Comedy icon dies at 94

Bob Newhart has died at the age of 94. The legendary comedian, whose television series “The Bob Newhart Show” and “Newhart” were hits in the 1970s and 1980s, died on Thursday.

His longtime publicist Jerry Digney announced in a press release obtained by the Washington Post that he had died of “a series of brief illnesses.”

Born in Oak Park, Illinois, Newhart began his career as a stand-up comedian in the 1950s after serving a stint in the Army (he served from 1952 to 1954). During the Korean War, he was known as “the funny guy in the barracks,” he told The Post in 2020.

While working as an accountant in Chicago, he began making funny phone calls to a friend to pass the time and sending the recordings to radio stations. This brought Newhart to the attention of James Conkling, then president of Warner Bros. Records. Conkling booked him at the Tidelands nightclub in Houston and recorded his performances.

His career began when his comedy program “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart” won a Grammy for Album of the Year at the 1961 Grammys – the first comedy album to receive this honor.

“There wasn’t even a comedy category back then,” he recalled to The Post in 2020. “It beat (Harry) Belafonte, Sinatra and an Elvis album (‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’). They kept calling my name and I kept going up there and thanking them for the awards.”

It sold 750,000 copies at the time. That year, the New York Times called Newhart “the first comedian in history to achieve fame through a recording.”

Since then, it has been added to the Library of Congress’s list of historically significant sound recordings.

“I thought (‘The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart’) could sell maybe 5,000 albums. I would have been happy with that,” Newhart told the Post. “I really saw it as a complement to stand-up, to get maybe four or five more people to come (to a club) because they had heard about this album.”

He added: “And then it exploded.”

In one of his jokes, he pretended to give Abraham Lincoln advice on how to improve the Gettysburg Address: “Say ’87 years ago’ instead of ’87 years ago,'” he said.

“Comedy clubs didn’t exist back then,” he recalled to The Post.

“There was a big shift in comedy. There was Mike (Nichols) and Elaine (May), Shelley Berman, me, Jonathan Winters and Lenny Bruce. We were all kind of there at the same time and the humor was different than the humor before, when there were a lot of jokes about wives… and they had no meaning for college kids who were buying these albums that were about their fears and worries about life.”

He attributed his popularity to college students.

“They would get the records and go into someone’s dorm room and get beer and pizza and someone had a record player. Those were their nightclubs. I think they really created that demand.”

“I find the macabre funny. 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 disturbed mind,” he told Los Angeles Magazine in 1990.

His variety show “The Bob Newhart Show” premiered in 1961. Although it won an Emmy and a Peabody Award, it was canceled after only one season.

Newhart’s next series was more successful, running from 1972 to 1978.

“The Bob Newhart Show” was a sitcom about a Chicago psychologist (Newhart) who lived with his wife (Suzanne Pleshette), a teacher, and had crazy patients and neighbors.

His next series, Newhart, was also a hit. It ran for eight seasons on CBS. In it, he played a New York writer who reopens a closed inn in Vermont and finds himself surrounded by strange locals.

Newhart was also involved in the series “Bob” from 1992 to 1993 and “George & Leo”, which ran from 1997 to 1998.

His film roles include In and Out, Legally Blonde 2, Elf and Kill the Boss. On television, he has recently appeared in The Librarians, ER (for which he received an Emmy nomination), The Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon.

Newhart had ten Emmy nominations but won only one, for “The Big Bang Theory.”

Newhart was married to Virginia Quinn from 1964 until her death in 2023. The couple had four children: Robert, Timothy, Jennifer and Courtney.

Newhart was also friends with fellow comedian Don Rickles, who died in 2017 at the age of 90.

Judd Apatow made the documentary “Bob and Don: A Love Story” about their friendship.

Newhart told the Post that Richard Pryor once confessed to him: “He looked up at me and said, ‘I stole your album. In Peoria, Illinois. I went into a record store and put it in my jacket.'”

Newhart recalled his response: “I said, ‘Richard, I get 25 cents per album.’ So he took 25 cents from someone and gave it to me in exchange for my royalties.”

In a 2005 interview with PBS, Newhart said of Elf: “It was just a wonderful experience… I went to a private screening with some of my granddaughters and they loved the movie. But my daughters loved it even more.”

When asked if he would be willing to make the film for his grandchildren, Newhart told the outlet, “The kids had something to do with it. I mean, I liked the story anyway and I enjoyed playing it.”

Newhart also told PBS, “More and more people come up to me and thank me for all the laughs. And my reaction is always the same. It was a pleasure. And that’s the truth.”

Newhart leaves behind four children and ten grandchildren.