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In appearance, Bob Newhart, who died Thursday morning at the age of 94, looked very much like what he had been before becoming one of the most beloved comedians and comic actors of our times: an accountant.
But along with a new generation of comic artists that included fellow Chicagoans Mike Nichols, Elaine May and Shelley Berman (members of Second City forerunner the Compass Players), Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Jonathan Winters, Woody Allen and the Smothers Brothers, he was in the vanguard of a comedy revolution. Out were one-liners about wives, mothers-in-law and airplane food. In were cynical and satirical takes on America’s most sacred institutions.
Some of Newhart’s most fondly remembered routines hilariously skewered Madison Avenue. In “Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue,” an increasingly flustered imagemaker tries to get Abe to stick to the Gettysburg Address script (“You changed four score and seven to eighty-seven? Abe, that’s meant to be a grabber.”)
That routine kicks off The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, his first album, which catapulted Newhart to stardom. It not only topped the charts (it sold over a million copies), but won a Grammy for album of the year, beating out Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole. Newhart also received Grammys for best new artist and best spoken-word comedy performance. His follow-up album The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back! was also a Grammy-winner and both took the one-two slots on the Billboard album chart.
Hold it. How does an accountant become a No. 1 recording artist? While working at Glidden Company selling paint, he and a colleague, whiled the monotonous hours on the phone making each other laugh with improvised dialogues. They recorded and marketed them to local radio stations. Newhart was forced to go solo when his friend took a job in New York.
Chicago radio personality Dan Sorkin not only played some of Newhart’s routines on the air, gave some of the tapes to an executive at Warner Bros. Records, which asked to record his next nightclub performance. Here’s the funny thing: Newhart had never performed in a nightclub. Strings were pulled and Newhart was booked in the Tidelands Motor Inn, where “The Button-Down Mind” was recorded
Newhart did not tell jokes. Like Shelley Berman (and a reported sore spot with him), Newhart did monologues that played out over a phone call between, say an Empire Building security guard whose first night coincides with the appearance of King Kong on the roof, or a game marketing executive fielding a call from Abner Doubleday pitching the game of baseball, or an officer addressing his crew following a truly disastrous voyage. Audiences only heard his end of the conversations.
Newhart was a mainstay of game, talk and variety shows. He parlayed the success of “The Button-Down Mind” into hosting his own 1961 variety show, which lasted one season, but won Emmy and Peabody awards.
He made his film debut as the comic relief in “Hell is for Heroes.” He did episodic television (“Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Captain Nice”) but his big break came in 1972 with “The Bob Newhart Show,” in which he played psychologist Bob Hartley. In its second year on the air, "The Bob Newhart Show" was an integral part of arguably television's best ever programming block: CBS' Saturday night lineup of "All in the Family," "M*A*S*H," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "The Bob Newhart Show," and "The Carol Burnett Show."
Bob Hartley dovetailed seamlessly with Newhart’s standup persona as a listener and reactor to his oddball patients. He had a TV wife, Emily, portrayed by Suzanne Pleshette. At one point, network executives, as they are wont to do, came to him and suggested adding a child to the mix. Newhart said to them, “That’s great. Who are you going to get to play Bob?”
The show ran for six seasons. It still holds up brilliantly. I interviewed Mr. Newhart in 2015 and he shared the secret of the show’s success: "Get great writing and a great cast and take all the credit yourself."
Lightning struck twice for Newhart in 1982 with the aptly-titled “Newhart,” in which he portrayed Dick Loudon, a somewhat out-of-depth owner of a Vermon inn. Again, brilliant writing and a peerless ensemble of iconic characters, including the two-thirds silent woodsmen brothers, Larry, Darryl and Darryl.
The series finale has been hailed as one of TV’s best, in which Bob awakens in bed next to Suzanne Pleschette to tell her of this dream he just had. “I was an innkeeper in this crazy little town of Vermont,” he tells her.
In 1992, Newhart was inducted in the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame, and a decade later, was the recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
As his more than 60-year career attests, Newhart was one of those rare personalities like Dolly Parton who is universally beloved. In 2006, he provided the Emmy broadcast with one of its funniest and darkest gags, as host Conan O’Brien revealed that, to prevent the show from going long, Newhart had been sealed in a glass case with only three hours of air.
Newhart was prolific in film and television. He voiced the lead role of Bernard in Disney’s “The Rescuers” and effortlessly stole his scenes in “Hot Millions,” “Legally Blonde 2,” “In & Out,” Elf,” “E.R.,” “The Librarians,” and “The Big Bang Theory,” in which he portrayed Professor Proton, and for which he was honored with his first Emmy.
In the last decade, he lost his best friend, comedian Don Rickles (see Judd Apatow’s lovely doc, “Bob and Don: A Love Story”) and his beloved wife Ginnie, to whom he had been married for 60 years.
But he never considered retiring. "As long as I am able to," he told me, of performing. "It's a new experience every time. And why stop making people laugh? I can't understand that -'I'm tired of making people laugh?'”
And that made him laugh.
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