Bob Newhart: Difference between revisions

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Bob Newhart is an American actor, comedian and writer famous for his timing and bemused demeanor.

Bob Newhart (born September 5, 1929), is an American stand-up comedian and actor.

Born George Robert Newhart in Oak Park, Illinois, Newhart attended St. Ignatius College Prep and graduated in 1952 from Loyola University Chicago with a business degree. He was drafted in the U.S. Army, and served in the Korean War until 1954.

Early career

After the war he got a job as an accountant for United States Gypsum. In 1958 he became an advertising copywriter for Fred A. Niles, a major independent film and television producer in Chicago. It was at the company that he and a coworker would entertain each other in long recorded telephone calls which they would send to a radio show as audition tapes. It was the start of shtick which was to serve him well for decades.

Stand-up comedy albums

His real start in comedy was as a stand up comedian. Warner Bros. Records, which had started in business in 1958, signed him a year later. His 1960 comedy album, The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart, went straight to number one on the charts, beating Elvis Presley and the cast album of The Sound of Music. Button Down Mind received the 1961 Grammy Award for Album of the Year.

Subsequent comedy albums include

• The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back
• Behind the Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart
• Something Like This... The Bob Newhart Anthology

Television

In the mid-1960s, Newhart appeared on The Dean Martin Show 24 times, and The Ed Sullivan Show eight times. From 1972 to 1978, Newhart starred in the popular Bob Newhart Show on CBS in which he played a Chicago psychologist and husband of co-star, Suzanne Pleshette.

Newhart guest hosted The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson a total of 87 times.

In 1982, Newhart returned to primetime with a new sitcom, Newhart, on CBS, co-starring Mary Frann. When the show went off the air in 1990, it ended with a surreal scene where Newhart wakes up in the morning on the set of his 1970s show and describes that the entire Newhart series as a dream.

In 1992, Newhart made an attempt to come back to television with a series called Bob. But it did not develop a strong audience and went off the air two years later. In 1997, Newhart returned again with George and Leo on CBS with Judd Hirsch. He guest-starrred on the tv series ER. In 2005 he is appearing in several episodes of Desperate Housewives as Morty, the on-again/off-again boyfriend of Sophie (Lesley Ann Warren), Susan Mayer's (Teri Hatcher) mother.

His other television work includes:

• The Bob Newhart Show (1961-1962)
• The Entertainers (regular performer in 1964)
• Thursday's Game (1974)
• Marathon (1980)
• Ladies and Gentlemen... Bob Newhart (1980)
• Ladies and Gentlemen... Bob Newhart Part II (1981)
• The Entertainers (1991)
• The Sports Pages (2001)
• The Librarian: Quest for the Spear (2004)

Persona

Newhart is known for his deadpan delivery and his slight stammer. Several of his funniest bits involve hearing one half of a conversation as he spoke to someone over the phone. In King Kong, a rookie security guard at the Empire State Building seeks guidance as to how to deal with the monster who is "taking up 19 or 20 storeys, depending on whether there is a 13th storey". He assures his boss he has looked in the manual "under 'ape' and 'ape's toes'".

Filmography

Newhart's most memorable roles was in two very different military-themed films, the 1962 comedy Hell Is for Heroes and his portrayal of Major Major Major Major in the 1970 film version of Catch-22.

He also appeared in:

• Hot Millions (1968)
• On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970)
• (1970)
• Cold Turkey (1971)
• The Rescuers (1977) (voice)
• Little Miss Marker (1980)
• First Family (1980)
• The Rescuers Down Under (1990) (voice)
• In & Out (1997)
• Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde (2003)
• Elf (2003)

Honors

On January 6, 1999 Newhart received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2002 he won the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. On July 27, 2004, the American cable television network TV Land unveiled a statue of Newhart on the Magnificent Mile in his native Chicago, depicting Dr. Robert Hartley from The Bob Newhart Show.

Personal life

Newhart was introduced by Buddy Hackett to Virginia Quinn, the woman who became his wife on January 12, 1963. The two have four children (Robert, Timothy, Jennifer, and Courtney), and several grandchildren.

In March 2005, Hyperion Books announced that they would publish Newhart's autobiography in 2006.

Trivia

• The premise of the final show has come to be referred to as "breaking the fifth wall" — the fifth wall being that no two television characters could possibly be the same person. The idea for that last show came from Newhart's wife.
• During Newhart's television career he repeatedely resisted playing a father. When this was attempted by the writers of The Bob Newhart Show in one episode, Newhart's response to the writers about the initial script was "Suzanne and I love the script, but who are you going to get to play Bob?"

Further reading

• Mayerly, Judine. The Most Inconspicuous Hit on Television: A Case Study of Newhart. Washington, DC: Journal of Popular Film and Television, 1989.
• Sorenson, Jeff. Bob Newhart. New York: St. Martin's, 1988.
• Reilly, Rick. Who's Your Caddy: Looping for the Great, Near Great, and Reprobates of Golf.

External links

• Bob Newhart profile from American Masters
• About Bob Newhart, from an American Public Media website
• Bob Newhart at IMDb
• The Bob Newhart website
• Get Desperate! — Bob Newhart] People Guide entry and news listings
• Hyperion To Publish Bob Newhart's Memoir, from a media and publishing website