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George Robert "Bob" Newhart (born September 5, 1929) is an American stand-up comedian and actor who, in his five decades of television, is best known as playing the major in the cult classic movie Catch 22, before playing such roles as psychologist Dr. Robert "Bob" Hartley on the popular 1970s sitcom The Bob Newhart Show and as innkeeper Dick Loudon on the popular 1980s sitcom Newhart. He also played Papa Elf in the movie Elf.
Birth name: George Robert Newhart
Born: September 5, 1929 (1929-09-05), Oak Park, Illinois, United States
Medium: Stand-up, film, television
Nationality: American
Years active: 1958-present
Genres: Sketch comedy, Satire
Subject(s): American culture
Influences: Jack Benny, Robert Benchley, H. Allen Smith, James Thurber, Max Shulman
Influenced: Ellen DeGeneres, Jeff Dunham, Lewis Black, Norm Macdonald, David Steinberg, Ray Romano, Tom Rhodes, Conan O'Brien
Spouse: Virginia Quinn (1964 - present) (4 children)
Notable works and roles: The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, Dr. Robert Hartley in, The Bob Newhart Show, Dick Loudon in Newhart
Golden Globe Awards: Best TV Star - Male 1962
Grammy Awards: Album of the Year 1961 The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, Best New Artist 1961, Best Comedy Performance 1961 The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back!
Early life
Newhart was born in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois, the son of Julia Pauline (née Burns), who was a housewife, and George David Newhart, who was part-owner of a plumbing and heating-supply business. Newhart has three sisters, Virginia, Mary Joan (a nun, who is Irish American, taught at a Chicago High School), and Pauline.
Newhart's family lived on the west side of Chicago. He was educated at Catholic schools in the area and attended St. Ignatius College Prep, graduating in 1947. He then enrolled at Loyola University of Chicago where he graduated in 1952 with a bachelor's degree in business management.
He was drafted in the U.S. Army and served stateside during the Korean War until discharged in 1954. Newhart briefly attended Loyola Law School but did not complete a degree.
Career
After the war he got a job as an accountant for United States Gypsum. He later claimed that his motto, "That's close enough," shows he didn't have the temperament to be an accountant. He also claimed to have been a clerk in the unemployment office who made $55 a week but who quit upon learning weekly unemployment benefits were $45 a week and "they only had to come in to the office one day a week to collect it."[8]
Comedy albums
In 1958, Newhart 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 telephone calls which they would record then send to a radio station as audition tapes. When his coworker ended his participation, Newhart continued the recordings alone, developing the shtick which was to serve him well for decades. In addition to his various standup bits, he incorporated that shtick into his television series at appropriate times. The auditions led to his break-through recording contract. A disc jockey at the radio station -- Dan Sorkin, who later became the announcer-sidekick on his NBC series -- introduced Newhart to the head of talent at Warner Bros. Records, which signed him only a year after the label was formed, based solely on those recordings. He expanded his material into a stand-up routine which he began to perform at
nightclubs.
Newhart became famous mostly on the strength of his audio releases, in which he became the world's first solo "straight man." This is a seeming contradiction in terms--by definition, a straight man is the counterpart of a more loony comedic partner. Newhart's routine, however, was simply to portray one end of a phone call, playing the straightest of comedic straight men and implying what he was hearing on the other end of the phone. Newhart told a 2005 interviewer for PBS's American Masters that his favorite standup routine is "Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue," in which a slick promoter has to deal with the reluctance of the eccentric President to agree to efforts to boost his image. The routine was suggested to Newhart by a Chicago TV director and future comedian -- Bill Daily, who would be Newhart's castmate on the 1970s Bob Newhart Show for CBS. Newhart is known for using an intentional stammer, in service of his unique combination of politeness and
disbelief at what he was supposedly hearing.
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. Newhart also won Best New Artist, and his quickly-released follow-on album, The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back, won Best Comedy Performance - Spoken Word that same year. Subsequent comedy albums include Behind the Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart (1961), The Button-Down Mind on TV (1962), Bob Newhart Faces Bob Newhart (1964), The Windmills Are Weakening (1965), This Is It (1967), Best of Bob Newhart (1971), and Very Funny Bob Newhart (1973). Years later he released Bob Newhart Off the Record (1992), The Button-Down Concert (1997) and Something Like This (2001), an anthology of his 1960s Warner Bros. albums.
Television
Newhart's success in stand-up led to his own NBC variety show in 1961, The Bob Newhart Show. The show lasted only a single season but earned Newhart an Emmy Award nomination and a Peabody Award. The Peabody Board cited him as:
“a person whose gentle satire and wry and irreverent wit waft a breath of fresh and bracing air through the stale and stuffy electronic corridors. A merry marauder, who looks less like St. George than a choirboy, Newhart has wounded, if not slain, many of the dragons that stalk our society. In a troubled and apprehensive world, Newhart has proved once again that laughter is the best medicine.”
In the mid-1960s, Newhart appeared on The Dean Martin Show 24 times, and The Ed Sullivan Show eight times. He appeared in a 1963 episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Newhart guest hosted The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson 87 times, and hosted Saturday Night Live twice, in 1980 and again in 1995. He also appeared in Desperate Housewives as Morty, Susan's step-dad.
Deadpan character actor
In addition to stand-up comedy, Newhart also became a dedicated character actor, when he made his guest-starring role on an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. The part led to other roles such as: Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre, Captain Nice, 2 episodes of Insight, It's Garry Shandling's Show, he reprised his role as Dr. Bob Hartley on Murphy Brown, The Simpsons, guest-starred on 3 episodes of ER (see below in "Other Appearances"), and his last guest-starring appearance was on Committed.
Sitcoms
The Bob Newhart Show
Newhart's most notable exposure on television came from two long running programs centering on him. Newhart guest-starred on the Smothers' Brothers show which was written by David Davis and Lorenzo Music. Soon after, in 1972, he was approached by his agent and his managers, producer Grant Tinker and actress Mary Tyler Moore (the husband/wife team who founded MTM Enterprises), to work on a pilot series called The Bob Newhart Show, to be written by Davis and Music. He was very interested in the starring role, of psychologist Dr. Robert "Bob" Hartley. The show faced heavy competition from the beginning, launching at the same time as the popular shows M*A*S*H, Maude, Sanford And Son, and The Waltons. Nevertheless, The Bob Newhart Show was an immediate hit. According to co-star Marcia Wallace, the entire cast got along well, and Newhart became close friends with both Wallace and co-star Suzanne Pleshette. According to Wallace, "I had a dog that I used to
bring to the set by the name of Maggie. And whenever there was a line that Bob didn't like --- he didn't want to complain too much --- so, he'd go over, get down on his hands and knees, and repeat the line to the dog, who inaverably yawned; and he'd say, 'See, I told you it's not funny!'"
By 1977, the show was suffering lackluster ratings and Newhart wanted to end it, but was under contract to do one more season. Newhart's wife gave birth to their daughter Jenny late in the year, which caused him to miss several episodes. Newhart finally pulled the plug on his own sitcom in 1978, after six seasons, and 142 episodes.
Newhart
In 1981, Newhart was interested in a new sitcom. After discussions with Barry Kemp and CBS, the show Newhart was created, in which Newhart was to play Vermont innkeeper Dick Loudin. Mary Frann was cast as his wife, Joanna Loudin. Newhart and Frann became a romantic couple off the set as well during the filming of the show. Like The Bob Newhart Show, Newhart was an immediate hit, and like the show before that, it was also nominated for Emmys, but Bob didn't win any awards. During the time he was working on the set of Newhart in 1985, his smoking habits finally caught up to him, and he was taken to the emergency room for polycythemia. The doctors ordered him to stop smoking.
Newhart himself "warmed up" the studio audience with a five-to-eight-minute routine before the filming of every show. According to co-actor Peter Scolari, after Newhart gave up smoking, he dealt with the issue during his routine, by having the spotlight operator move around the spotlight on the stage, while Newhart said, "And I haven't had any of the problems that people usually talk about having with the... with the smoking --- impatience, outbursts of anger, appetite. I haven't really... look, put it on me or get it off me! Just make up your mind!"
In 1987, ratings began to drop. Newhart was canceled in 1990 after eight seasons and 182 episodes. Newhart's last episode ended with a scene (met by screams of laughter from the studio audience) in which Newhart wakes up in bed with his wife from The Bob Newhart Show. He realizes (in a satire of a famous plot element in the TV series Dallas a few years earlier) that the entire Newhart series was a single nightmare of Dr. Bob Hartley's, provoked by "eating too much Japanese food before going to bed," as the final Newhart episode had him selling his country inn to Japanese investors. Recalling Mary Frann's buxom figure and her choice of clothing, Bob closes the segment and the series by telling Emily, "You should really wear more sweaters." before the typical closing notes of the old Bob Newhart Show theme played over the fadeout.
Other TV series
In 1992, Newhart returned to television with a series called Bob, about a cartoonist. An ensemble cast included a pre-Friends Lisa Kudrow, but the show did not develop a strong audience and was canceled shortly after the start of its second season. In 1997, Newhart returned again with George and Leo on CBS with Judd Hirsch and Jason Bateman; the show was canceled during its first season.
Other appearances
In 2001, Bob made an appearance on MADtv (Season 6), playing a psychiatrist who yells "Stop it!" in a skit. Other television work includes:
-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)
-In and Out (1997)
-The Sports Pages (2001)
-The Librarian: Quest for the Spear (2004)
-The Librarian: Return to King Solomon's Mines (2006)
-The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice (2008)
Newhart guest-starred on ER in a rare dramatic role that earned him an Emmy Award nomination, his first in nearly 20 years. In 2005 he began a recurring role in Desperate Housewives as Morty, the on-again/off-again boyfriend of Sophie (Lesley Ann Warren), Susan Mayer's (Teri Hatcher) mother. His most recent appearance was on the 2006 Emmy Awards, hosted by Conan O'Brien. Newhart was a part of a gag in which he was placed in an airtight glass prison that contained three hours of air. If the Emmys went over the time of three hours, he would die. This gag was an acknowledgment of the common frustration that award shows usually run on past their allotted time (which is usually three hours).
Persona
Newhart is known for his deadpan delivery and a slight stammer which early on he incorporated into the persona around which he built a successful career. On his TV shows, although he got his share of funny lines, often he worked in the Jack Benny tradition of being the "straight man" while the sometimes somewhat bizarre cast members surrounding him got the laughs.
Several of his routines involve hearing one half of a conversation as he speaks to someone over the phone. In a bit called King Kong, a rookie security guard at the Empire State Building seeks guidance as to how to deal with an ape who is "18 to 19 stories high, depending on whether we have a 13th floor or not". He assures his boss he has looked in the guards manual "under 'ape' and 'ape's toes'". Other famous routines include "The Driving Instructor," "The Mrs. Grace L. Ferguson Airline (and Storm Door Company)", "Introducing Tobacco To Civilization", and "Abe Lincoln's Press Secretary".
Health
In 1985, Newhart was rushed to the emergency room, suffering with polycythemia, after years of heavily smoking. He made a recovery, several weeks after.
Hobbies
Newhart has 8 hobbies including: golfing, playing poker, spending quality time with family, traveling, partying, playing cards with friends, and dancing. In between his 2 series (The Bob Newhart Show and Newhart), he would frequently perform comedy.
Quotes
Bob: "I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'."
Bob on pleasure: "All I can say about life is, Oh God, enjoy it!"
Bob on his ritual: "This stammer got me a home in Beverly Hills, and I'm not about to screw with it now."
Bob who knows there's nothing wrong with laughter: "Laughter gives us distance. It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it and then move on." (Source: Myfamousquotes.com)
Bob when he realized it was difficult talking to people on his own phone: "It's getting harder and harder to differentiate between schizophrenics and people talking on a cell phone. It still brings me up short to walk by somebody who appears to be talking to themselves."
Bob on drinking alcoholic beverages on airplanes: "I'm one of those passengers who arrives at the airport five or six hours early so I can throw back a few drinks and muster up the courage to board the plane. Apparently I'm not alone because I've never been in an empty airport bar. I don't care what time you get there. Even at 8:00 a.m. you have to fight your way to the bar. At that hour, everyone drinks Bloody Marys so no one can tell it's booze- at least until they fall off their chair."
Bob when asked to do a new sitcom: "My manager, I was surprised was one of the founders of MTM Enterprises, by Mary Tyler Moore and Grant Tinker, and Mary's show was such a big hit. He came to me and said, 'Would you like to do a sitcom?' I was traveling on the road a lot, so, the sitcom I could stay home, and said, yeah!"
Bob: "I don't have a show anymore. I don't have a check coming in every week. This is important to me, I got to score a million tonight or it could all be over."
Bob: "My friends were getting married, buying houses, buying cars, and I wasn't doing anything. There was the point was I talk to myself to you, every screw up nature, look at what you've done with your life. But there was always something on the horizon, that was holding, maybe, you know, this will make you different."
Writings
On September 20, 2006, Hyperion Books released Newhart's first book, I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This. The book is primarily a memoir, but features comic bits by Newhart as well. As comedian David Hyde Pierce notes, "The only difference between Bob Newhart on stage and Bob Newhart offstage – is that there is no stage."
Honors
In addition to his Peabody Award and several Emmy nominations, Newhart's recognitions include:
-Three Grammy awards in 1961: Best New Artist, Best Comedy Performance (Spoken Word) and Album of the Year for The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart.
-In 1993 Newhart was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame.
-In 1998, Billboard magazine recognized Newhart's first album as #20 on their list of most popular albums of the past 40 years, and the only comedy album on the list.
-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.
-In 2004, Newhart was #14 on Comedy Central Presents: 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time.
-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. The statues depict Dr. Hartley sitting in his therapy practice chair with a pencil held between his hands, and a patients' sofa next to him. The bronze set is now located in the small park in front of the entrance of Navy Pier.
Personal life
Newhart was introduced by Buddy Hackett to Virginia "Ginnie" Quinn, the daughter of late character actor Bill Quinn. She became his wife on January 12, 1963. The couple have four children (Robert, Timothy, Jennifer and Courtney), and several grandchildren. They are Catholic and raised their children as such, but "Ginnie" said they did not want them to have "the fears" that came from their upbringing.[10] His son Rob (who portrayed his father in 1993's Heart & Souls, with Robert Downey Jr.) maintains his father's official website. Newhart is good friends with comedian Don Rickles. Newhart and Rickles appeared together on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on January 24, 2005, the Monday following Johnny Carson's death, reminiscing about their many guest appearances on Carson's show.
When Newhart was asked whom he admired the most as a comedian, he stated: Richard Pryor. Upon Pryor's death in 2005, Newhart paid tribute by calling him "the seminal comedian of the last 50 years."
Filmography
-Hell Is for Heroes (1962)
-Hot Millions (1968)
-On A Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970)
-Catch-22 (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)
-The Librarian: Quest for the Spear (2004)
-The Librarian: Return to King Solomon's Mines (2006)
-The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice (2008)
"She was a pro's pro."
On Saturday afternoon, January 19, 2008, Suzanne Pleshette passed away from a 9 month battle with lung cancer. In remembering his former colleague and friend, Mr. Newhart said "She was a pro's pro"
"Although she was quite sick, she was one of those people you thought would go on forever. If anyone could beat cancer, it was Suzy -- she was such an indomitable spirit. She was a pro's pro and I know she was looking forward to getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on her birthday, Jan. 31."
Fox Entertainment officially released information to DVD retailers confirming the rumors the first season of "Newhart" will become available February 28, 2008.
Fox states the cost of the first season, 22 episodes, will be available for 39.95, although some retailers are offering discounts for advance orders. While Bob once said this series would not be released until the complete "The Bob Newhart Show" series was released, it appears Fox considers "Newhart:" as a completely separate entity, although only the first 4 seasons of "The Bob Newhart Show" has been released on DVD.
Some of the special guest stars in the first season DVD of "Newhart" include Rue McClanahan (Golden Girls), K Callan (Lois & Clark), Dana Elcar (MacGyver), Robert Pastorelli (Murphy Brown), Daniel J. Travanti (Hill Street Blues), Jerry Van Dyke (Coach) and Ruth Gordon (Harold & Maude).
Read more about the official Fox announcements and additional information from the links below. Much thanks to Gord Lacey and tvshowsondvd.com for passing along this information.
Joining 24 other inductees, which include recordings from Jelly Roll Morton, Cole Porter, the Rolling Stones, Paul Simon and Franklin Roosevelt's Address to Congress on December 8th, 1941, "The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart" will be added to the Library of Congress' 2006 National Recording Registry.
According to the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, the Library selects recordings that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant' which are at least 10 years old. With the latest inclusion to the Registry, the total count of recordings to be "preserved for all time" stands at 225.
The nominees were submitted online by the public and through the National Recording Preservation Board, "which comprises leaders in the fields of music, recorded sound and preservation". All the nominees are reviewed by the Library of Congress and 25 entries are selected each year. If you are interested in nominating entries for the 2007 National Recording Registry, click here. If you would like to view the entire registry, click here.
According to the Library of Congress' official website, "The Library of Congress is the nation's oldest federal cultural institution and the world's largest library with more than 134 million items, which includes more than 2.8 million sound recordings. The Library's Recorded Sound Section holds the largest number of radio broadcasts in the United States – more than 500,000".
It is comforting to know future generations of American's will be able to enjoy the Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart.
The late 1950s was the time for hip comics and sickos. Mort Sahl and Nichols and May were redefining the style for satire. Shelley Berman was studying Freud. Jonathan Winters was flying over the cuckoo's nest.
In Chicago, an accountant named Bob Newhart was supplementing his income by writing and performing comedy sketches on the radio. One year he actually made a thousand dollars at his "hobby." He might have remained comfortably pigeon-holed on the anonymous airwaves of Mid-America except for another 1950's phenomenon. Not only were comics big - so were comedy albums.
Newhart's radio style was a natural for records. His material was fresh and different. His "button-down mind" was creating cool, calculated and controlled sketches, satiric but in a new way. Newhart wasn't Lenny Bruce or Shelly Berman, shaking up or lecturing the audience. Newhart was part of the audience himself, gently mirroring the faults and foibles of the unassuming average man.
Few were more unassuming than bland Bob, who came from a stable Chicago household, attended St. Ignatius High School and graduated from Loyola University in 1952. When some of his comedy radio tapes found their way to Warner Brothers Records, Warner assumed Newhart was ready to become its star comic, opposite the Verve roster of wits.
But there was a problem. Newhart had never done stand-up before a live audience. It took a persuasion and a push to get him before a hand- picked audience in the small Tidelands Club in Houston. Even then, it took a few tries to get a usable complete performance.
Newhart may have been a basket-case at the time, but it's hard to tell from the results. His characters were mildly nervous anyway. Hiding behind set pieces, going from routine to routine, his shyness was an endearing example of vulnerability. The audience responded, even under such awkward conditions, with loud, appreciative laughter. Newhart proved that with good material (and a bit of prior experience in radio) he could indeed make the transition to stand-up.
Released in 1960, Newhart's first album offered historical "what ifs," a favorite device of his. These included Abraham Lincoln coached for the Gettysburgh Address, Abner Doubleday laughed at for inventing a complex game called baseball, and the merchandising of the Wright Brothers. Newhart's other favorite device, the nervous monologue sketch, was exemplified by the classic "Driving Instructor" routine, with Newhart as a harried man whose life is in the hands of an outrageously inept student driver.
Many of Newhart's sketches involved average men of the old generation trying to deal with the machinery of the brave new 60s.: airplanes, advertising agencies, even unexploded bombs. He didn't attack modern times, like Shelly Berman. Newhart merely questioned modern times. A cop confronts a suicidal man on a building ledge with, "First time?" A hapless soul pinned to his chair by a huge dog asks his host, "You got him from the Army, did you?" "Whose Army?" And when that unexploded bomb appears on the beach, an official remarks to the frantic telephone caller, "You think that's unusual, finding a shell on the beach?"
The humor of these deadpanned questions was matched by the solutions. Trying to defuse the bomb, the official looks into a coffee-stained manual and mutters, "One wire is kind of bluish gray, and the other ...kind of grayish blue." And as time ticks away, the bureaucratic tells his assistant, "If that thing goes off it's me they'll want to talk to, not you."
Only 15 gold records were issued in 1960, and Newhart had one of them. He was also voted "Best New Artist" at the Grammy Awards and his album was "Album of the Year." Over a million and a half copies of "The Button-Down Mind" were sold, and his follow-up won a Grammy as well.
Newhart conquered most of his performing worries but remained uneasy with fame. The father of three lived a calm, quiet life, going on stage to portray the understated every man caught in embarrassing situations, injecting into his routines about the ad men, PR men, and fools who would've interfered with the destines of Lincoln and Sir Walter Raleigh.
Despite its weaknesses, his third album hit #12 on the charts. 1962 saw "The Bob Newhart Show" on NBC - briefly. He wasn't happy with the limits imposed by the network: "Those who control the medium are obsessed with the notion that if they offend even one viewer, they have one less customer. What the TV biggies don't know is that people like entertainment with bite. They want satire. The growth of the talking record sales proves that. When the public couldn't get satire on TV it turned to records...satire on TV could be the next TV trend."
He was right, just eight years too soon. Still, his short-lived show won an Emmy, and the subsequent album of his TV work was his finest, including "The introduction of Tobacco to Civilization," wherein a telephone call from Sir Walter Raleigh prompts skeptical laughter in England:
"Are you saying "snuff," Walt? What's snuff? You take a pinch of tobacco (starts giggling) and you shove it up your nose! And it makes you sneeze, huh. I imagine it would, Walt, yeah. Goldenrod seems to do it pretty well over here. It has some other uses, though. You can chew it? Or put it in a pipe. Or you can shred it up and put it on a piece of paper, and roll it up - don't tell me, Walt, don't tell me- you stick in your ear, right Walt? Oh, between your lips! Then what do you do to it? (Giggling) You set fire to it! Then what do you do, Walt? You inhale the smoke! You set fire to it! Then what do you do Walt? You inhale the smoke! Walt, we've been a little worried about you...you're gonna have a tough time getting people to stick burning leaves in their mouth...."
Said H. Allen Smith, "That thing about tobacco and cigarettes is possibly the greatest single comedy routine I've seen or heard in my entire life."
Newhart salved his TV ego bruises by playing Vegas. Reflecting the tastes of the Vegas crowd he did routines about nudist camps and topless clubs as well as sharp bits like "The Man Who Looked Like Hitler."
Newhart's last album, appropriately titled "This Is It," might explain another reason for his gradual move away from stand-up. The liner notes report that "Newhart's slow-created tales come uncommonly hard-born... the routines in this album have been gestating around in Newhart's creativity for periods ranging from six months to six years." And for all that, the LP lasted 13 minutes on one side, just 10 on the other.