’s father.

One night in Kaufmann’s apartment he sang a ditty that became the gruff-but-lovable pirate’s signature tune: “Oh, a sailor travels to many lands/Any place he pleases/And he always remembers to wash his hands/So’s he don’t get no diseases!” Then and there, she knew they had the beginnings of a hit. Of course, Kaufmann and Reubens needed more than just Phil to flesh out Pee-wee’s maniacally magical world. “Paul knew he needed help onstage,” says Kaufmann, now a true-crime journalist. “He couldn’t do the whole thing by himself.” Fortunately, their future cast was all in-house. Forsaking his trademark physicality for life in a box, John Paragon came aboard as Jambi the Genie. Additional players included Edie McClurg as Hermit Hattie, John Moody as Mailman Mike, and Lynne Stewart as Kap’n Karl’s dream girl—“the most beautiful woman in Puppetland”—Miss Yvonne. Phil did double duty as the voice of Mike’s puppet pal Monsieur LeCroq.

Offstage, Kaufmann says, she and Phil began seeing each other casually, and Kaufmann sometimes hung out at his home in Sherman Oaks. On one memorable occasion, Phil insisted on showing her his “gun collection,” which then (according to records) included only one registered model: a Colt .45-caliber pistol purchased in August 1980. At first Kaufmann thought he was kidding, because Phil leaned left politically and guns seemed anathema to his liberal viewpoints. But he wasn’t kidding at all, she says, and even suggested they visit a firing range together. “He was really delighted about it, bragging. If I was a gun nut, I probably would have said, ‘Hey, cool. What does this one do?’ But I just got so scared and weirded-out that I said, ‘That’s it, I’m never going to spend another night here.’ And I never did.” They stopped dating in short order.

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Promoted via funky posters and flyers created by now renowned artist Gary Panter (who was also in charge of Pee-wee production design), midnight performances of
The Pee-wee Herman Show
began on February 7, 1981, and continued on Fridays and Saturdays at the Groundlings Theater for several months. In those opening weeks especially, Kaufmann says, the room was often heavily papered. Which is to say tickets were given away, always strategically, to celebrities and anyone else in showbiz who might be in a position to help raise this unique (if unproven) venture to the next level. One night Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro (then shooting
The King of Comedy
) were in the crowd, the next Penny Marshall and George Carlin. For many of the show’s actors, including Phil, it was the greatest exposure of their careers.

“[T]here would be twenty or thirty people in the audience for the [Groundlings] late show, and during that show the lobby would fill up,” Reubens later told the
Hollywood Reporter
. “’Cause my show was sold out. We had a waiting list of hundreds of people. It created a little bit of an awkward situation for me within the Groundlings because I had this extremely happening and successful show and we still weren’t selling out the late show.”

While Reubens and Kaufmann worked on a script with director Bill Steinkellner, Phil and his cohorts contributed ideas and honed their onstage personas. “Phil improvised his scene with Paul, Lynne improvised her scenes,” Paragon says. “I improvised my scenes. And we helped write each other’s parts. It was very collaborative. There was no jealousy or envy. There was no competition.” In a 2004 story for
L.A. Magazine,
Reubens grew wistful when recalling that simpler time. “The thing I remember more than anything,” he said, “was sitting in my ratty car—just me, Phil, and John Paragon, the three male stars of the show, on top of the world, talking and laughing and fantasizing and projecting about what would happen soon.”

In the spring of 1981, when
The Pee-wee Herman Show
had outgrown its Melrose incubator, production shifted to L.A.’s famed Roxy Theatre on Sunset Boulevard, where the public was welcomed, actors were paid a handsome $25 per night, and the next several months saw plenty of packed houses. Now the stakes were getting real. As a result, some of the show’s principal cast members say, the enterprise became more businesslike and Reubens along with it. But he never messed with Phil, whom Paragon says possessed “amazing strength” and was “probably the only person who ever stood up to Pee-wee.” Others agree. Aside from having had a successful career in graphic design—one he could fall back on should this acting thing cave in—Phil quickly became a central player in Pee-wee’s world. “He really was too important for Paul to mess with,” says Kaufmann. And because Reubens “couldn’t alienate him,” Phil had more leverage. When Phil missed a show one evening and Edie McClurg’s brother filled in, Kaufmann says, he knew all the lines “but you could just tell the energy, the humor, the twinkle wasn’t there. And so it wasn’t an easy role to assign to someone else.” Gary Panter’s now ex-wife Nicole—then a punk world denizen and budding impresario—sensed it as well. “Phil had other irons in the fire that looked like they were going to go somewhere. That’s what I think gave him the backbone to not give a shit about what Paul thought.” Hired as the show’s unofficial “cool consultant,” Nicole also played the part of Pee-wee’s friend Susan. “Paul’s leverage with people had to do with, ‘This is the show that’s going to make you,’ and I don’t think Phil ever believed that.”

Although receipts from the Roxy extravaganza barely covered costs, Kaufmann says, the popular production kept on keeping on in hopes that a tipping point was near. And soon enough, it came. Reubens and his handlers at the Agency for the Performing Arts (APA) struck a deal with HBO to film closing night with multiple cameras for the still-nascent cable network’s comedy series
On Location.
Marty Callner, a rising star in the music video and live comedy realms, was brought in to direct. Kaufmann was wary. “The whole idea was to run it for a long time and keep running it until we had an agreement as to where [on television] we were going to do it,” she says of her vision for a late-night kids’ program for adults. Not only did Reubens effectively quash that scenario with his HBO arrangement, Kaufmann and others contend, he served associates far smaller pieces of the Pee-wee pie than had originally been promised. Kaufmann says she was supposed to get 5 percent of the proceeds from anything Pee-wee-oriented that emanated from the Roxy show. Phil and other principals were to have a 3 percent stake. “For as much as I loved Phil, he would barely stand up for himself,” Kaufmann says. “He did not stand up for
anyone
else. And anyone will tell you this. He never, ever, ever stood up for someone else. He just took the path of least resistance.”

Only years later would Phil grouse publicly about his allegedly shabby treatment, and only in the sparest terms. “There was a lot of fucking disappointment among all those people that worked so hard and tirelessly and got credit taken away from them for their contribution to making Paul Reubens a star,” says artist Richard Duardo, who did some artwork for the Roxy show with Gary Panter. “And Phil, for one, was hurt profoundly, deeply. So was Gary. Paul hurt the core group that really propelled him.”

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Not long before Pee-wee and his gang of adult adolescents stormed the Roxy, Phil had begun dating a fiery woman who’d soon spur him to give matrimony another try. Her name was Lisa Strain (now Strain-Jarvis), a vim-brimming, self-possessed free spirit of twenty-three. She then worked as the personal assistant to a real estate developer and was, by her own admission, a handful—though not, she thought, in a bad way. They first encountered each other at a restaurant and music venue called Madame Wong’s in L.A.’s Chinatown district. “Can I dance with you?” Phil asked her, wiggling anxiously as she boogied solo. His manner was so genuine, his tone so eager that she couldn’t say no. “Dance,” she told him, and he did. When he’d had enough, Phil thanked her for the opportunity and returned to his friends. At closing time, while the band packed up its gear, Phil spied Lisa sitting at a table and again approached her. But when he asked if he could walk her to her car, Lisa declined. Having arrived with one of the musicians, she thought it only appropriate to leave with him, too. Phil, however, succeeded in procuring her phone number, which she spoke aloud for lack of a writing implement. Phil said he’d remember. She was sure he’d forget. To make certain that didn’t happen, Phil chanted her digits all the way home and rang her the next day.