Bob Newhart, an accountant turned comedian who became one of the most popular TV stars of his time after achieving success with a classic comedy album, has died at age 94. Newhart’s publicist, Jerry Digney, said the actor died Thursday in Los Angeles.
Newhart, best remembered in the 1970s and 1980s as the star of two hit television shows that bore his name, began his career as a standup comedian in the late 1950s. He gained nationwide fame when his routines were captured on vinyl in the 1960s The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhartwhich won the Grammy Album of the Year Award.
While other comedians of the era, including Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Alan King, and Mike Nichols and Elaine May, often made people laugh with their offbeat attacks on modern mores, Newhart was an anomaly. His outlook was modern, but he rarely raised his voice above a hesitant, almost stuttering delivery. His only prop was a telephone, which was used to pretend to have a conversation with someone on the other end of the line.
Newhart was initially reluctant to sign on for a weekly TV series, fearing it would lead to excessive publicity of his material. Nevertheless, he accepted an offer from NBC, and The Bob Newhart Show Despite Emmy and Peabody awards, the half-hour variety show was canceled after one season, which Newhart used as a running joke for decades.
He waited 10 years before starting another job The Bob Newhart Show in 1972. It was a situation comedy in which Newhart played a Chicago psychologist who lived in a penthouse with his schoolteacher wife Suzanne Pleshette. His neighbors and patients, particularly Bill Daily as an airline navigator, were an eccentric, neurotic group who provided a perfect counterpoint to Newhart’s offbeat commentary. The series, one of the most acclaimed of the 1970s, ran until 1978.
After four years, the comedian launched another show called NewhartThis time he was a successful New York writer who reopens a long-shuttered Vermont inn. Again Newhart was the quiet, sensible guy surrounded by a group of eccentric locals. Again the show was a huge hit, running for eight seasons on CBS.
The two 1990s series were comparatively lackluster. Although she was nominated several times, her only Emmy Award was for a guest role in The Big Bang Theory“I think they think I’m not acting. It’s just Bob being Bob,” he lamented about not winning television’s highest honor in his heyday.
Over the years, Newhart also appeared in several films, usually in comedic roles. Some of them are: catch 22, Inside and outside, Legally Blonde 2And Yoginias the tiny father of Will Ferrell’s full-sized adopted son. Other recent work includes horrible Bosses and TV series Librarian And The Big Bang Theory By-product Young Sheldon,
He vowed in 2003 that he would work as long as he could. He said, “I’ve had 43 years of my life; (quitting my job) would be like something is missing.”
Newhart married Virginia Quinn, known to his friends as Ginny, in 1964, and remained with her until her death in 2023. They had four children: Robert, Timothy, Jennifer, and Courtney.
He was particularly close with fellow comedian and family man Don Rickles, whose raucous outrageous humor memorably clashed with Newhart’s witty vulnerability. Rickles told Variety in 2012, “We’re like apples and oranges. I’m Jewish, he’s Catholic. He’s the quiet one, I yell.” A decade later, Judd Apatow paid tribute to their friendship in a short documentary Bob and Dawn: A Love Story,
Newhart, who specialized in light sarcastic commentary, began comedy when he was bored at his $5-an-hour accounting job in Chicago. To pass the time, he and his friend Ed Gallagher began making funny phone calls to each other. Eventually, they decided to record them as comedy routines and sell them to radio stations.
His efforts failed, but the records came to the attention of Warner Bros., who signed Newhart to a record contract and put him on the Houston club tour in February 1960. “A frightened 30-year-old walked on stage and played his first nightclub,” he recalled in 2003.
Six of his routines were recorded and released on the album, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhartwas released on April Fools’ Day 1960. It sold 750,000 copies and was followed by The button-down mind strikes back! At one point the albums were Nos. 1 and 2 on the sales charts. In 1960, The New York Times said he was “the first comedian in history to come to fame through recordings.”
Born George Robert Newhart in Chicago to a German-Irish family, he was called Bob to avoid confusion with his father, who was also named George.
