American comedian and actor Bob Newhart dies at 94
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Bob Newhart in 2019. He invented the stand-up special in 1960 and was a source of comic brilliance until his final years.
PHOTO: NYTIMES
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LOS ANGELES – Bob Newhart, who burst onto the comedy scene in 1960 working a stammering everyman character not unlike himself, then rode essentially that same character through a long, busy career that included two of television’s most memorable sitcoms, died on July 18 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 94.
His publicist, Jerry Digney, confirmed the death.
Newhart was not merely unknown a few months before his emergence as a full-fledged star; he was barely in the business, though he had aspirations.
In 1959, some comic tapes he had made to amuse himself while working as an accountant in Chicago caught the ear of an executive at Warner Bros Records, which in 1960 released the comedy album The Button-Down Mind Of Bob Newhart.
The record shot to No. 1 on the charts and at the 1961 Grammy Awards, it improbably captured the top prize – album of the year.
He won two other Grammys that year, for best new artist and best spoken-word comedy performance, an honour that was given not to his first album but to his second, a hastily made follow-up titled The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back! (1960). For a while, his first two albums occupied the top two spots on the Billboard album chart.
“Playboy magazine hailed me ‘the best new comedian of the decade’,” Newhart wrote in his autobiography, I Shouldn’t Even Be Doing This: And Other Things That Strike Me As Funny (2006), describing this period. “Of course, there were still nine more years left in the decade.”
He transitioned quickly and easily into television, landing a short-lived variety show, numerous guest appearances on the shows of Dean Martin and Ed Sullivan, regular work guest-hosting for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show and, ultimately, The Bob Newhart Show, a celebrated sitcom in which he played a somewhat befuddled psychologist.
That series ran from 1972 to 1978, and he followed it up with Newhart (1982 to 1990), another successful sitcom, in which he played a Vermont innkeeper. Newhart ran for eight seasons and ended with what is still viewed as one of the greatest finales in television history.
He remained busy in television and films into his 80s. He won an Emmy in 2013 for a guest appearance as the beloved former host of a TV science show on The Big Bang Theory (2007 to 2019).
That Emmy was, surprisingly, his first.
He had been nominated, but did not win, at the Emmys of 1962, for writing; 1985, 1986 and 1987, as lead actor in a comedy (Newhart); 2004, as guest actor in a drama series, for his role in three episodes of ER (1994 to 2009) as an architect losing his sight; and 2009, for his supporting role in the TV movie The Librarian: The Curse Of The Judas Chalice (2008).
George Robert Newhart was born on Sept 5, 1929, in Oak Park, Illinois. His father, who worked for a plumbing and heating contractor, was also named George, which is how the comedian came to be known as Bob.
The success of the Button-Down Mind albums brought all sorts of demands for Newhart’s dry humour. In December 1961, the first Bob Newhart Show had its premiere on NBC.
By the time CBS gave him a sitcom in 1972, also called The Bob Newhart Show, he was a household name.
The cast was perfectly chosen to contrast with Newhart’s well-established persona. Marcia Wallace was Hartley’s sassy receptionist and Suzanne Pleshette was Emily, his blunt, sarcastic wife.
Newhart returned to the sitcom format in 1982 with Newhart, this time playing Dick Loudon, who with his wife, Joanna (Mary Frann), abandons urban life to try inn-keeping in Vermont. The show ran for eight seasons on CBS, ending on May 21, 1990, with a finale whose sly surprise became the stuff of television legend.
As chaos envelops the inn, Dick is struck by a golf ball and knocked unconscious. To try to preserve secrecy, a fake ending was conceived in which Dick wakes up in heaven and meets God.
But the actual ending wasn’t set in heaven at all – it was set in the familiar bedroom of the Hartleys from Newhart’s earlier show. He wakes up next to not Frann but Pleshette. The entire second series had been a dream.
The idea for that ending, Newhart said, came from his real wife, Virginia (known as Ginnie). Fellow comedian Buddy Hackett introduced them and they married in 1963. She died in 2023.
Newhart is survived by their four children, Robert Jr., Timothy, Courtney Albertini and Jennifer Bongiovi; a sister, Ginny Brittain; and 10 grandchildren. NYTIMES
