He wasn’t the everyman, despite what every obituary will claim, because no one is — and because most men are far less gentle.
He was a blue-collar, Catholic kid from the Chicago area, with a business degree and two years in the Army, a law school dropout who worked as both an accountant and a copywriter.
He made funny tape recordings, mostly to pass the time. He was interested in showbiz, sure, but barely pursued it. Then, the whirlwind: A Warner Bros. executive heard and liked his tapes and asked him to record them live. So, Newhart climbed onto a nightclub stage — the Tidelands Club in Houston — for the first time and recorded “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart.”
It quickly sold more than a million copies, becoming the first stand-up album to reach the top of the Billboard Charts — effectively inventing the modern stand-up special. It also launched one of the most formidable and influential comedic careers in the last century.
This wasn’t the American Dream. This was a fairy-tale.
Newhart’s stand-up — crisp, clean and observational, which put it at odds with the day’s popular acts like Lenny Bruce and Don Rickles — made him a buttoned-up star, playing college campuses across the country in a suit, as if he’d just strolled over from an accounting firm.
With acclaim came road-weariness, so he jumped at the chance to work in television.
“I’d been doing stand-up for 12 years, and being on the road while having three kids,” Newhart told me in 2018. “I wanted a home life, and Arthur Price asked if I’d be interested in a situation comedy, and I said yeah. It would give me a normal life.”
We don’t live in a world, or a country, that often rewards kindness and gentleness with fame and fortune. But those qualities led the tributes that poured onto social media after Newhart died Thursday at 94.
Billy Crystal called him “a gentle wonderful man.” Judd Apatow tweeted he was “the kindest most hilarious man” with a “gentle spirit.” Actor David Pressman tweeted he “was so unbelievably supportive and kind.”
Carol Burnett: “He was as kind and nice as he was funny.”
Jason Alexander: He “was as kind as he was funny.”
“Every time I met Bob Newhart, he was EXACTLY Bob Newhart: witty, graceful, low-key, and friendly,” wrote film critic Richard Roeper.
Newhart would probably be uncomfortable with the lip service. So consider this anecdote, instead: During the rise of the #MeToo movement, my colleague Monica Hesse asked several women which celebrity, if discovered to be a predator, would most disappoint them. One woman said Bob Newhart.
After the resulting piece published, Newhart read it and contacted Hesse and her source, telling them he was moved by their confidence, and that he promised not to disappoint them.
That gentleness, that generosity of sprit — that almost radical kindness — infused his work.
It seeped into the movie that made him a grandfather figure to a younger generation: the forever kindhearted holiday classic “Elf,” which also showcased to millennials a softer side of James Caan.
But, first, it underpinned his sitcoms, particularly “The Bob Newhart Show,” which ran from 1972 to 1978. The show wasn’t outwardly progressive or political like some of its peers — “The Mary Tyler Show,” “All in the Family,” “M*A*S*H” — but it didn’t duck reality.
This was especially true in its portrayal of the marriage between Newhart’s Dr. Bob Hartley and his wife Emily Hartley, played by Suzanne Pleshette. The show avoided the tired “dumb husband/nagging wife” tropes, but it was never saccharine. Instead, it was realistic and empathetic.
The couple slept in the same bed, an unusual sight on television at the time, since it implied a sex life. The couple loved, admired and, most importantly, challenged each other — not out of some simmering hatred milked for laughs but out of a mature, mutual respect.
It’s what drew me to the show, despite it going off the air nine years before I was born.
It’s what led me in 2018 to write about “The Bob Newhart Show” on the 40th anniversary of its finale.
“It was just good, kind, no-nonsense, mid-America comedy, turning things on its ear,” actor Fred Willard told me then. “It didn’t have that New York edge or that San Francisco hipness. His comedy isn’t hard-edge, bang-bang comedy.”
Television’s role in American life has changed over the years. Now, the landscape of streaming services are strewn with shows desperately reaching for that coveted descriptor: prestige. This usually means convoluted or disturbing plots, a dollop of shock factor, and exhausting runtimes.
But sometimes you just want to turn off your brain and chuckle. To hang out with your on-screen friends. To watch some clever antics while forgetting the stress of the day, of the world. Sometimes you don’t need Academy Award-winning acting on your small screen, or self-righteous subversion in your stand-up.
Sometimes you want something warm.
Sometimes you want something gentle.
Sometimes you want something comforting. Something that, say, feels like a dream.
That’s when you want Bob Newhart.
Monica Hesse contributed to this report.
