Bob Newhart was once told that an episode of his landmark ’70s sitcom, the Bob Newhart Show, was running a little long. A producer asked him to speed up his dialogue: “Can you kind of run your speeches together a little?”
Newhart’s reply: “Look, that stammer got me a home in Beverly Hills and I’m not about to screw with it now.”
If ever a comedian knew his shtick it was George Robert Newhart. The comedy legend was never the class clown or, as he told me during a 1997 interview, the guy “in the middle with the lampshade on the head … I was the guy on the edge of the crowd who whispers something to the guy next to him, and the guy next to me broke up. And the guy next to him said, ‘What’d he say?’”
The Chicago native, who died Thursday at age 94, was not, as often assumed, a disciple of the Jack Benny school of comedic timing. His early comedy heroes were the dry witted, deadpan radio duo Bob Elliott & Ray Goulding.
After achieving the rank of staff sergeant during a two-year stint in the army during the Korean War, in the mid-1950s Newhart ventured into the business world as an accountant. His “close enough” approach to money math, however, soon had him switching to advertising.
“People kept saying, you’re funny, you say funny things,” he related while promoting his short-lived sitcom, George & Leo, in 1997. He decided to see if there was a place for him in comedy. “I was going to give it a year and see if I could make a living at it.”
One year turned into four. Skits were written and submitted; a comedy record deal was offered and recorded. In 1960, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart topped the charts, the biggest selling comedy album up to that time.
“And the next thing I know, [TV star maker] Ed Sullivan was on the phone: ‘Would I like to do six Ed Sullivan shows?’”
The exposure launched Newhart as part of a new wave of “thinking man’s comedians” whose albums were sweeping through record stores in the early ’60s. Other rising stars included Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Bill Cosby, Shelley Berman and duo (Mike) Nichols and (Emily) May.
Newhart’s earliest routines had him playing straight man to himself, filling in the other half of a phone call by repeating the essential parts of the conversation. “Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue” was one hilarious example.
“Hi Abe sweetheart, how are ya kid?” asks Lincoln’s press agent. “How’s Gettysburg? Sort of a drag, eh?” It ends with Lincoln’s agent suggesting the president and his wife Mary, “take in a play.”
One of Newhart’s friends during those early years in Chicago was Bill Daily. The two would work together a dozen years later on The Bob Newhart Show (1972-78), with Daily playing psychologist Bob Hartley’s scatterbrained apartment neighbour, co-pilot Howard Borden.
Daily, who I interviewed in 2014, called Newhart the “nicest guy ever.” He remembers Newhart getting standing ovations with the Abe Lincoln bit.
Another co-star on that series, Peter Bonerz, played dentist Jerry Robinson. One of the future director’s first jobs was working at a record store, where boxes of Newhart’s comedy albums would “sell out in a day.”
About the only person who didn’t get a boost from The Bob Newhart Show was Newhart’s close friend, comedian Don Rickles. Rickles used to warm up the studio audience, but the abrasive night club comedian’s act was deemed “too hot” for the show.
Daily recalled: “Bob finally had to say to his best friend, ‘I’m sorry, but you can’t do it anymore.’”
Essential to the success of the series were the two female leads. As Emily Hartley, Suzanne Pleshette – who died at 70 in 2008 – made bland Bob seem sexier. Meanwhile, Marcia Wallace was hard to miss as the tall, orange-haired receptionist, Carol Kester.
Stealing scenes left and right were Dr. Hartley’s self-absorbed patients, including Jack Riley as terminally disgruntled Mr. Carlin, Florida Friebus as dotty Mrs. Bakerman and John Fielder as high-pitched Mr. Peterson.
That Newhart let them all shine says a lot about the star. He set a template that others would follow as the calm centre on a show full of zanies. One can see the influence he had on comedians like Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David.
The deadpan approach was repeated on Newhart, which ran eight seasons from 1982 to 1990. Cast as a Vermont innkeeper, Newhart again welcomed solid support from Mary Frann, Tom Poston, Julia Duffy, Peter Scolari and, of course, Larry, Darryl and Darryl (actors Bill Sanderson, Tony Papenfuss and John Voldstad).
That series is best remembered for its ending, regarded as the best sitcom finale ever.
“The final episode was my wife’s idea,” Newhart told me in our 1997 interview. His wife of 60 years, Ginny, who died last year, told her husband that the final episode should end in a dream sequence.
“You ought to wake up in bed with Suzie,” Newhart recalled her saying, “and describe this crazy town in Vermont.”
Which is exactly what happened. At the very end of the episode, in a scene that began in darkness, the lights went on in the studio to reveal that Bob was in bed with Emily (Pleshette), his TV wife from his first series. The suggestion was that the entire second series had been a bad dream.
“And the people, they went crazy when they saw the set,” said Newhart. “I mean, they didn’t even know who was in the bed. They saw the set and they went, ‘Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!’”
Newhart tried other sitcoms after his two big hits but could not three-peat. Bob, from 1992, had him as a cranky cartoonist.
“It was decided that we were going to give them a Bob Newhart they had never seen,” Newhart recalled. “And the American public said a resounding, ‘We don’t want to see a new Bob Newhart. Show us the Bob Newhart we know.’
“So, I learned my lesson,” he said. “I always say, actors love to stretch, but they should only stretch on exercise videos. They shouldn’t stretch in front of the American public. The American public, they couldn’t care less whether you’re stretching or not.”
In truth, audiences just wanted to see Newhart be Newhart. He guest hosted The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson 87 times and Saturday Night Live twice. He voiced a mouse who sounded like Newhart in two animated Rescuers features for Disney.
Never nominated for an Emmy throughout the runs of both of his sitcom successes, he finally won for a guest-starring role that came late in life – that of former Science TV host Professor Proton on The Big Bang Theory. He even returned as the character on Young Sheldon.
Through it all, Newhart was at his best when staying true to himself. One guiding principle on The Bob Newhart Show, he told the writers, was that Bob and Emily were not going to have children.
“I explained to the writers I didn’t want to be Father Knows Best dumb daddy, how do we get him out of this fix he’s gotten himself into? I didn’t want to play that character.”
The writers ignored the directive in the sixth season. A script arrived where Emily was pregnant. Newhart read it and called the producers.
“It’s a funny script,” he told them. “Who are you going to get to play Bob?”
With his death at 94, we’re all left asking that question.
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