Bob Newhart, one of the most popular sitcom stars in television history, died Thursday in LA at age 94.
Bob Newhart performs his unique, oblique brand of standup comedy in the early ‘60s. (Image: Getty)
Newhart is best remembered as the star of two hit sitcoms, “The Bob Newhart Show” (1972-78) and “Newhart” (1982-1990), a rare feat in such a fickle medium.
In both series, he played a level-headed everyman reacting stoically to the insane situations created by the eccentric characters surrounding him — making expert use of a trademark deadpan stare and stammer.
This was an extension of the act with which Newhart commanded the Congo Room stage at the Sahara during his 1963 Las Vegas debut. Newhart talked into a prop phone on which he pretended to hold one-sided conversations with historical figures and assorted unreasonable people.
Bob Newhart’s marquee at the Sands in July 25, 1968, four years before he began a new career in TV sitcoms. (Image: vintagelasvegas.com)
Newhart performed his unique, oblique standup through the early ’70s up and down the Strip, appearing at the Desert Inn, Frontier, Caesars Palace, and the Golden Nugget.
“If normalcy is a gimmick, Bob Newhart had one of stand-up comedy’s greatest hooks,” Gerald Nachman wrote in his 2003 book “Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s.”
Of all the revolutionary comedians of the era such as Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce and Shelley Berman, Nachman wrote, “Newhart was the most Everyman of them all — nonethnic, nonabrasive, non-angst-ridden, non-you-name-it … His mild-mannered, quizzical nature worked like a sedative for the increasing craziness of the time.”
Newhart’s Desire
Born George Robert Newhart in Oak Park, Ill. to a German-Irish family, Newhart came to performing via a circuitous route. He studied at Loyola University in Chicago, from which he graduated with a degree in commerce in 1952. He then enlisted in the Army for two years before entering Loyola’s law school and flunking out in 1956.
Newhart found himself bored to death working as an accountant for the state unemployment department, so he fleshed some of his riper comedy ideas out while performing in a stock company in suburban Oak Park for fun.
The subtle Newhart and the anything-but-subtle Don Rickles, shown chatting together in 2010, couldn’t be farther apart as comedians, but they were close friends in real life. (Image: Associated Press)
Some of those routines ended up on his debut comedy album, “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart.” The first comedy album ever to top the Billboard chart, it earned Newhart Grammys for best comedy album and best new artist of 1960.
The following year, Newhart’s comedian pal Buddy Hackett, known for riotous Vegas shows, set him up with a blind date with Virginia Quinn — Ginnie — whom he married two years later. They remained married until her death last year.
It would be negligent not to mention that Newhart created TV’s hands-down funniest moment ever. At the very end of the last episode of his second sitcom, he woke up in bed with his TV wife (Suzanne Pleshette) from his first sitcom.
“Honey, honey, wake up,” Newhart said. “You won’t believe the dream I just had.”
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