ormer "Saturday Night Live" actor Phil Hartman, who portrayed radio newsman Bill McNeal in the NBC sitcom "NewsRadio," and his wife were found dead this morning in an apparent murder-suicide in their Encino home.
      Police responding to a 911 call were removing two children from the home when Hartman's wife, Brynn, 40, shot herself to death in the master bedroom, Lt. Anthony Alba said.
      The body of the 49-year-old Hartman was found in bed in the same bedroom.
      "We are investigating this as a possible murder-suicide," Alba said. "We know for sure that the female inflicted her own gunshot wound. She apparently shot herself as the officers were in the house removing the second child," Alba said. "Mr. Hartman had been dead for awhile."
      It was unclear how much time transpired between the two shootings. Cmdr. Dave Kalish said only that officers responded to the house within minutes of the initial shooting report.
      The Hartmans' children, a 9-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl, were traumatized but otherwise safe in police custody, Kalish said.
      Asked about the state of the Hartmans' marriage, Kalish said, "We don't have any information concerning that topic." There was also no immediate information about the gun.
      Hartman was a fixture on "Saturday Night Live" for years, doing impersonations ranging from Presidents Clinton and Reagan to Jack Nicholson. He was in the season finale of NBC's "3rd Rock from the Sun" and is in the upcoming summer film "Small Soldiers."
      Police and an ambulance responded to a call of shots fired at 6:21 a.m. at the home on Encino Avenue, 15 miles west of downtown. Alba said he didn't know who made the call.
      The front door was open when officers arrived at the $1.2 million, 4,000-square-foot home.
     

GARY NULL / NBC

Kalish said arriving officers first the boy inside the house and took him to safety, then returned to find the girl. As they were taking her out they heard the gunshot from the bedroom.
      Alba said "any time our officers enter a location, if there are children, they are our first consideration, removing children from essentially dangerous situations and that's what the officers did."
      Slowly emerging details of the Hartmans' recent activities revealed no signs of trouble.
      Mrs. Hartman and a woman friend stopped in at Buca di Beppo, an Italian restaurant down the street from her home, about 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, said Tony Penn, general manager and part owner. The Hartmans dined there as many as eight times in the two months it's been open.
      "She was a sweet, loving person. I never got the impression there were any problems," he said. "They seemed to love each other, they seemed normal. They were regular, down-to-Earth people."
      Susan Kaplow, a neighbor in the upscale San Fernando Valley neighborhood, said Mrs. Hartman was happy on Wednesday.
      "She left me a really happy message yesterday," Ms. Kaplow said. "Everything was fine. We leave each other silly messages all the time."
      Stuart Kramar, who lives across from the Hartmans, said he didn't hear any gunshots. He came out of his home about 6:30 a.m. and saw emergency vehicles and a woman at a house next to the Hartmans' cradling a crying child. Kramar also saw no signs of trouble.
      "She was friendly, there were no pretenses and no attitudes with her," he said. Hartman was a personable neighbor who would nod or wink when they passed.
      Hartman's violent end stood in stark contrast to the way his colleagues remembered him.
      "Phil was a deeply funny and very happy person," said fellow "Saturday Night" alum Steve Martin. "This is a great tragedy."
      NBC West Coast President Don Ohlmeyer said Hartman was a warm, professional and loyal person. "Phil was blessed with a tremendous gift for creating characters that made people laugh," Ohlmeyer said.
      Actor Steve Guttenberg, who knew Hartman for 20 years since their days working together with the Groundlings comedy troupe, was shocked by the manner of his friend's death.
      "It's totally contradictory to the kind of guy he is," Guttenberg said.
      He said he met Hartman's wife several times but did not know details of their relationship.
      "It shows when you see people you don't know the complications behind their lives," he said. "It's just bewildering these people did this. These are people who are always laughing, always having a good time. It's just terrible."
      "They were always a very happy couple," Guttenberg said. "They always had the appearance of being well-balanced."
      A half-block from the Hartman home, neighbor Sylvia Parker said the community of estate-sized homes had never experienced a crime worse than robbery. "It's the last thing you would expect to happen here," said Ms. Parker, who did not know the Hartmans.
      Hartman appeared on "Saturday Night Live" for eight seasons, which he found stressful. He told People magazine in a 1995 interview, "The rejection and backstabbing could be painful but the hardest thing was competing against your friends for airtime."
      He joined "SNL" in 1986, part of a cast that included Jon Lovitz, Dennis Miller and Dana Carvey. Hartman scored with his amazing skill at impersonation. During his seven seasons, he mimicked upwards of 70 famous people, including Ed McMahon, Jimmy Swaggart and Phil Donahue.
      "Even at Westchester High in West L.A., I was class clown, because I could do John Wayne, Jack Benny, Jack Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and entertain my friends on the senior lawn," he remembered in a 1995 Associated Press interview. "But I never seriously considered it as a career choice."
      "NewsRadio" came along in 1995, with Hartman playing the vain anchor Bill McNeal. The show was a critical favorite, but had difficulty finding an audience as it bounced around NBC's prime-time schedule.
      It had several brushes with cancellation, and it was somewhat surprising when NBC announced last week it would come back for another season in the fall.
      Hartman was heard as a guest voice on "The Simpsons," including as the character Troy McClure.
      In recent years he appeared with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the film "Jingle All the Way," in HBO Pictures' "The Second Civil War" and with Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd in last year's "Sgt. Bilko." Other films included "Greedy," "House Guest," "Blind Date," "Three Amigos," "Coneheads," "Fletch Lives," "Quick Change" and "So I Married an Axe Murderer."
      "One of the remarkable things about my career is that it has been marked by steady, incremental progress. No sudden spikes up, and no sudden downfalls, either," he said in 1995.
      "I haven't really been slammed, like some of my buddies. I can't imagine that I'm going to avoid that in my career. Because I came into it so late, after working in the corporate world of advertising and graphic design, I know how hard the average person works, because I've been there.
      "I've succeeded beyond my wildest dreams … financially and the amount of fun I have in my life."
      Like Aykroyd, the late John Candy and numerous other comics, Hartman was born in Canada. Unlike the others, he grew up in the United States … Connecticut and Southern California. He studied art and wound up in graphic design, doing album covers for rock bands.
      Hartman got his start in show business in 1975, when he dropped in on an improvisational comedy club and was impressed by the comics' fast wit.
      In the 1995 Associated Press interview, he recalled that he told himself, "I gotta do this!"
      He joined a workshop of the Groundlings comedy troupe and later became a member. He got bit parts and collaborated with fellow Groundling Paul "Pee Wee Herman" Reubens on the script of "Pee Wee's Big Adventure."
      "I was 36, and I had decided to quit acting because it was so disappointing," Hartman recalls. "'Pee Wee's Big Adventure' was relatively successful, and if you can be associated with a hit, a lot of doors open. I found the writing arena to be much less competitive.
      "As an actor, I felt I couldn't compete. I wasn't as cute as the leading man; I wasn't as brilliant as Robin Williams. The one thing I could do was voices and impersonations and weird characters, and there was really no call for that. Except on 'Saturday Night Live."'
      The Groundlings canceled tonight's show in Hollywood in Hartman's memory. "He will be greatly missed, not only by those of us who knew him personally, but also by the millions of people who appreciated his remarkable talent," the troupe said in a statement.