Ithe Angeles – Bob Newhart, the deadpan accountant turned comedian who became one of the most popular television star of his era after striking gold with a classic comedy album, has died aged 94.
Jerry Digney, Newhart’s publicist, says the actor died Thursday in Los Angeles after a series of short illnesses.
Newhartbest remembered now as the star of two hit television shows of the 1970s and 1980s that bear his name, launched his career as a stand-up comedian in the late 1950s. He gained national fame when his routine was captured on vinyl in 1960 as “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart”, which won a Grammy for album of the year.
While other comedians of the era, including Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Alan King and Mike Nichols and Elaine May, often laughed at their aggressive attacks on modern mores, Newhart was an anomaly. His outlook was modern, but he rarely raised his voice above a hesitant, almost stuttering expression. His only prop was a telephone, used to pretend he was talking to someone on the other end of the line.
In one memorable sketch, he portrayed a Madison Avenue image maker trying to instruct Abraham Lincoln on how to improve the Gettysburg Address: “Let’s say eighty-seven years ago instead of eighty-seven,” he advised.
Another favorite was “Merchandising the Wright Brothers,” in which he tried to persuade aviation pioneers to found an airline, although he acknowledged that the distance of the inaugural flight might limit them.
“Well, see, it’s going to hurt our time to shore if we have to land every 100 feet.”
Newhart was initially wary of signing on for a weekly TV series, fearing it would overexpose his material. Still, he accepted an attractive offer from NBC, and “The Bob Newhart Show” debuted on October 11, 1961. Despite Emmy and Peabody awards, the half-hour variety show was canceled after one season, a source of jokes from Newhart for decades later.
He waited 10 years before performing another “Bob Newhart Show” in 1972. This was a situation comedy with Newhart playing a Chicago psychologist who lived in a penthouse with his teacher wife, Suzanne Pleshette. His neighbors and his patients, particularly Bill Daily as an airline navigator, were a crazy, neurotic bunch who provided an ideal counterpoint to Newhart’s deadpan comments.
The series, one of the most acclaimed of the 1970s, lasted until 1978.
Four years later, the comedian launched another program, simply called “Newhart”. This time he was a successful New York writer who decides to reopen a long-closed inn in Vermont. Once again, Newhart was the calm, reasonable man surrounded by a group of eccentric locals. Once again, the show was a huge success, lasting eight seasons on CBS.
It all ended in memorable style in 1990, with Newhart – in his old Chicago psychologist character – waking up in bed with Pleshette, wincing as he tells her about the strange dream he had: “I was an innkeeper in this crazy little town in Vermont. … The handyman kept losing the meaning of things, and then there were these three woodcutters, but only one of them spoke!
The stunt parodied an episode of “Dallas” in which a key character was killed and revived when it was revealed that the death occurred in a dream.
Two later series were comparative duds: “Bob,” in 1992-93, and “George & Leo,” 1997-98. Although nominated several times, he has never won an Emmy for his sitcom work. “I think they think I’m not acting. Which is just Bob being Bob,” he sighed.
Over the years, Newhart has also appeared in several films, often in comedic roles. Among them: “Catch 22”, “In and Out”, “Legally Blonde 2” and “Elf”, as the little father of adopted son Will Ferrell. More recent work has included “Horrible Bosses” and the TV series “The Librarians,” “The Big Bang Theory” and “Young Sheldon.”
Newhart married Virginia Quinn, known to friends as Ginny, in 1964, and remained with her until his death in 2023. They had four children: Robert, Timothy, Jennifer and Courtney. Newhart was a frequent guest of Johnny Carson and liked to tease the three-times-divorced “Tonight” host that at least some comedians enjoyed long-term marriages. He was especially close to fellow comedian and family man Don Rickles, whose raucous, insulting humor memorably clashed with Newhart’s droll understatement.
“We are apples and oranges. I’m Jewish, he’s Catholic. He’s low-key, I’m a screamer,” Rickles told Variety in 2012. A decade later, Judd Apatow would pay tribute to their friendship in the short documentary “Bob and Don: A Love Story.”
A master of the gently sarcastic commentary, Newhart got into comedy after becoming bored with his $5-an-hour accounting job in Chicago. To pass the time, he and a friend, Ed Gallagher, began making funny phone calls to each other. Eventually they decided to record them as comedies and sell them to radio stations.
His efforts failed, but the records caught the attention of Warner Bros., who signed Newhart to a contract and booked him at a Houston club in February 1960.
“A terrified 30-year-old man went on stage and played in his first nightclub,” he recalled in 2003.
Six of their routines were recorded during their two-week meeting, and the album, “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart,” was released on April Fools’ Day 1960. It sold 750,000 copies and was followed by “The Button-Down A mind strikes back!” At one point, the albums were number one and two on the sales charts. The New York Times in 1960 said he was “the first comedian in history to gain prominence through recording.”
In addition to winning album of the year at the Grammys for his debut, Newhart won best new artist of 1960, and the follow-up “The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back!” won best spoken word comedy album.
Newhart was booked for several appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and in nightclubs, concert halls and college campuses across the country. He hated clubs, however, because of the annoying drunks they attracted.
“Every time I have to leave a scene and put one of those birds in its place, it ruins the routine,” he said in 1960.
In 2004, he received another Emmy nomination, this time for guest starring in a drama series, for a role on “ER.” Another honor came in 2007, when the Library of Congress announced that it had added “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart” to its registry of historically significant sound recordings. Only 25 recordings are added each year to the registry, which was created in 2000.
Newhart hit the bestseller list in 2006 with her memoir, “I Shouldn’t Even Be Doing This!” He was nominated for another Grammy for best spoken word album (a category that includes audiobooks) for reading the book.
“I’ve always compared what I do to the man who is convinced he’s the last sane man on Earth… the Paul Revere of psychotics running around town screaming, ‘This is crazy.’ But no one pays attention to this. him,” Newhart wrote.
Born George Robert Newhart in Chicago to a German-Irish family, he was called Bob to avoid confusion with his father, who was also called George.
At St. Ignatius High School and Loyola University in Chicago, he entertained his fellow students with impressions of James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Durante and other stars. After graduating with a degree in commerce, Newhart served two years in the Army. Returning to Chicago after military service, he entered law school at Loyola but failed. He eventually got a job as an accountant at the state unemployment office. Bored with work, he spent his free time acting at a limited liability company in suburban Oak Park, an experience that led him to telephone bits.
“I was not part of any comic conspiracy,” Newhart wrote in his memoir. “Mike (Nichols) and Elaine (May), Shelley (Berman), Lenny Bruce, Johnny Winters, Mort Sahl – we didn’t all get together and say, ‘Let’s change the comedy and slow it down.’ to find humor. College students would hear jokes about mother-in-laws and say, “What the hell is a mother-in-law?” What we did reflected our lives and related to theirs.”
Newhart continued appearing on television occasionally after her fourth sitcom ended and promised in 2003 that she would work as much as she could.
“It’s been so long, 43 years of my life; (giving up) would be like something was missing,” he said.
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Former Associated Press writer Bob Thomas contributed to this report.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
