Free You Might Remember Me The Life and Times of Phil Hartman by Mike Thomas

The down payment on it, $5,000, was a gift from Gretchen’s father. He helped in other ways, too. But the monthly mortgage—which amounted to a couple of hundred dollars more than they’d paid to rent their previous pad—was a couple of hundred dollars too much. Still, they somehow made do and got along in the process, even taking on a roommate for a time. “There were never cross words between the two of us,” Gretchen says. “I mean, we had our issues—like, we didn’t have enough money. But we didn’t live ahead of ourselves. Our life was really simple, kind of like in that Shirley MacLaine–Robert Mitchum movie What a Way to Go! ”
    Before long, though, stress—partly brought on by mounting bills—began taking its toll. To further complicate matters, Gretchen again became pregnant. Phil wanted kids, five of them, even back then—but not then. The timing, Gretchen says, was worse than before, and so she quietly had her second pregnancy terminated at a clinic in Beverly Hills. “Twice it was accidental,” she says, noting that even the use of an IUD had failed to prevent conception. “And whatever smarts we had, we just knew we weren’t bringing a kid into the world. We just weren’t ready.” Phil stayed cool and gave no hint of being upset. Gretchen admits, though, that if something bothered him, “certainly nobody ever knew—and that included me.”
    “He didn’t have a lot of requirements,” she adds. “He really didn’t. And he definitely didn’t expect anything of other people. My attitude is if I give out to you, you’d better give me something back emotionally. He wasn’t that kind of guy.”
    That same fall, Phil transferred his credits from Santa Monica City College to San Fernando State University (now Cal-State Northridge), a four-year institution, where he took graphic arts classes but declared no major. He dropped out the following spring. A few months before doing so, in early February 1971, a massive earthquake registering 6.6 on the Richter scale rippled through much of Southern California and portions of neighboring states, causing $500 million in damage, killing sixty-five people and injuring two thousand more. Aftershocks, seismic and otherwise, continued for several more months.
    By late that year, Phil and Gretchen had lost their spark and grown apart. Continuing money woes and Gretchen’s most recent pregnancy were key issues, but even more detrimental was a “flirtation” she had carried on with a bigwig client from the dentist’s office where Gretchen found work after quitting her bank gig. “It was exciting,” she says. “I got to see a barber come into his office and give him haircuts, manicures, and cater to his every whim. But I was just a bystander caught up in it all. When it came down to the rubber meeting the road, I tucked tail and ran home to Phil. I told him everything, which was nothing, but I believe it did irreparable damage to an already fragile and strained marriage.”
    The end of their union was as inauspicious and unexpected as its beginning. As easily as they’d come together, they drifted apart. Steve Small handled the divorce proceedings, which were cut-and-dried since Phil and Gretchen had few if any assets to divide. “There was no drama to it,” Small says. Gretchen agrees, calling the split “a real matter-of-fact kind of thing. I don’t remember ever walking into a courtroom.” By March 1972 their marriage was officially dissolved, though they stayed in sporadic contact and on friendly terms for the next quarter-century. “I take full blame for whatever didn’t work out,” Gretchen says. “I don’t know that we’d still be married today, because fame and glory might have changed all that. But from what I believe and things I’ve read, Phil didn’t change.”
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    For the first time in a couple of years, Phil was a free man—a young, talented, good-looking bachelor in the casually amorous Age of Aquarius—and