Bob Newhart made me laugh so many times over the years, especially on his first hit TV sitcom, The Bob Newhart Show (1972-78).
I’ll never forget, therefore, the one time I made him laugh.
It was at a Television Critics Association Awards presentation, at least a dozen years ago. I believe our group were bestowing our Heritage Award as a salute to the great comedian, who somehow never even won an Emmy before landing one in his eighties as a guest star on The Big Bang Theory.
I was a presenter that year and was on stage to announce the winner in the category of Specials. I pointed out that one of the nominees had the word “special” right in the title, and was obviously pandering to the Association, and that the ploy had worked because that series had won.
I looked out at the gathering from the stage of the grand ballroom of The Beverly Hilton. There was Bob Newhart, sitting among the luminaries and nominees — I think The Smothers Brothers might have also been in the house that night — and he was laughing. Maybe he was just being polite, or maybe the idea of a critic attempting to tell a joke just struck him as hilarious. Either way, it did not matter. I made Bob Newhart laugh.
Another time, several years earlier, in 1997, Newhart was at press tour to promote George & Leo, a forgotten comedy where he was paired with Judd Hirsch. The premise had this odd couple thrown together due to the marriage of their offspring. Someone at CBS must have thought two clowns for the price of one equals hit. It did not.
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Nevertheless, a very relaxed Newhart stuck around after the session for the CBS press tour party and took plenty of questions. It was a real privilege just to have a casual conversation with him, about all manner of comedy.
When “Mary Tyler Moore” writers David Davis and Lorenzo Music built a show around Newhart for the 1972-’73 season, the low-key comedian with the impeccable timing was already well established as a comedy headliner. He was cast as psychologist Bob Hartley, the calm shrink at the centre surrounded by a cast of crazies. They included some very funny group therapy patients: Jack Riley as terminally disgruntled Mr. Carlin, Florida Friebus as dotty Mrs. Bakerman and John Fielder as high-pitched Mr. Peterson.
Peter Bonerz, who played dentist Jerry Robinson, had been a Newhart fan for years. The future director grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and one of his first jobs was working at a record store, where boxes of Newhart’s comedy albums would “sell out in a day.”
Newhart was part of a wave of “thinking man’s comedians” sweeping record stores in the early ‘60s, people like Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Bill Cosby, Shelley Berman and Nichols and May. Like millions of others, young Bonerz would watch them all on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” They helped inspire him to launch his own comedy career as part of the San Francisco-based troupe “The Committee.”
Bill Daily also had a prior connection to Newhart before he was cast as his apartment-crashing neighbour, airline co-pilot Howard Borden. Daily, of course, already was an established TV presence through his five seasons on “I Dream of Jeannie.” He had known Newhart a decade earlier when both were working in television in Chicago.
“Nicest guy ever,” says Daily, echoing seemingly everyone’s assessment of Newhart.
I dug into the vault and found my 2014 conversation with Daily, who goes into great detail about what it was like working on The Bob Newhart Show. Starting Monday, it can be listened to at brioux.tv: the podcast. Daily, who died in 2018, was a hoot.
Zoomer magazine also asked me to salute Newhart at their on-line, “Everything Zoomer,” digital edition. You can ready that story, with more from Daily and Boner, here.
You can see Newhart’s approach and influence on everything from Seinfeld to even Curb Your Enthusiasm. He was also a terrific guest — and guest host — on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson.
He was also a pretty good sport about his own mortality — like the time Conan O’Brien put him in a three-hour coffin in a race to finally bring an Emmy broadcast in on time.
Newhart saw how absurd everyday life was and helped us all laugh at ourselves.
