R.I.P. Bob Newhart

[BackInTex]

This one hurts.

Bob Newhart, Dean of the Deadpan Delivery, Dies at 94


A former accountant, he became an overnight sensation with the release of a 1960 live comedy album, then starred in a pair of fabled CBS sitcoms.

Bob Newhart, the beloved stand-up performer whose droll, deadpan humor showcased on two critically acclaimed CBS sitcoms vaulted him into the ranks of history’s greatest comedians, died Thursday morning. He was 94.

The Chicago legend, who won Grammy Awards for album of the year and best new artist for his 1960 breakthrough record, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, died at his Los Angeles home after a series of short illnesses, his longtime publicist, Jerry Digney, announced.

The former accountant famously went without an Emmy Award until 2013, when he finally was given one for guest-starring as Arthur Jeffries (alias Professor Proton, former host of a children’s science show) on CBS’ The Big Bang Theory.

In 1972, MTM Enterprises cast the modest comic as clinical psychologist Bob Hartley, who practiced in the real-life Newhart’s favorite burg, Chicago. The Bob Newhart Show would become one of the most popular sitcoms of all time, featuring a wonderful cast of supporting players: Suzanne Pleshette, Peter Bonerz, Marcia Wallace, Bill Daily and Jack Riley among them.

Newhart ended the series in 1978 after 142 episodes — and, incredibly, no Emmy nominations for him and no wins for the show — feeling it had exhausted its bag of tricks. But he was back on CBS in 1982 to front another MTM comedy.

In Newhart, he portrayed Dick Loudon, a New York author turned proprietor of the Stratford Inn in Vermont. The show was a mainstay for eight seasons, and this one also featured a great cast (Mary Frann, Tom Poston — who later would marry Pleshette — Julia Duffy, Peter Scolari and, as handymen “Larry, Darryl and their other brother Darryl,” William Sanderson, Tony Papenfuss and John Voldstad).

In one of the most admired series endings in history, Newhart wrapped its eight-season run with a cheeky final scene in which Loudon wakes up in the middle of the night as Bob Hartley in bed with Pleshette in their Chicago apartment, suggesting that his whole second series had been a dream.

“I tend to find humor in the macabre. I would say 85 percent of me is what you see on the show. And the other 15 percent is a very sick man with a very deranged mind,” he said during a 1990 interview with Los Angeles magazine.

He was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame in 1992.

George Robert Newhart was born on Sept. 5, 1929, in Oak Park, Illinois. He grew up a Cubs fan and participated in the team’s victory parade down La Salle Street after Chicago took the National League pennant in 1945. (He was, quite naturally, thrilled when the Cubs ended their 108-year World Series drought by winning in 2016.)

Newhart never dreamed of being in show business; in fact, such a gaudy profession ran against the Midwestern grain of his personality and perhaps was why he would connect with Middle America.

After attending St. Ignatius College Prep and then earning a degree in commerce from Loyola University, Newhart spent two years in the Army and then flunked out of law school. He then worked as an accountant with U.S. Gypsum and then the Glidden Co., which sold paint.

“Somehow there’s a connection between numbers and music and comedy. I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s there,” he once said in an interview with a college business professor. “I know it’s a case of 2 and 2 equals 5 in terms of a comedian. You take this fact and you take that fact and then you come up with this ludicrous fact.”

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[SportsFan68]

I love it that he won an Emmy for Big Bang Theory. Yay, Bob!

[littlebeast13]

I would have blown this one on Dead or Alive...

lb13

[silverscreenselect]

I would have blown this one on Dead or Alive...

lb13

Newhart's most recent appearance was in 2020 on an episode of Young Sheldon.

[tlynn78]

The tribute to him on CBS last night was wonderful

[Game Girl]

ya,it is very sad for him to go. I was watching young and the restless and all of a sudden I hear that there is a tribute. I originally thought it was just a anniversary tribute like they been doing recently , but it eventually dawned on me that this was something different. (The appearing out of nowhere into the schedule should occurred to me but these days I do not put it past anything to do something like that) I was actually listening to some with the documentary when I made my first few posts. it was a nice remembrance of the time. I remember when I first saw the scene in which he woke up making it seem the Inn was all a dream but there are many other good moments some I knew some I did not. (I am writing this portion two weeks later obviously so it is a little less specific) hopefully he is having fun in that comedy club up above or doing whatever he is planning on doing up there.