DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm TV critic David Bianculli. Today we're remembering Bob Newhart, the comedian and TV sitcom star who died last Thursday at age 94. We'll listen back to a conversation between him and Terry Gross from 1998, and we'll begin with this appreciation.
Bob Newhart was one of the most successful and durable stars in the history of television. He first appeared on TV in the 1950s as a guest on Hugh Hefner's syndicated series "Playboy's Penthouse." In the '60s, he had a Peabody-winning variety series. In the '70s, he starred for several successful seasons on "The Bob Newhart Show," playing psychologist Bob Hartley. In the '80s, he starred in another multi-year hit playing a Vermont innkeeper. He had other sitcoms in the '90s, then spent the 21st century playing recurring roles on everything from "ER" and "Desperate Housewives" to the sitcoms "The Big Bang Theory" and, as late as 2020, "Young Sheldon." He also was a standout supporting player in such films as "Elf" and "Catch-22."
Bob Newhart's career stretched over most of a century, yet he didn't enter showbusiness until he was 30, when he stepped on stage as a stand-up comic for the first time. Bob Newhart was a former accountant in Chicago, working as an advertising copywriter. At parties, he would do little comic routines and taped some of them for the fun of it. Somehow, the tapes ended up at Warner Brothers Records, where an executive offered to pay to have Newhart's next nightclub appearance recorded for a comedy record album. The only problem was Newhart didn't have any previous nightclub appearances, much less any upcoming ones.
But with the offer in hand, he booked a club, recorded his brand-new act. And when it was released in 1960, "The Button-Down Mind Of Bob Newhart" became the first comedy album to hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts. One of its classic routines had him playing a driving instructor meeting his new pupil, Mrs. Webb, and Bob Newhart's clever approach was that you only ever heard his half of the dialogue. The rest was silent and imagined. Decades later, in an interview, he told me that despite that album's success, he hated listening to it because the producer of that record edited and shortened so many of Newhart's comic pauses to save time. But to millions of listeners - and I was one of them as a young kid - his recorded routines seemed perfect and well worth memorizing.
(SOUNDBITE OF COMEDY ALBUM, "THE BUTTON-DOWN MIND OF BOB NEWHART")
BOB NEWHART: How do you do? You're Mrs. Webb. Is that right? Oh, I see you've had one lesson already. Who was the instructor on that, Mrs. Webb? Mr. Adams. I'm sorry. Here it is - Mr. Adams. Just let me read ahead and kind of familiarize myself with the case. How fast were you going when Mr. Adams jumped from the car?
(LAUGHTER)
NEWHART: Seventy-five.
(LAUGHTER)
NEWHART: And where was that? In your driveway.
(LAUGHTER)
NEWHART: How far had Mr. Adams gotten in the lesson? Backing out.
(LAUGHTER)
NEWHART: I see. You were backing out at 75, and that's when he jumped. Did he cover starting the car and the other way of stopping?
(LAUGHTER)
NEWHART: What's the other way of stopping? Throwing it in reverse. That's...
(LAUGHTER)
BIANCULLI: Tom Smothers once described Bob Newhart as a one-man comedy team, which was a perfect description except that Newhart played so well with others, too. On "The Bob Newhart Show" in the '70s, his Bob Hartley was delightful against Suzanne Pleshette, who played his wife, Emily. And when he was in sessions with his therapy patients, they were great foils against which to play. Many obituaries described Newhart's style of comedy as deadpan, but he once told me he hated that, too. He preferred the term low-key, but by any other name, what he did was hilarious. Here he is listening to a patient, played by Jack Riley.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE BOB NEWHART SHOW")
JACK RILEY: (As Elliot Carlin) I don't know, Dr. Hartley. I think I'm making some progress.
NEWHART: (As Bob Hartley) You are?
RILEY: (As Elliot Carlin) I think I'm overcoming my agoraphobia.
NEWHART: (As Bob Hartley) I didn't even know you had a fear of open places.
RILEY: (As Elliot Carlin) Open places?
NEWHART: (As Bob Hartley) Agoraphobia is a fear of open places.
RILEY: (As Elliot Carlin) Oh. I thought it was a fear of agricultural products.
(LAUGHTER)
NEWHART: (As Bob Hartley) Sorry.
RILEY: (As Elliot Carlin) Well, anyway, wheat doesn't scare me anymore.
(LAUGHTER)
BIANCULLI: In Bob Newhart's next successful sitcom, "Newhart," he got to exercise both sets of comedy muscles, often in the same scene. In the episode introducing jack-of-all-trades Larry and his very strange and silent siblings, Newhart's Dick Loudon and his wife, Joanna, played by Mary Frann, have a problem on their hands - actually, in their basement. Workers repairing the ancient inn have uncovered the skeletal remains of a body several hundred years old. Dick is looking for someone to remove the remains and starts with a phone call.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "NEWHART")
NEWHART: (As Dick Loudon) Hello. Is this Anything for a Buck? Yeah. My name is Dick Loudon. I'm the owner of the Stratford Inn. Yeah. There's something we have to have moved. Not until next week - there's no way you could do it sooner. Well, it's a 300-year-old corpse that's buried in our basement. Five minutes would be fine.
(LAUGHTER)
NEWHART: (As Dick Loudon) No, actually, we thought we'd pay you.
(LAUGHTER)
BIANCULLI: Almost immediately, Larry and his brothers show up at the inn in person. Larry is played by William Sanderson.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "NEWHART")
NEWHART: (As Dick Loudon) Oh, boy.
(LAUGHTER)
NEWHART: (As Dick Loudon) Hi.
WILLIAM SANDERSON: (As Larry) Hi. I'm Larry. This is my brother, Darryl. That's my other brother, Darryl.
(LAUGHTER)
NEWHART: (As Dick Loudon) So how you doing?
SANDERSON: (As Larry) OK, except I throwed my back out last week crawling under a house.
NEWHART: (As Dick Loudon) Sounds like a tough job.
SANDERSON: (As Larry) Wasn't a job. I just like crawling under houses.
(LAUGHTER)
BIANCULLI: This led to what I consider the ultimate finale in TV history. In the final episode of "Newhart," in 1990, Dick gets hit on the head by a golf ball and awakens in bed. But it's a different bedroom, the one from "The Bob Newhart Show," and he wakes up next to his wife from that show, played by Suzanne Pleshette. The studio audience, like viewers at home, had no idea what was coming or who was under those covers, but what a terrific surprise when he starts describing his nightmare to Emily.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "NEWHART")
SUZANNE PLESHETTE: (As Emily Hartley) All right, Bob? What is it?
(LAUGHTER)
NEWHART: (As Bob Hartley) Well, I was an innkeeper in this crazy little town in Vermont.
(LAUGHTER)
PLESHETTE: (As Emily Hartley) I'm happy for you.
(LAUGHTER)
PLESHETTE: (As Emily Hartley) Goodnight.
NEWHART: (As Bob Hartley) Nothing made sense in this place. I mean, the maid was an heiress. Her husband talked in alliteration. The handyman kept missing the point of things, and then there were these three woodsmen, but only one of them talked.
(LAUGHTER)
PLESHETTE: (As Emily Hartley) That settles it - no more Japanese food before you go to bed.
(LAUGHTER)
BIANCULLI: Seventeen years later, Bob Newhart appeared on "The Big Bang Theory" as former children's TV science host Professor Proton. Sheldon, played by Jim Parsons, had hired the long-retired Arthur Jeffries, aka Professor Proton, as his birthday entertainment. He finally met the professor sitting on a suitcase on a landing, winded from climbing the stairs in the apartment building where Sheldon lived with his roommate, Leonard. Leonard is played by Johnny Galecki. Sheldon speaks first.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE BIG BANG THEORY")
JIM PARSONS: (As Sheldon Cooper) It's really you.
JOHNNY GALECKI: (As Leonard Hofstadter) Mr. Jeffers, I am so sorry. We should have told you about the broken elevator.
NEWHART: (As Arthur Jeffries) I agree.
(LAUGHTER)
PARSONS: (As Sheldon Cooper) Professor Proton, it's an honor to meet you.
NEWHART: (As Arthur Jeffries) Just call me Arthur.
PARSONS: (As Sheldon Cooper) Leonard...
(LAUGHTER)
PARSONS: (As Sheldon Cooper) ...Did you hear that? Professor Proton said I should call him Arthur. That means we're friends.
(LAUGHTER)
NEWHART: (As Arthur Jeffries) No. A friend would have told me about the elevator.
(LAUGHTER)
PARSONS: (As Sheldon Cooper) Look at me.
(LAUGHTER)
PARSONS: (As Sheldon Cooper) I can get as close to you as I want without my mom saying it's going to ruin my eyes.
(LAUGHTER)
NEWHART: (As Arthur Jeffries) Is he dangerous?
(LAUGHTER)
GALECKI: (As Leonard Hofstadter) Actually, he's a genius.
PARSONS: (As Sheldon Cooper) I am.
(LAUGHTER)
NEWHART: (As Arthur Jeffries) That doesn't answer my question.
(LAUGHTER)
BIANCULLI: Amazingly, Bob Newhart won his only acting Emmy for his guest appearances on "The Big Bang Theory," and it became a delightful recurring role. But Newhart was one of TV's most beloved sitcom stars. And his "Bob Newhart Show" was part of the all-time best night of television on television, the time CBS filled its Saturday nights with "All In The Family," "M*A*S*H*," "The Mary Tyler More Show," "The Bob Newhart Show" and "The Carol Burnett Show." Terry Gross spoke with Bob Newhart in 1998 and asked him about the unusual comedy approach that made him a star.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
TERRY GROSS: Now, how did you come up with the one-sided phone call bit?
NEWHART: Well, you know, I'm credited with that, and I actually - I don't - I certainly didn't invent the form. One of the first records ever was a thing called "Cohen On The Telephone." And then, of course, George Jessel used to do phone calls to his mother and then Shelley Berman did a lot of one-sided conversations. Mike and Elaine did two-sided conversation, but again, they were telephone conversations. There are just - there are some routines that lend themselves to the telephone. And I think what happens is the audience, the people listening to it - it makes it a hot medium in Marshall McLuhan's words because they're involved. They're supplying something. They're not just sitting back and saying, oh, that's funny. Oh, that's funny. They're supplying the other end of the conversation.
I belong to a country club out here, and George Scott belongs to it. And he asked me one time, he said, in that kind of gruff voice of his - he said, (imitating George Scott) let me ask you something. How do you those telephone conversations? And I said, well, George, I just - you know, I ask a question, and then I wait long enough for the person on the other end to answer it. And then I start talking again. He said, (imitating George Scott) that's amazing. It's absolutely amazing. And I thought to myself, no, George Patton is amazing.
(LAUGHTER)
NEWHART: This is just a telephone conversation. I don't know how else to do it. That's the only way you can do it.
GROSS: Bob Newhart is my guest. Now, you're Catholic. And when you were coming of age as a comic, I think a lot of the comics were Jewish comics who were getting their start in the Catskill Mountains, which was a largely Jewish resort area. And I'm wondering if you ever felt that ethnic comics had a built-in constituency, i.e. people of their ethnic group. Did you feel like you had that kind of, you know - because there was no Borscht Belt for you.
NEWHART: No.
GROSS: Did you play the Borscht Belt at all?
NEWHART: No, I never have.
GROSS: Right.
NEWHART: Catskills? No.
GROSS: Right. So did you feel like that...
NEWHART: I played the Poconos. That's as close as I ever came to...
GROSS: Right.
NEWHART: ...The Catskills.
GROSS: (Laughter) OK. Did you feel like you were missing out on something not being identified as an ethnic comic?
NEWHART: Well, you know, humor, I think, at that time was very regional, as I recall. It was - I remember Phil Foster doing doing routines about the Brooklyn Dodgers. And then television came along, and you had to make your humor continental. You couldn't make it regional anymore. It had to be - you had to find ways of not making it regional - is what I'm trying to say. I - after some time, I realized that a lot of my friends that - a lot of the comics are Jewish that I know, and they would refer to the Jewishness. And then I began referring to my Catholicism and what it's like to grow up as a Catholic and began to realize how funny it is, in many ways, to grow up. It gives you a chance to stand back and look at it and find the humor in it.
GROSS: What did you find funny about your Catholic upbringing?
NEWHART: Well, for instance, I said the difference between Catholics and other religions is basically we have confession and non Catholics don't understand how you go in this little dark room and tell another human being, like, terrible things you've done during the week. But if you're raised Catholic, there are certain tricks you learn about going to confession. Like, you sit in the very last pew, and you watch the two lines move in the confessional. And whichever line moves the fastest, that's the one you get in because that priest wants to get out of there. And I remember the first time I did that, and it got a big reaction from the audience. And I realized, Oh, I'm not the only one who did that.
GROSS: You could have treated as if it was a long line at the supermarket instead...
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: ...Of the confessional. Can you remember for us what the venues...
NEWHART: You know, that's interesting because it does suggest they (laughter) might have a confessional like, you know, 10 sins or less, you know?
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: The swift moving line.
(LAUGHTER)
NEWHART: I just thought of that.
GROSS: That's good.
BIANCULLI: Bob Newhart, speaking to Terry Gross in 1998. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 1998 interview with stand-up comic and sitcom star Bob Newhart. He died last week at age 94.
GROSS: Can you recall for us what your early venues were like - the smaller clubs, if there were such things at the time - and, you know, what Reno and Vegas were like when you started doing them in the '60s?
NEWHART: Oh, wow. There were clubs. They weren't comedy clubs per se, much as they'd be referred to today as, with just one comic after another getting up and doing five minutes. They were folk music clubs, places like Mister Kelly's in Chicago and the Hungry I in San Francisco and the Crescendo in Los Angeles. And you'd get up and do a half hour, 35 minutes. And then this folk group would come on and sing, and then a guy who played the banjo and do protest songs, and then you'd be on again.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: And what about Vegas?
NEWHART: Vegas was fun. It was a chance to - you'd be there for a month, so it was a chance for the family to come up and be with you on the weekends and have some kind of normalcy to your life, as much as walking on a stage twice a night and trying to make people laugh is normal, you know? But that would be the And there was a camaraderie among Vegas people that still exists. I still see Steve and Eydie and Shecky Greene and Dick Martin and Don Rickles. And these are all friendships that were developed in Vegas.
GROSS: Well, you know, you mentioned Don Rickles. I know you and he are, or at least were, best friends. And it seems like such an incongruous pairing because...
NEWHART: (Laughter).
GROSS: You know, I mean, the last thing in the world you would do is insult people onstage. And Don Rickles is, like, Mr. Insult Comic. Your temperaments couldn't seem more opposite.
NEWHART: Well, I don't know.
GROSS: Are you really nasty off the stage, and is he really nice?
NEWHART: Oh, he's very nice. Yeah, I'm probably nastier off the stage than I appear. And he's nicer than he appears. But we feed each other. We both - our wives enjoy each other's company, and we enjoy each other's company. And we go away on vacation, and we're together for two or three weeks, and we have laughs. We just have a good time. It's something - I wish everybody could have friends such as the Rickles.
GROSS: So where do you guys go on vacation, not to Vegas?
NEWHART: Oh, no, no, no. That would be - no, that'd be a working vacation.
GROSS: Oh, yeah.
NEWHART: That'd be what they call a busman's holiday. The last trip we made we went to Southeast Asia. We went to - we flew to Singapore and got aboard a liner and made stops in Bangkok and South Vietnam and North Vietnam, and then Hong Kong. And then we flew to Beijing and China, and then flew home from Beijing. And it was a wonderful, wonderful trip. It was - we went up the Saigon River.
GROSS: You know, I'm wondering - I'm thinking, like, how odd it would've been if, like, say I were a journalist in Vietnam and there was Don Rickles and Bob Newhart sailing up the river. I thought I was hallucinating or something.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: Did you run into any people who did a real double take seeing you and he go by?
NEWHART: I met a man. I'm confused now whether it was China or Vietnam. But anyway, they kind of knew who I was, but they didn't know who Don was. And I think that upset him. And I derived a great deal of satisfaction from it.
GROSS: (Laughter).
NEWHART: But that has happened before. We traveled in Europe. And of course, they don't really know either of us, and they certainly don't know what to make of Don. Here's this loud American who's just yelling things at people and insulting them.
GROSS: Well, does he do that when he's touring?
NEWHART: Oh, yeah. Oh, sure, oh, sure. And so they don't quite know what to make of Don when we're on vacation.
GROSS: I mean, does he do that as shtick, or is that just the way he treats people?
NEWHART: He can't help it.
GROSS: (Laughter).
NEWHART: He sees things, and he makes observations that are just - that are scary at times. They're so right, you know?
BIANCULLI: Bob Newhart speaking to Terry Gross in 1998. The stand-up comic and sitcom star died last Thursday at age 94. After a break, we'll continue their conversation. And Justin Chang reviews the new movie mash-up teaming two popular Marvel heroes, Deadpool and Wolverine. I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MILES DAVIS QUINTET "IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU")
BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, *****
BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli, professor of television studies at Rowan University in New Jersey. We're remembering Bob Newhart, the comedian and actor whose astoundingly long and successful showbiz career began on TV in 1959 and stretched until 2020 with his final appearance as Professor Proton on "The Big Bang Theory" prequel series "Young Sheldon." His most successful sitcoms were "The Bob Newhart Show" and "Newhart," and he also was featured in such movies as "Catch-22" and "Elf." Bob Newhart died last Thursday at age 94. Terry spoke with him in 1998.
GROSS: I have another question about when you started doing stand-up comedy. You started doing stand-up during the era I've come to think of as the you-dirty-rat era...
NEWHART: (Laughter).
GROSS: ...Because every stand-up comic was compelled to do impersonations of James Cagney. And they also were required to do impersonations of Armstrong and Bogart, and you did some of those yourself.
NEWHART: I was never much of a impersonator. Comics kind of have an ear for that sort of thing. But I was never real good at it. I found what was interesting - and it certainly wasn't planned in any way. But the people I mentioned - Mike and Elaine and Shelley Berman and myself, Johnny Winters, Lenny Bruce - it was a different kind of comedy than had preceded it. What had preceded it was material that could be stolen. In other words, take my wife, please...
GROSS: Jokes.
NEWHART: ...Or - jokes. I'll burn a hole in the coat. You know, you like this jacket? It's a beautiful jacket. I got eight pairs of pants with it. With my luck, I'll burn a hole in the coat. You know, well, anybody could deliver that line. It wasn't personalized at all. But without realizing it - 'cause I certainly wasn't aware of it; it's only in hindsight that I'm aware of it - you couldn't steal a Mike and Elaine routine or a Shelley Berman routine or a Bob Newhart routine or Johnny Winters' routine. They would say, oh, that sounds like Johnny Winters. And so it became - it was a shift in American comedy that just happened. And I think why it happened was our audience was largely college kids. And they would - they didn't have mother-in-laws. So mother-in-law jokes...
GROSS: (Laughter).
NEWHART: ...Didn't mean anything to them, you know?
GROSS: Thank goodness.
(LAUGHTER)
NEWHART: And so to that extent, the humor that was being done in nightclubs was irrelevant to them. And so they would - and it was also very expensive. Nightclubs had a cover charge, and it was very expensive to go to a nightclub, and they didn't have the money, obviously. So they would buy a record and get some pizza and some beer, and they'd all sit around and listen to one of us, and that was their nightclub. And I think that's what happened.
GROSS: Right. And - I mean, you had an onstage persona. Like you said, it wasn't just jokes. It was a whole character that was telling these stories.
NEWHART: Exactly.
GROSS: Let me ask you about the first sitcom that you did, the first "Newhart Show," and you played a psychiatrist. It's common now to have stand-up comics with they own sitcoms. In fact, it's almost obligatory.
NEWHART: (Laughter) That's right.
GROSS: What was it like when you were a stand-up comic, having a sitcom built around you?
NEWHART: Well, it was paternalistic, really, because my manager - and my manager still is Arthur Price - and he and Mary Tyler Moore and Grant Tinker formed MTM Productions. And with the success of Mary's show, he came to me, and he said, would you like to do a sitcom? And I said, yeah, I would, because it would keep me home. It'd keep me off the road, and I could spend some time with the family, which was very important.
So we then went about trying to come up with a sitcom. And we started out with a - OK, what occupation is he? First of all, he's married, right? OK. He's married. And I insisted on that we not have children, that we not have precocious children, 'cause I hated that - those kind of shows where the kids are always bailing the dumb father out of some scrape he's gotten himself into, you know. And we love you, Daddy. Daddy's a nitty (ph), but we do love you - and resolved I wasn't going to do that kind of show.
And so then we started looking for occupations. And I sat down with Lorenzo Music and Dave Davis, who I had worked with before, who were - had been writers on Mary Tyler Moore's show, and I knew Lorenzo from "The Smothers Brothers Show." And he said, well, you know, Bob is - he's a listener. He's like a reactor. He reacts to people. What occupation would lend itself to somebody who listens? And they said, well, how about a psychiatrist?
So they came to me and said, what about a psychiatrist? I said, well, let's make him a psychologist because I think a psychologist tends to deal with less severely disturbed people, and I didn't want to be making fun of severely disturbed people. I didn't want him - me making fun of people with multiple personalities or schizophrenia or anything like that stuff, you know?
GROSS: Right, suicidal depression. Yes. Right - just Mr. Carlin (laughter).
NEWHART: Yeah. Well, yeah. Mr. Carlin, actually, was worse at the end of six years than he was when he originally came to me.
GROSS: (Laughter).
NEWHART: So he has a class action suit against me, I think, as do most of my group.
BIANCULLI: Bob Newhart speaking to Terry Gross in 1998 - more after a break, this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 1998 interview with Bob Newhart, who died last week at age 94. When we left off, Terry and Bob were talking about "The Bob Newhart Show," in which he played psychologist Bob Hartley. Here's a scene in which Bob and his wife, Emily, played by Suzanne Pleshette, have just found out their respective IQ scores.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE BOB NEWHART SHOW")
PLESHETTE: (As Emily Hartley) You know, Bob, ever since you took that IQ test, you've been sitting around, acting petulant.
NEWHART: (As Bob Hartley) What do you mean by that?
PLESHETTE: (As Emily Hartley) Petulant means suddenly irritated by the trivial.
NEWHART: (As Bob Hartley) Emily, I know what petulant means. You don't have to talk down to me just because I'm not as intelligent as you are.
(LAUGHTER)
PLESHETTE: (As Emily Hartley) Bob, you are intelligent.
NEWHART: (As Bob Hartley) Well, maybe I am, Emily, but ever since I found out what our IQs are, well, I think it's affecting our marriage.
PLESHETTE: (As Emily Hartley) What do you mean by that?
NEWHART: (As Bob Hartley) Marriage is a wedding between two...
PLESHETTE: (As Emily Hartley) Oh, Bob, I know what marriage means.
(LAUGHTER)
PLESHETTE: (As Emily Hartley) What's it got to do with us? We've got a perfect marriage.
NEWHART: (As Bob Hartley) Emily, a perfect marriage is where the husband and the wife have the same IQ.
(LAUGHTER)
PLESHETTE: (As Emily Hartley) Bob, it is not important.
NEWHART: (As Bob Hartley) Next to perfect is where the husband's is higher than the wife's.
(LAUGHTER)
PLESHETTE: (As Emily Hartley) Bob, forget it.
NEWHART: (As Bob Hartley) Third is where the wife is one point higher than the husband.
PLESHETTE: (As Emily Hartley) Please, Bob.
NEWHART: (As Bob Hartley) And the fourth, which is us, which is the worst, is where the wife is 151 and the husband is 129, which is a difference of...
(LAUGHTER)
PLESHETTE: (As Emily Hartley) Twenty-two.
GROSS: Now, part of your persona in "The Newhart Show" was - you know, he was this straight-laced, middle-of-the-road guy who was kind of dull.
NEWHART: OK.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: Right? How did the writers come up with that aspect of it - surrounded by a lot of nutty, eccentric people, but he was kind of dull?
NEWHART: Well, he - part of the success of "Newhart" was we tried to isolate what made "The Bob Newhart Show" work, and what seemed to make part of "The Bob Newhart Show" - at least the working environment of "The Bob Newhart Show," the psychologist's office - was you had to have a situation where, no matter how outrageous the statement was made by one of the patients, you couldn't react to it. You couldn't say, that's the craziest thing I've ever heard, Mr. Carlin. You know, you'd have to say - I remember one time I said, how did this week go? He said, it went very well. He said, on Saturday, I was possessed by the devil.
(LAUGHTER)
NEWHART: And I think my line was, OK, you want to go with that, Mr. Carlin?
(LAUGHTER)
NEWHART: I couldn't say, you were what (laughter)? So we tried to find those elements in "Newhart," and we found them in the guests. No matter how unreasonable the guests were, you still had to kind of say, certainly, sir, certainly. I'll send the maid up to the room right away.
GROSS: Do you have a favorite episode from the first "Newhart" show?
NEWHART: I have several. I have - there's one that kind of summed up comedy to me. It was a - I had an African American insurance salesman who came in, and he was very tall and muscular, and he wore the Djibouti (ph), and he had a he had a black Great Dane that he called Whitey. And he came to me, and he said, I don't seem to be able to sell insurance policies, and I said, well, it has nothing to do with your personality. It's just that you kind of scare people, you know? And he said, well, thank you very much.
So then we leave my office, and he said, is the men's room - and I pointed it out just down the hall. And, well, then he let the Great Dane stay there. So with that, Jerry comes out, and he comes over to me, and we start talking. And the Black gentleman comes back in, and he says, sit, Whitey. And with that, Jerry sits right on the reception desk, you know? And it was...
(LAUGHTER)
NEWHART: It got a huge laugh, and to me, it summed up what comedy does. It diffuses tensions in many areas. It gives you distance so that you can stand back and laugh at things. But there were a lot of "Bob Newhart" shows and "Newhart" shows that I love. I love one. Julia sang. We did a telethon, and it had nothing to do with me. I mean, I was the host of the telethon, but Julia...
GROSS: This is on the Vermont show.
NEWHART: Yeah, Julia Duffy, Stephanie. Everybody was doing something on the telethon to try to raise money. I forget what the cause was. And Julia did an uptempo "Ol' Man River," and it's one of the funniest things to this day that I've ever seen. It was hysterical. It was - I mean, her lack of understanding of the lyrics...
(LAUGHTER)
NEWHART: ...Was incredible (laughter).
GROSS: Well, that was a great show, too, the show in which you played an innkeeper in Vermont and who also, at least for several years, hosted a local TV show called...
NEWHART: That's right.
GROSS: ..."Vermont Today," in which...
NEWHART: That's right.
GROSS: ...Michael, your producer, would either book you the most ludicrous or just incredibly boring guests.
NEWHART: That's right.
GROSS: And I'd love the look on your face when you were interviewing somebody just outrageously dull, you know, doing an outrageously pointless interview.
NEWHART: We had Estelle Getty on one show before "The Golden Girls," and she was a librarian who had come up with a new Dewey Decimal system.
(LAUGHTER)
NEWHART: And Michael was trying to jazz it up. He had all kinds of things going in the background to kind of jazz it up.
GROSS: You know, the - your shows have been rerun a lot on Nick at Nite. And I think there was one - I don't know - 24- or 48-hour period when they did a whole Bob-A-Thon. They were bringing on, I guess, a new series of yours, a new-in-rerun series of yours. And to introduce it and celebrate it, there was just hour after hour of continuous Newhart programs. What was that like for you?
NEWHART: Well, that's a tribute to the cast and to the writing that the writing is still valid, and I had something to do with that. I said - I told the writers, don't put in any Gerald Ford jokes, you know, because this is going to be rerun and rerun and rerun, and we're going to look silly, you know, because I knew then that it would go into syndication and people would be watching it. And we tried to get away from being trendy and...
GROSS: Right.
NEWHART: ...For that reason. And it holds up. The material holds up, which is largely attributed to the writing.
GROSS: The lapels and the sideburns don't hold up (laughter).
NEWHART: That's the only thing. I know.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: You wore a lot of plaid, also.
NEWHART: Oh, yeah. Well, see; my...
GROSS: Now, whose idea was all the plaid?
NEWHART: My dresser was colorblind. ***
GROSS: Are you kidding?
NEWHART: Name was Ralph. Yeah. And he was such a nice guy. We didn't want to say anything, but...
GROSS: Oh, that's so Newhart.
NEWHART: ...My wife...
GROSS: (Laughter) It's, like, quintssential Newhart.
NEWHART: My wife would come in, and I'd be ready to go out. And I'm not good with colors either, so she would say, oh, my God, you're kidding. I said, what? She said, oh, take the jacket off. It doesn't even come close to going with the shirt (laughter).
GROSS: That's funny.
NEWHART: But, you know, of all careers to choose when you're colorblind, I mean, the wardrobe seems like the last one.
GROSS: Yeah, you'd think somebody might have said something about it at the studio or...
NEWHART: I remember reading an article in a paper about a one-eyed bullfighter - and again, we get back to material coming out of the papers - a one-eyed bullfighter in Spain who was reapplying to - for license to fight the bulls. And it occurred to me then that if there is one occupation where you really want to have two good eyes, I think bull fighting would be right up toward the top, you know, I mean, of all professions to choose.
GROSS: When you started on television, it was in the days when there were three networks in many cities, a couple of, you know, syndicated kind of channels. But when a show was popular, everybody seemed to watch it. And television has just become such a different experience now because there's so many channels. Do you feel the difference?
NEWHART: Well, of course, we were - we used to get shares like 42, 43 shares.
GROSS: That's an enormous amount of people.
NEWHART: I mean, you know, those are Super Bowl shares now.
GROSS: Exactly.
NEWHART: There was no competition. I just found out - the engineer told me that I was the "I Love Lucy" of the United Arab Emirates, which I have never known.
(LAUGHTER)
NEWHART: He said that they showed "The Bob Newhart Show" in the United Arab Emirates, and people would go home early from work to see it. (Laughter) I never knew I was a hit in the Middle East.
GROSS: Huh. The first "Newhart" show was on Saturday night - right? - after...
NEWHART: Yeah.
GROSS: ..."Mary Tyler Moore." It was...
NEWHART: It was "All In The Family," "M*A*S*H*," "Mary Tyler Moore," us and "Carol Burnett."
GROSS: Was Saturday night a good time? I remember you know, like, when I didn't have something to do, when I was feeling really bad about it...
NEWHART: It became...
GROSS: ...At least I could stay home and watch you and Mary Tyler Moore, so it wasn't a total loss.
NEWHART: Well, it was a time shift. People stayed home Saturday because of that lineup, as they stay home Thursday because of NBC's must-see Thursdays. And it used to be - I think Monday was "Lucy," I think; wasn't it?
GROSS: I don't remember.
NEWHART: I think Monday, and then I think Berle was Tuesday. And so it shifted. That was must-see Saturday.
GROSS: When I think of the Newhart character and your shows from the '70s and the '80s, I think of somebody who stammers a lot, not because he's unsure of what he feels but because he can't really afford to reveal what he really feels because it might be a little harsh, or it might be a little too something. So there's this constant kind of, like, stammering to just, you know, cover up and to try to kind of package in a better way what it is that he's really thinking or feeling. Does that work for you?
NEWHART: Well, that's interesting because the stammer is real. I didn't invent the stammer. I remember in the first year of "Newhart," and we were doing an episode, and it was running long. And one of the producers came up to me and said, can you run some of the words together? Because the show is really spreading. And I said, look - this stammer got me a home in Beverly Hills, and I'm not about to change it. So...
(LAUGHTER)
NEWHART: ...You better get some words out of the script. No, it isn't an affectation. It's the way I speak, although I do - I know what you're saying. It does help to get you over an uncomfortable moment. I mean, I think that he's - I think of him as a nice person who doesn't want to hurt anybody's feelings...
GROSS: Right.
NEWHART: ...But at the same time has difficulty saying, you know, what he means.
GROSS: Well, it's really been a pleasure to talk with you.
NEWHART: Thank you, Terry.
GROSS: I want to thank you very much.
BIANCULLI: Bob Newhart, speaking to Terry Gross in 1998. The comic and sitcom star died last week, leaving behind a string of comedy hits on TV and vinyl. He was 94 years old. After a break, Justin Chang reviews the newest Marvel superhero movie, "Deadpool And Wolverine." This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF ERROLL GARNER'S "YOU MADE ME LOVE YOU") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
