Bob Newhart

George Robert Newhart (September 5, 1929 – July 18, 2024) was an American comedian and actor. Newhart was known for his deadpan and stammering delivery style. Beginning his career as a stand-up comedian, he transitioned his career to acting in television. He received three Grammy Awards, an Emmy Award, and a Golden Globe Award as well as the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

Newhart came to prominence in 1960 when his record album of comedic monologues, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, became a bestseller and reached number one on the Billboard pop album chart and won two Grammy Awards for Album of the Year, and Best New Artist. That same year he released his follow-up album, The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back! (1960), which was also a success, and the two albums held the Billboard number one and number two spots simultaneously. He later released several additional comedy albums.

Newhart hosted a short-lived NBC variety show, The Bob Newhart Show (1961), before starring as Chicago psychologist Robert Hartley on The Bob Newhart Show from 1972 to 1978. For the latter, he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Male TV Star. He then starred as Vermont innkeeper Dick Loudon on the series Newhart from 1982 to 1990, where he received three nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. He also starred in two short-lived sitcoms, Bob (1992–1993) and George and Leo (1997–1998).

Newhart also acted in the films Hell Is for Heroes (1962), Hot Millions (1968), Catch-22 (1970), Cold Turkey (1971), In & Out (1997), and Elf (2003), and voiced Bernard in the Disney animated film The Rescuers (1977) and its sequel (1990). Newhart played Professor Proton on the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory from 2013 to 2018, for which he received his first-ever career Emmy Award, for the Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series. He also reprised his role in The Big Bang Theory prequel spin-off series Young Sheldon (2017–2020).

Early life and education

George Robert Newhart was born on September 5, 1929, in Oak Park, Illinois. His parents were Julia Pauline (née Burns; 1901–1994), a housewife, and George David Newhart (1899–1987), a part-owner of a plumbing supply business. His mother was of Irish descent, while his father was of German and Irish descent. He went by his middle name, "Bob," to avoid confusion with his father. The family name Newhart is of German origin (Neuhart). One of his grandmothers was from St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. He had three sisters.

Newhart was educated at Catholic schools in the Chicago area, including St. Catherine of Siena Grammar School in Oak Park, and attended St. Ignatius College Prep (high school), graduating in 1947. He then enrolled at Loyola University Chicago, from which he graduated in 1952 with a bachelor's degree in business management. Newhart was drafted into the U.S. Army and, until his discharge, in 1954, served as a U.S.-based clerk during the Korean War. He briefly attended Loyola University Chicago School of Law, but did not complete a degree, in part, he said, because he had been asked to behave unethically during an internship.

Career

1958–1971: Comedy albums and stardom

After the war, Newhart worked for United States Gypsum as an accountant. He later said that his motto, "That's close enough," and his habit of adjusting petty cash imbalances with his own money showed that he lacked the temperament of an accountant. In 1958, Newhart became an advertising copywriter for Fred A. Niles, a major independent film and television producer in Chicago. There, he and a co-worker entertained each other with long telephone calls about absurd scenarios, which they later recorded and sent to radio stations as audition tapes. When the co-worker ended his participation by taking a job in New York, Newhart continued the recordings alone, developing routines.

Dan Sorkin, a radio station disc jockey, who later became the announcer-sidekick on Newhart's NBC series, introduced Newhart to the head of talent at Warner Bros. Records. Based solely on those recordings, the label signed him in 1959, only a year after it had come into existence. Newhart expanded his material into a stand-up routine that he began to perform at nightclubs. He became famous mostly on the strength of his audio releases, in which he played a solo "straight man". Newhart's routine was to portray one end of a conversation (usually a phone call), playing the comedic straight man while implying what the other person was saying. Newhart's 1960 comedy album The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart was the first comedy album to make number one on the Billboard charts and peaked at number two in the UK Albums Chart. It won two Grammy Awards, Album of the Year, and Best New Artist.

Newhart told a 2005 interviewer for PBS's American Masters that his favorite stand-up routine was "Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue", which appears on this album. In the routine, a slick promoter has to deal with Lincoln's reluctance to agree to efforts to boost his image. Chicago TV director and future comedian Bill Daily, who was Newhart's castmate on The Bob Newhart Show, suggested the routine to him. A follow-up album, The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back!, was released six months later and won Best Comedy Performance – Spoken Word that year. His subsequent comedy albums include Behind the Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart (1961), The Button-Down Mind on TV (1962), Bob Newhart Faces Bob Newhart (1964), The Windmills Are Weakening (1965), This Is It (1967), Best of Bob Newhart (1971), and Very Funny Bob Newhart (1973). Years later, he released Bob Newhart Off the Record (1992), The Button-Down Concert (1997), and Something Like This (2001), an anthology of his 1960s Warner Bros. albums. On December 10, 2015, publicist and comedy album collector Jeff Abraham revealed that a "lost" Newhart track from 1965 about Paul Revere existed on a one-of-a-kind acetate, which he owns. The track made its world premiere on episode 163 of the Comedy on Vinyl podcast.

Newhart's success in stand-up led to his own short-lived NBC variety show in 1961, The Bob Newhart Show. The show lasted only a single season, but it earned Newhart a Primetime Emmy Award nomination and a Peabody Award. The Peabody Board cited him as "a person whose gentle satire and wry and irreverent wit waft a breath of fresh and bracing air through the stale and stuffy electronic corridors. A merry marauder, who looks less like St. George than a choirboy, Newhart has wounded, if not slain, many of the dragons that stalk our society. In a troubled and apprehensive world, Newhart has proved once again that laughter is the best medicine." In the mid-1960s, Newhart was one of the initial three co-hosts of the variety show The Entertainers (1964), with Carol Burnett and Caterina Valente, appeared on The Dean Martin Show 24 times and on The Ed Sullivan Show eight times. He appeared in a 1963 episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, "How to Get Rid of Your Wife"; and on The Judy Garland Show. He also appeared on series such as Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre, Captain Nice, and Insight. Newhart guest-hosted The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson 87 times, and hosted Saturday Night Live twice, in 1980 and 1995. In 1964, he appeared at the Royal Variety Performance in London, before Queen Elizabeth II.

In 1962, Newhart filmed An Evening with Bob Newhart, thought to be the first pay-per-view television special, for Canadian-based Telemeter.

1972–1978: The Bob Newhart Show

Newhart starred in two long-running sitcoms. In 1972, soon after he guest-starred on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, he was approached by his agent and his managers, producer Grant Tinker, and actress Mary Tyler Moore (the husband/wife team who founded MTM Enterprises), to work on a series called The Bob Newhart Show, to be written by David Davis and Lorenzo Music. He was very interested in the starring role of psychologist Bob Hartley, with Suzanne Pleshette playing his wry, loving wife Emily and Bill Daily as neighbor and friend Howard Borden.

The Bob Newhart Show was a part of the CBS comedy lineup on Saturday Night consisting of All in the Family, M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and The Carol Burnett Show. The series was an immediate hit. The show eventually referenced what made Newhart's name in the first place; apart from the first few episodes, it used an opening-credits sequence featuring Newhart answering a telephone in his office. According to co-star Marcia Wallace, the entire cast got along well, and Newhart became close friends with both Wallace and co-star Suzanne Pleshette.