Phil Hartman Days VIII: In the Playhouse

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Photo: Fireplace Series #1

When I sat down with Bob Shapiro to discuss my new job everyone was on a high. He had his first bonafied hit after stepping down as President of Warner Brothers a year earlier and we creative types were in that happy place one lands in when their film is a big hit. It wasn't just the healthy box office numbers but the fact that Pee-wee was a cult phenomenon, a truly original creation. The pastels and 50's style visuals of the film were high fashion back then, they helped further define the cultural pallete of the decade. Lots of people wanted to touch the cloth, so to speak, to perhaps get a little of the magic for their entertainment conglomerates. Soon the principals were in bookend meetings around town and it wasn't long before they accepted a job to create a new kid's television series for CBS, Pee-Wee's Playhouse.

For my part, although I'd had very little to do with the success of the film, I was feeling pretty cocky. I suppose it came from being everyone in Hollywood's new best friend. I was set up in in the WB Bungalow, clearly the nicest one on the lot. When Bob stepped down as Studio Chief he knew which one to put dibs on - a beautiful, spacious cottage that had once been the dressing room of 30's movie star, Marion Davies (also the mistress of Randolph Hearst). Each office had been fashioned from rooms in the house and all were different, some with fireplaces, whitewashed walls, glass-fronted bookcases & iron mullioned windows. It didn't get any better. I felt like Tess triumphant at the end of Working Girl, because it had been only months earlier when I'd been forced by arcane Studio-union policy to join the secretarial pool between jobs as a production coordinator. During one hiatus, I was asked to report to the office of a development executive, one of the elite Turks in the business, who proceeded to dump a bunch of typing assignments on my desk with barely a glance in my direction before going back into her office, getting on the phone and turning to the business of film development. Which, if you don't know this already, consists of 20% actual script development and 80% gossip.

In those days they were called D-Girls because almost all of them were women or gay men and boy were they vicious! Information passed through them at lightening speed, getting more exaggerated and vitriolic with every telling. Their stock in trade was the ever-changing list of creatives (directors & actors), their box office value (real or potential), and no tidbit was too small to pass up. They were hungry for ways to beg, borrow or steal these commodities before someone else did, and they loved to share in the daily grist of who was hot and who was not. What happened to the projects they oversaw is another story because D-Girls were famous for "can't say yes, won't say no." They had no real power to get a greenlight for a project - they were more like the shadowy politicians behind the King's throne, whispering their way into favor.

I remembered the humiliation of that day so clearly. My face to the wall staring at the typewriter, gulping down tears every time I had to answer the phone for the development executive, trying to disappear from the room. I swore then and there that I'd do anything, clean toilets, wait tables, put out a tin cup, before I ever, ever sank to typing up someone's memos again.

How quickly fortunes change: Here I was now a few short months later with my own office, someone to answer my phone, and the requisite announcement of my appointment on the cover of The Hollywood Reporter. But Bob hedged at actually making me his Development V.P. so he had me doing 'special projects'. They were varied, odd, and sometimes interesting. One day he asked me to translate an old film from French into English - I had to watch it on a movieola, kind of a personal viewer in the pre-DVD days. I also started doing a round of lunches, something expected of anyone who wanted a future in the film business. Some people wanted to get to Michael through me so the meet-and-greets were not difficult.

These were halcyon days for me although Michael wasn't faring as well in his new job as part of a large team of writers for Pee-wee's Playhouse. Most of them were Paul's cronies and they came from stand-up comedy. Worse still, most of them were actors in the series so they were very possessive of the jokes, the style of humor, and just about everything else. Phil fit in well in this environment but Michael, who was trying to interject order into the pandemonium was soon tagged as a sourpus and eventually shut out. As far as Michael's stalling career was concerned I was in denial and focused instead on the rounds of parties and events we were still privy to, and for many of them we double-dated with Phil. By now he was escorting a variety of attractive women, some of them nice, some of them not-so-nice. He seemed to have trouble getting away from the cool blondes he found so compelling. I suppose they were the yin to his yang, because Phil remained the same affable, vulnerable, and always transparent nice-guy even as his career started to really take off.

Phil's character on Playhouse was Captian Carl, a loud, barnacled sea-captian with very bushy eyebrows and blustery way. The burr in Capt'n Carl's side was his a secret crush on fellow Playhouse regular, Miss Yvonne, and yar matey would be reduced to a blubbering idiot when she was around. All comedians reach for those vulnerabilities most personal to them and usually that's when their humor is the truest.

When the series debuted we had a party for friends at the house and watched with amazement as adults and children alike screamed with laughter. It was a totally new thing, the idea of parents and kids watching Saturday morning television together and CBS was very happy. As Emmy season rolled around we got word the show had been nominated in several categories, including the writing. Another opportunity to dress up in some outlandish tulle concoction and make for the limos.

The show did win a couple of Emmy's but the writers lost out to Sesame Street, which was on a 10 year winning-streak. We were bitterly disappointed. The Emmys were beautiful and would have looked really, really nice on the mantelpiece.

By this time we'd purchased a craftsman house in the West Adams district and we stayed busy. Phil continued to come to our weekly dinner parties, often solo, and we began to think of him as a member of our family. Then one day, he got word that he and Jan were going to be in the new SNL season and within weeks he had moved to New York. The hardest part of working on a show or a film is when it ends and everybody moves on. It's a bitter pill to swallow, one I never got used to.

Next: Phil becomes a bonified star and we meet Brynn