The comedian died yesterday at the age of 94.
A former accountant who began moonlighting in comedy venues, Newhart first rose to fame in the 1960s for his observational humor and droll delivery. His breakthrough album, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, recorded over several days in Houston before Newhart had any stand-up experience, netted him Grammys for best new artist and album of the year in 1961.
“In 1959, I gave myself a year to make it in comedy; it was back to accounting if comedy didn’t work out,” he once said, according to Digney’s statement. Newhart was 30 years old and years into a career as a Chicago accountant when the album went No 1 on the sales charts, the first comedy album to do so.
The comic went on to dominate the sitcom landscape for nearly two decades with two beloved TV shows, first with The Bob Newhart Show, which aired on CBS from 1972 until 1978. The show, in which Newhart starred as a befuddled psychologist in Chicago, became one of the most popular sitcoms of all time.
…Born on 5 September 1929 in Oak Park, Illinois, George Robert Newhart ushered in a new style of comedy in the 1960s, breaking from the mold of vaudeville and Borscht Belt routines for bits based in observation and psychology. His performance style incorporated stammering, deadpan delivery and quietly subversive material that appealed widely.
Here is the last scene from his second long-running series Newhart that ran from 1982-1990 where he portrayed an innkeeper in a small town in Vermont. I watched that show faithfully. The ending has been widely praised as one of the best endings of a series. The explanation of why is after the clip. (As a side note, of the three sisters, the one in the middle in black is played by Lisa Kudrow.)
The follow-up, Newhart, starred Newhart and Mary Frann as an author and his wife who open a rural inn in Vermont. It ran from 1982 until 1990 and featured one of the more admired finales in TV history, in which Newhart’s character wakes up next to his wife from the Bob Newhart Show, played by Suzanne Pleshette, suggesting the entire second series was a dream.
Accountancy’s loss was comedy’s gain.
Bob Newhart also played the recurring characters of Judson in The Librarians movies, and Professor Proton in both The Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon. He had a knack for playing aggrieved, put-upon characters.
I absolutely loved “Newhart”, although I’d have had a hard time explaining why as it was very different to the other comedies I was into at the time. Ultimately, I think it was just him.
One of the main things about both of his sitcoms is that he was played the straight man surrounded by wacky characters, bringing a balance that kept the zaniness from getting out of hand.
And I think this the first time I’ve ever used “wacky” and “zaniness” without a hint of irony.
The reason the appearance of Susan Pleshette and “it was all a dream” was funny is IMO oddly omitted here. It was because it was a reference to a very famous and popular evening soap opera called Dallas had an “it was all a dream” episode in 1978. That Dallas episode was a retcon to erase their horrifically written and excessively stupid (even for soap operas) previous season.
When I was a kid (late 70s) my parents gave me a record set with old time comedy -- Abbott and Costello, Fibber McGee and Molly, etc. I’m pretty sure The Grace L Ferguson Airline and Storm Door Company was part of it.
I’m Larry. This is my brother Darryl.
This is my other brother Darryl.
X-D