I loved this profile of Phil Hartman written by Jack Handey, who was an SNL writer for decades (and the source of the infamous, “Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey”).
He could do any accent. He could play menacing or frightened
He could basically do it all. You’d hand him the ball and he’d punch it over the goal line. If he couldn’t, the ball you handed him was probably slippery or flat.
I believe Phil Hartman was one of the greatest comedians of his era, and like a future Hall of Famer cut down by injury, we’ll never know what kind of legacy he could have built with a lifetime body of work.
I searched around for some clips and found a huge treasure trove at Yahoo.