Comic Bob Newhart, best known for an everyman persona that powered two classic TV sitcoms, died Thursday morning of natural causes. He was 94. Newhart was the funniest guy in the room while playing unassuming characters who, in others' hands, would have been setting up somebody else's jokes.
Much of his success, according to Newhart himself, came from one mannerism: his stammer. It showed up in his first hit TV sitcom, The Bob Newhart Show in 1972, where he played a psychologist flummoxed by a long line of eccentric patients. And it continued all the way up into his guest appearances on CBS' hit sitcom The Big Bang Theory starting in 2013, where he played a former kids TV show host bewildered by the fan worship of genius scientist Sheldon Cooper.
The stammer made Newhart sound like an everyman, even as he was slyly proving he was the most hilarious person onstage. In a 2014 PBS documentary, Newhart recalled a TV producer asking him to speak faster once during a scene. Newhart told him: "This stammer has gotten me a home in Beverly Hills, and I'm not about to change it."
In 2005, the comic told NPR that the stammer served his style of comedy, which some have described as "minimalist."
"I like to get laughter out of the least and I think one way you do it is by giving the audience some credit for some intelligence," he said
George Robert Newhart was born in 1929 in Oak Park, Ill. Raised in the Chicago area, he got a degree in business management and served in the Army during the Korean War before landing a job as an accountant.
Bored with accounting, Newhart began making up comedy routines over the phone with a co-worker. Eventually, he quit accounting and got a DJ pal to help him get a record deal with Warner Brothers. But there was one problem, as he told NPR's Talk of the Nation in 2006, Warner Brothers told him: "We'll record it at your next nightclub," Newhart recalled. "And I said, 'Well, see, that's going to be a problem because I've never played a nightclub.' "
Newhart had two weeks to develop material for his first record, The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart, released in 1960. It became the first comedy album to hit No. 1 on Billboard's albums chart, launching his career.
"If you show fear, you're dead meat," Newhart told NPR in 2005. "So there was a lot of bravado in the first three or four, five years of my career. ... I didn't want people to catch on to me, you know, how I really didn't know what I was doing."
Another comedy album followed, along with appearances on TV shows and movies. But it wasn't until 1972 that he landed the first of his two classic TV sitcoms, The Bob Newhart Show. He played Bob Hartley, a psychologist surrounded by eccentric, oddball patients.
As Newhart told WHYY's Fresh Air in 1998, picking his character's occupation was key. "We said well, you know, Bob is a listener; he's like a reactor — he reacts to people. What occupation would lend itself to somebody who listens?"
The Bob Newhart Show ended in 1978 after six seasons, by Newhart's choice. Four years later, he was in another sitcom — just called Newhart. This time, he was playing Vermont innkeeper and TV talk show host Dick Loudon.
That show ran eight seasons. Its famous final scene was suggested by Newhart's real-life wife Virginia: It featured Newhart's character waking up in his bed from The Bob Newhart Show, next to Suzanne Pleshette, who played his wife on the 1970s sitcom. There, he relayed to her his dream from the night before: "I was an innkeeper in this crazy little town in Vermont ..."
Newhart had other TV series, but they didn't last long.
He worked steadily as a standup comic and character actor, appearing on shows like ER and Desperate Housewives. In 2006, he released a memoir called I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This. And that same year, he appeared on the Emmy awards in an inspired bit with Conan O'Brien: "Tonight I have placed beloved TV icon Bob Newhart in an airtight container," O'Brien told the audience. "If the Emmys run one second over, Bob Newhart dies."
It would be another seven years before Newhart won his first Emmy award, in 2013, for his guest appearance on The Big Bang Theory. The following year, NPR asked Newhart if there were any failures in his life or career that troubled him.
"No, I've lived in an incredible time," he answered. "I've lived in the days of Johnny Carson, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin — incredibly rewarding times. ... I could never look on my life as a failure — it's far beyond anything I ever thought I would attain."
Such humility was a fitting attitude for a performer who became a comedy legend by acting like the buttoned-down guy next door.
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