Bob Newhart
Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
Bob NewhartThe beloved stand-up performer, whose quirky, deadpan humor on two critically acclaimed CBS sitcoms earned him a place among the greatest comedians of all time, died Thursday morning at the age of 94.
Legendary Chicago artist who won Grammy Awards for Best Album and Best New Artist for his breakthrough album in 1960 Bob Newhart’s Button-Down MindHis longtime publicist, Jerry Digney, announced his death at his Los Angeles home after several brief illnesses.
The former accountant didn’t win an Emmy until 2013, when he finally did, for his guest role as Arthur Jeffries (aka Professor Proton, the former children’s science show host) on CBS’s “The 1000.” The Big Bang Theory.
In 1972, MTM Enterprises cast the suave comedian as clinical psychologist Bob Hartley in real-life Newhart’s favorite town, Chicago. The Bob Newhart Show The film stars Suzanne Pleshette, Peter Bonners, Marcia Wallace, Bill Daly and Jack Riley among them.
Newhart left the series after 142 episodes in 1978. Incredibly, he wasn’t nominated for an Emmy, nor did the show win one, as he felt the show had run out of talent. However, he returned to CBS in 1982 to star in another MTM comedy.
in New HeartIn “The Stratford Inn,” he played Dick Loudon, a New York writer who became the proprietor of the Stratford Inn in Vermont. The show ran for eight popular seasons, and again with a stellar cast including Mary Fran, Tom Poston, who would later marry Pleshette, Julia Duffy, and Peter Scolari Also starring in the cast are William Sanderson, Tony Papenfuss and John Voldstad as handymen “Larry, Darryl and another brother, Darryl.”
As one of the most acclaimed series endings in history, New Heart The eight-season run ended with a cheeky final scene in which Loudon wakes up in the middle of the night as Bob Hartley in bed with Pleshette in his Chicago apartment, suggesting the entire second series had been a dream.
Newhart’s silences and stammers were one of his trademarks, and his sarcastic observations were the result of his observant personality.
“I tend to find humor in the macabre. I’m 85 percent what you see on the show, and the other 15 percent is a very sick, very disturbed guy,” he said in a 1990 interview. Los Angeles magazine.
He was inducted into the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame in 1992.
George Robert Newhart was born on September 5, 1929, in Oak Park, Illinois. He grew up a Cubs fan, and attended the team’s victory parade down LaSalle Street after Chicago won the National League pennant in 1945. (Naturally, he was ecstatic when the Cubs ended a 108-year World Series drought by winning in 2016.)
Newhart never dreamed of being in show business – in fact, such a glamorous profession would have been contrary to his Midwestern character, which is probably why he was so connected to Midwest America.
Mr. Newhart attended St. Ignatius College Prep and then earned a business degree from Loyola University. He served two years in the Army and then dropped out of law school. He then worked as an accountant for U.S. Gypsum and then for Glidden, a paint distributor.
“Somehow there’s a connection between numbers, music and comedy. I don’t know what it is, but I know there is one,” he once said in an interview with a college business professor. “For comedians, you know that two and two add up to five. You put this fact together with that fact and you get this ridiculous fact.”
To ease the tedium of the job, Newhart and his friends would make prank calls to one another for fun, which he refined into his signature comedy of one-sided phone conversations (where the audience has to guess what the other person is like).
He and his friends also sold a radio show, broadcasting five minutes of comedy five days a week for $7.50 a week.
Another friend, a Chicago disc jockey, introduced Newhart to an executive at Warner Bros. Records in 1959. An accountant and copywriter at the time, he had only three routines but developed more and won a record deal.
“You have to remember, when I started out in the late ’50s, I didn’t say to myself, ‘Oh, this is a big void to fill. I’m going to be a balding ex-accountant who specializes in understated humor,'” he said. “It was just who I was, and where my heart had always been headed, so it was just natural for me to do that.”
Bob Newhart’s Button-Down MindRecorded live at a Houston nightclub, it became the first comedy album to top the album charts and became one of the best-selling “talk” albums ever, selling 1.5 million copies. The album includes classics such as “Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue” and “The Driving Instructor.”
Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl It was becoming established, Button-Down Mind Newhart also won his third Grammy Award for Best Comedy Performance. The Ed Sullivan Show.
After two more successful albums, Newhart was offered a weekly television variety show in 1961-62. The Bob Newhart Show It won an Emmy and a Peabody Award for outstanding program achievement that year in the category of humor.
But Newhart quickly became exhausted: “Even though I had a great producing team, I was solely responsible for the show 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” he once said.
He turned down offers for a number of sitcom roles, returning to nightclubs and honing his acting skills with guest appearances on television and in films, including Don Siegel’s Star Wars: Episode I – The Final Battle. Hell is for heroes (1962) starring Steve McQueen, followed by Hot Millions (1968), by Mike Nichols Catch 22 (1970) and Norman Lear’s Cold Turkey (1971).
Newhart Show Co-creator Dave Davis Lorenzo Musick had been wanting to work on this comic for some time.
“Lorenzo and I are here for Bob. I love American styleBob wasn’t available, so we got Sid Caesar, and a few years later I wrote a screenplay for Bob. The Mary Tyler Moore Show“Bob couldn’t come again,” Davis said. Thursday in Oral history “After I became story editor on Mary’s show, MTM Enterprises decided to branch out and asked Lorenzo and me to make a pilot. We knew exactly what we wanted to do. We wanted to make a show with Bob.”
“Arthur Price,” Newhart said. [co-founder of MTM] He was my manager. He asked me if I’d be interested. I’d been on the road as a stand-up comedian for 12 years, mostly one-night shows and the next day I was 5,300 miles away somewhere. I wanted a normal life where I could be at home with my family.
“I didn’t ask for much. I just didn’t want the show to be about a goofy dad that everyone loves and gets himself into trouble and his wife and kids have to help each other out.”
In 1992 he began a new series. BobHe played a cult comic book character, but the role didn’t attract an audience. George and LeoIn it, he played a bookstore owner. Judd Hirsch.
Newhart is on NBC emergency He appeared in three episodes as a doctor suffering from macular degeneration (for which he was again nominated for an Emmy), and played Morty Frickman, husband to Lesley Ann Warren’s character on ABC’s Doctor Who. Desperate Housewives.
Most recently, Newhart played Judson in Trio. Librarians a TV movie and a TNT series.
Newhart co-starred Little Miss Marker (1980) As President Buck Henryof First Family (1980), with Gilda Radner as the feisty daughter; Will Ferrellof fairy (2003) and Scary bosses (2011). He brings his flat Midwestern accent to the voice acting in two productions. rescue team movie.
Chicago honored him with a bronze statue of Newhart in the spot seen in the opening credits, near the office building on Michigan Avenue. The Bob Newhart ShowThere, his portrait was seated in a chair next to a psychiatrist’s vacant couch, and the statue was later moved to Navy Pier.
In 2002, he became the fifth recipient of the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, and four years later published a memoir. You shouldn’t do this..
Since January 1963, Newhart has been married to Virginia “Ginny” Quinn, daughter of character actor Bill Quinn. Until she died She is scheduled to die in April 2023 at the age of 82. The pair’s blind date was set up by comedian Buddy Hackett (Ginny was babysitting Hackett’s children).
“Buddy came back one day and said, in his inimitable way, ‘I met this young man named Bobby Newhart, and he’s a comedian and he’s Catholic, and you’re Catholic, so I think you should probably get married,'” she recalled in a 2013 interview.
She’s the one who came up with this amazing ending idea. New Heart The show took place during a Christmas party, which Pleshette happened to be attending.
The Newharts Don Rickles and his wife, Barbaraand the couple often vacationed together.
He is survived by his children, Robert Jr., Timothy, Courtney and Jennifer, and 10 grandchildren.
