Comedian Martin Mull, star of ‘Roseanne,’ ‘Clue’ and more, dies at 80





LOS ANGELES (AP) — Martin Ponder, whose comical, exclusive satire and acting made him a hip sensation during the 1970s and later a darling visitor star on sitcoms including "Roseanne" and "Captured Improvement," has passed on, his little girl said Friday. He was 80.

Ponder's girl, television essayist and comic craftsman Maggie Reflect, said her dad kicked the bucket at home on Thursday later "a bold battle against a long disease."

Ponder, who was likewise a guitarist and painter, came to public popularity with a common job on the Norman Lear-made sarcastic drama "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman," and the featuring job in its side project, "Fernwood This Evening."

"He was known for succeeding at every imaginative discipline under the sun and furthermore for doing Red Rooftop Hotel plugs," Maggie Ponder said in an Instagram post. "He would track down that joke entertaining. He was rarely not entertaining. My father will be profoundly missed by his better half and little girl, by his companions and colleagues, by individual craftsmen and humorists and performers, and — the indication of a really extraordinary individual — by a lot of people, many canines."

Known for his light hair and very much managed mustache, Ponder was brought into the world in Chicago, brought up in Ohio and Connecticut, and concentrated on workmanship in Rhode Island and Rome.

His initial introduction to the big time was as a lyricist, writing the 1970 semi-hit "A Young Lady Named Johnny Money" for vocalist Jane Morgan.

He would join music and parody in a demonstration that he brought to hip Hollywood clubs during the 1970s.

"In 1976 I was a guitar player and plunk down comic showing up at the Roxy on the Nightfall Strip when Norman Lear strolled in and heard me," Ponder told The Related Press in 1980. "He cast me as the spouse blender on 'Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.' after four months I was veered off on my own show."

His experience on the Strip was memorialized in the 1973 nation rock exemplary "Solitary L.A. Rancher" where the Riders of the Purple Sage give him a whoop alongside music illuminating presences of Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge.

"I know Kris and Rita and Marty Ponder are hangin' at the Singer," the tune says.

On "Fernwood This Evening" (some of the time styled as "Fernwood 2 Evening"), he played Barth Gimble, the host of a nearby syndicated program in a midwestern town and twin to his "Mary Hartman" character. Fred Willard, an incessant partner with very much like comic sensibilities, played his companion. It was subsequently redone as "America 2 Evening" and set in Southern California.

He would become a genuine moderator as a substitute for Johnny Carson on "The This evening Show."

Reflect frequently played marginally shabby, to some degree foul, and frequently smarmy characters as he did as Teri Garr's chief and Michael Keaton's enemy in 1983′s "Mr. Mother." He played Colonel Mustard in the 1985 film variation of the tabletop game "Hint," which, in the same way as other things Ponder showed up in, has turned into a clique.

The 1980s likewise brought many's thought process was his best work, "A Background Marked by White Individuals in America," a mockumentary that was previously broadcasted on Cinemax. Ponder co-made the show and was featured as an "hour" style insightful journalist researching everything milquetoast and unremarkable. Willard was again a co-star.

He composed and featured in 1988′s "Leased Lips" close by Robert Downey Jr., whose dad, Robert Sr., coordinated.

His co-star Jennifer Tilly said in an X post Friday that Ponder was "a particularly clever charming and kind individual."

During the 1990s he was most popular for his repetitive job on a few seasons of "Roseanne," in which he played a hotter, less shabby supervisor to the title character, a transparently gay man whose accomplice was played by Willard, who kicked the bucket in 2020.

Ponder would later play detective for hire Quality Parmesan on "Captured Improvement," a clique exemplary person on a religion exemplary show, and would be designated for an Emmy, his first, in 2016 for a visitor run on "Veep."

"What I did on 'Veep' I'm exceptionally glad for, yet I might want to believe it's likely more group, at my age it's more aggregate," Ponder told the AP after his designation. "It could go as far as possible back to 'Fernwood.'"

Different joke artists and entertainers were much of the time his most ardent followers.

"Martin was the best," "Bridesmaids" chief Paul Feig said on X. "So interesting, so gifted, such a decent person. Was sufficiently fortunate to act with him on The Jackie Thomas Show and cherished each second being with a legend. Fernwood This evening was so powerful in my life."

Reflect is made due by his girl and performer Wendy Haas, his better half beginning around 1982.