1958–1971: Comedy albums and stardom , and
Carol Burnett in 1964 After the war, Newhart worked for
United States Gypsum as an accountant. He later said that his motto, "That's close enough," and his habit of adjusting
petty cash imbalances with his own money showed that he lacked the temperament of an accountant. There, he and a co-worker entertained each other with long telephone calls about absurd scenarios, which they later recorded and sent to radio stations as audition tapes. When the co-worker ended his participation by taking a job in New York, Newhart continued the recordings alone, developing routines. A follow-up album,
The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back!, was released six months later and won
Best Comedy Performance – Spoken Word that year. His subsequent comedy albums include
Behind the Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart (1961),
The Button-Down Mind on TV (1962),
Bob Newhart Faces Bob Newhart (1964),
The Windmills Are Weakening (1965),
This Is It (1967),
Best of Bob Newhart (1971), and
Very Funny Bob Newhart (1973). Years later, he released
Bob Newhart Off the Record (1992),
The Button-Down Concert (1997), and
Something Like This (2001), an anthology of his 1960s Warner Bros. albums. On December 10, 2015, publicist and comedy album collector
Jeff Abraham revealed that a "lost" Newhart track from 1965 about
Paul Revere existed on a one-of-a-kind acetate, which he owns. The track made its world premiere on episode 163 of the
Comedy on Vinyl podcast. Newhart's success in stand-up led to his own short-lived
NBC variety show in 1961,
The Bob Newhart Show. The show lasted only a single season, but it earned Newhart a
Primetime Emmy Award nomination and a
Peabody Award. The Peabody Board cited him as "a person whose gentle satire and wry and irreverent wit waft a breath of fresh and bracing air through the stale and stuffy electronic corridors. A merry marauder, who looks less like
St. George than a choirboy, Newhart has wounded, if not slain, many of the dragons that stalk our society. In a troubled and apprehensive world, Newhart has proved once again that laughter is the best medicine." In the mid-1960s, Newhart was one of the initial three co-hosts of the variety show
The Entertainers (1964), with
Carol Burnett and
Caterina Valente, appeared on
The Dean Martin Show 24 times and on
The Ed Sullivan Show eight times. In 1962, Newhart filmed
An Evening with Bob Newhart, thought to be the first
pay-per-view television special, for Canadian-based
Telemeter.
1972–1978: The Bob Newhart Show Newhart starred in two long-running
sitcoms. In 1972, soon after he guest-starred on
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, he was approached by his agent and his managers, producer
Grant Tinker, and actress
Mary Tyler Moore (the husband/wife team who founded
MTM Enterprises), to work on a series called
The Bob Newhart Show, to be written by
David Davis and
Lorenzo Music. He was very interested in the starring role of psychologist Bob Hartley, with
Suzanne Pleshette playing his wry, loving wife Emily and
Bill Daily as neighbor and friend Howard Borden.
The Bob Newhart Show was a part of the CBS comedy lineup on Saturday Night consisting of
All in the Family,
M*A*S*H,
The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and
The Carol Burnett Show. The series was an immediate hit. The show eventually referenced what made Newhart's name in the first place; apart from the first few episodes, it used an opening-credits sequence featuring Newhart answering a telephone in his office. According to co-star
Marcia Wallace, the entire cast got along well, and Newhart became close friends with both Wallace and co-star Suzanne Pleshette. In addition to Wallace as Bob's wisecracking, man-chasing receptionist Carol Kester, the cast included
Peter Bonerz as amiable orthodontist Jerry Robinson;
Jack Riley as Elliot Carlin, the most misanthropic of Hartley's patients; character actor and voice artist
John Fiedler as milquetoast Emil Petersen; and
Pat Finley as Bob's sister, Ellen Hartley, a love interest for Howard Borden. Future
Newhart regular
Tom Poston had a briefly recurring role as Cliff "Peeper" Murdock, veteran stage actor
Barnard Hughes appeared as Bob's father for three episodes spread over two seasons, and
Martha Scott appeared in several episodes as Bob's mother. By 1977, the show's ratings were declining and Newhart wanted to end it but was under contract to do one more season. The show's writers tried to rework the sitcom by adding a pregnancy, but Newhart objected: "I told the creators I didn't want any children, because I didn't want it to be a show about 'How stupid Daddy is, but we love him so much, let's get him out of the trouble he's gotten himself into'." Nevertheless, the staff wrote an episode that they hoped would change Newhart's mind. Newhart read the script and he agreed it was very funny. He then asked, "Who are you going to get to play Bob?" Coincidentally, Newhart's wife gave birth to their daughter Jenny late in the year, which caused him to miss several episodes. In the last episode of the fifth season, not only was Bob's wife Emily, pregnant, but his receptionist Carol was, too. In the first show of the sixth season, Bob revealed his dream of the pregnancies and that neither Emily nor Carol was really pregnant. Marcia Wallace spoke of Newhart's amiable nature on set: "He's very low key, and he didn't want to cause trouble. I had a dog by the name of Maggie that I used to bring to the set. And whenever there was a line that Bob didn't like—he didn't want to complain too much—so, he'd go over, get down on his hands and knees, and repeat the line to the dog, which invariably yawned; and he'd say, "See, I told you it's not funny!". Wallace also commented on the show's lack of Emmy recognition: "People think we were nominated for many an Emmy, people presume we won Emmys, all of us, and certainly Bob, and certainly the show. Nope, never!" Newhart discontinued the series in 1978 after six seasons and 142 episodes. Wallace said of its ending, "It was much crying and sobbing. It was so sad. We really did get along. We really had great times together." Although primarily a television star, Newhart appeared in a number of popular films, beginning with the 1959 war story
Hell Is for Heroes (where he did his one-sided telephone act in a bunker). In 1968, Newhart played an annoying software specialist in the film
Hot Millions. His films include 1970's
Alan Jay Lerner musical
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, the 1971
Norman Lear comedy
Cold Turkey,
Mike Nichols's war satire
Catch-22, the 1977 Disney animated feature
The Rescuers and its 1990 sequel
The Rescuers Down Under as the voice of Bernard, and he
played the president of the United States in the comedy
First Family (1980).
1982–1990: Newhart By 1982, Newhart was interested in a new sitcom. After he had discussions with
Barry Kemp and
CBS, the show
Newhart was created, in which Newhart played
Vermont innkeeper and TV talk show host Dick Loudon.
Mary Frann was cast as his wife, Joanna. He realizes (in a satire of a famous plot element in the television series
Dallas a few years earlier) that the entire eight-year
Newhart series had been a single nightmare of Dr. Bob Hartley's, which Emily attributes to eating Japanese food before he went to bed. Recalling Mary Frann's buxom figure and proclivity for wearing sweaters, Bob closes the segment and the series by telling Emily, "You really should wear more sweaters" before the typical closing notes of the old
Bob Newhart Show theme played over the fadeout. The twist ending was later chosen by
TV Guide as the best finale in television history. With the exception of the series finale, Newhart simply said "meow" in the
MTM Productions closing logo on all episodes. The finale's logo used a sound clip of the two brothers named Darryl shouting "QUIET!!!" in unison; prior to this, only their brother Larry ever spoke a word while they remained silent.
1991–2012: Established career , In addition to stand-up comedy, Newhart became a dedicated character actor in film and television. Newhart played a beleaguered school principal in
In & Out (1997), acted in the
Will Ferrell Christmas comedy film
Elf (2003), and made a cameo appearance as a sadistic but appreciative CEO at the end of the comedy
Horrible Bosses (2011). He appeared on ''
It's Garry Shandling's Show and Committed, reprised his role as Dr. Bob Hartley on Murphy Brown, and appeared as himself on The Simpsons. Newhart had a role on NCIS'' as
Ducky's mentor and predecessor, a retired
forensic pathologist, who was discovered to have
Alzheimer's disease. In 1992, Newhart returned to television with a series about a
cartoonist called
Bob. The ensemble cast included
Lisa Kudrow, but the show did not develop a strong audience and was cancelled shortly after the start of its second season, despite good critical reviews. On
The Tonight Show following the cancellation, Newhart joked he had now done shows called
The Bob Newhart Show,
Newhart, and
Bob so that his next show was going to be called
The. In 1997, Newhart returned again with
George & Leo on CBS with
Judd Hirsch and
Jason Bateman (Newhart's first name being George); the show was cancelled during its first season. In 1995, Newhart was approached by
Showtime to make the first comedy special of his 35-year career,
Off the Record, which consisted of him performing material from his first and second albums in front of an audience in
Pasadena, California. In 2003, Newhart guest-starred on three episodes of
ER in a rare dramatic role that earned him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination, his first in nearly 20 years. On August 27, 2006, at the
58th Primetime Emmy Awards, hosted by
Conan O'Brien, Newhart was placed in a supposedly airtight glass prison that contained three hours of air. If the Emmys went over the time of three hours, he would die. This gag was an acknowledgment of the common frustration that award shows usually run on past their allotted time (usually three hours). Newhart "survived" his containment to help O'Brien present the award for Outstanding Comedy Series (which went to
The Office). During an episode of
Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Newhart made a comedic cameo with members of the
ABC show
Lost lampooning an alternate ending to the series finale. In 2011, he appeared in a small but pivotal role as a doctor in
Lifetime's anthology film on breast cancer,
Five.
2013–2020: The Big Bang Theory and final roles In 2013, Newhart appeared in an episode of the sixth season of
The Big Bang Theory playing the aged Professor Proton (Arthur Jeffries), a former science TV show host turned children's party entertainer, for which he was awarded a
Primetime Emmy Award. It was Newhart's first Emmy. At that year's Emmy ceremony, Newhart appeared as a presenter with
The Big Bang Theory star
Jim Parsons and received a standing ovation. He continued to play the character periodically through the show's
12th and final season and on its spinoff
Young Sheldon. On December 19, 2014, the 85-year-old Newhart made a surprise appearance on the final episode of
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, where he was revealed to be the person inside Secretariat, Ferguson's on-set pantomime horse. The show then ended with a scene parodying the
Newhart series finale, with Ferguson and
Drew Carey reprising their roles from
The Drew Carey Show. In June 2015, Newhart appeared on another series finale, that of
Hot in Cleveland, playing the father-in-law of Joy Scroggs (
Jane Leeves). It marked a reunion with
Betty White, who was a cast member during the second season of
Bob 23 years earlier. The finale ends with their characters getting married. == Comedic style ==