Comedian Bob Newhart pretends to talk on an antique telephone at his home in the Bel Air Estates neighborhood of Los Angeles on June 25, 2003.
Jerome T. Nakagawa/AP
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Jerome T. Nakagawa/AP
The Life of Bob Newhart People who died this week At 94, she might remind us to notice the brilliance hidden in what may seem like mere background.
He worked as an accountant in Chicago in the mid-1950s, where he often said his motto was, “Enough is enough!” To escape the tedium of cubicles and calculators, he began a routine of telephone conversations between friends and historical figures.
After his friend left to take a job in New York, Newhart continued to man the phones on one end of the line.
Suppose Abraham Lincoln’s spokesman told the president, “Next time someone complains about Grant’s drinking, find out what brand he’s drinking and tell them I’ll send a case to all the other generals. Trust me, Abraham.” The spokesman reassured a skeptical Lincoln, “That’s a funny story. Go for it!”
Or the scene in which the president of a 16th-century British shipping company receives a phone call from Sir Walter Raleigh in the New World.
“Tobacco?” he asks. “…Just to be clear, Walt, you bought 80 tons of leaves?…Can you chew them? Or put them in a pipe? Or… You can put them on paper and roll them…”
Shipping executives have to stifle laughter. And, of course, we may now regret that there was not more skepticism about rolling tobacco in the 16th century.
Tapes of Newhart’s routine eventually made their way to a record company, resulting in the 1960 comedy album. Bob Newhart’s Button-Down MindThe former accountant won the Grammy Award for Best Album in 1961, beating out other nominees such as Nat King Cole, Harry Belafonte and Frank Sinatra.
Newhart went on to star in two hit comedies, playing seemingly mild-mannered men navigating a world of colorful characters as a Chicago psychologist and a Vermont innkeeper, and then, of course, the role that introduced him to a new generation. fairy.
In 2002, Newhart won the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. That night on stage at the Kennedy Center, he told the silk-and-sequined crowd, “I’m standing here a long way from the accounting department at Glidden Corporation.”
