Bob Newhart, the beloved comedian who never forgot his Chicago roots, dies at 94

Never, in the lively history of show business, has there been anybody like Bob Newhart and it was in Chicago that he burst onto the entertainment landscape. For more than half a century he remained a vital, admired and impossible-to-imitate presence in nightclubs, on albums, in films and, most profoundly, on TV.

After a lifetime of making people laugh, Newhart died Thursday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 94. His publicist Jerry Digney confirmed his death.

Newhart worked nearly to the end of his life, contributing to last year’s “Bob and Don: A Love Story,” a documentary by Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio about his longtime friendship with the late comic Don Rickles. He was guided by a philosophy once expressed to the Hollywood Reporter: “As long as you’re able to physically do it I can’t imagine ever not doing it. It’s been a way of life for me. It’s a pain in the ass getting there, with the planes and the canceled flights and the hotel rooms, but then you walk out on that stage and it’s a great audience and you’re having a great time. Why would anyone say, ‘You know, I’m really tired of making people laugh?’”

It started here, when he was born George Robert Newhart in Oak Park on Sept. 5, 1929, and grew up in Chicago in the vicinity of Austin and Washington Boulevards. He was the only son of George David Newhart, part owner of a plumbing and heating-supply business and housewife Julia Pauline. He had three sisters — Virginia, Mary Joan and Pauline — and all attended St. Catherine of Siena School in Oak Park.

Newhart later went to St. Ignatius College Prep and graduated from Loyola University with a bachelor’s degree in business management in 1952. Drafted into the U.S. Army, he served during the Korean War as a personnel manager until he was discharged in 1954. He briefly attended Loyola University’s law school before working as an accountant for United States Gypsum. He was not good at that job, he later said, often adjusting petty cash imbalances with his own money.

He aspired to a career in comedy and gave himself three years to make that happen.

In 1958, he became an advertising copywriter for Fred A. Niles, a film and television producer. To kill time, he and a colleague entertained each other with long telephone calls about absurd scenarios. They scripted a radio show which they later recorded and sent to radio stations as audition tapes. They eventually sold it to 13 Midwestern outlets. When his co-worker ended his participation, Newhart continued alone.

Dan Sorkin, a disc jockey at a local radio station and Newhart’s friend, introduced him to the head of talent at Warner Bros. Records. The label signed him in 1959, only a year after it was formed, based solely on those recordings. His debut album was “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart.”

“I never thought much would come of these record albums, to be honest,” Newhart told the Los Angeles Times. “I thought maybe 25,000 copies might sell. Then it went crazy.”

Yes it did, becoming the stuff of show biz legend. “Button-Down Mind” sold 1.5 million copies and earned two Grammy Awards and became the first comedy album ever to hit No. 1. It saved the struggling Warner Brothers Records and changed the face of modern comedy.

The album contained what would be his most famous bit, “Abe Lincoln Vs. Madison Ave.” “The best piece of writing I ever did,” Newhart would say about his playing an advertising and publicity executive, what would be called a “branding expert” today, who tries to keep Lincoln on message at Gettysburg. Another bit found Newhart addressing sailors on the submarine U.S.S. Codfish after a record-setting, continuous two-year voyage.

To that point, before the album, Newhart had never performed in public but in quick order he expanded his recorded material into a stand-up routine and began to perform at nightclubs, notably Mister Kelly’s, that Rush Street club that at the time was among the most famous in the country.

Of one of his early appearances, Tribune critic Will Leonard wrote, “His style is smooth, his timing beautiful, and his delivery razor sharp.”

His act, his comedy, was in marked contrast to that of his edgier, controversial contemporaries such as Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl. They all came to prominence as the last of the old-school comics was vanishing, the by-the-jokebook gag and one-liner material delivered by such performers as Milton Berle, Joey Bishop, Henny Youngman. But he had a bite, or as the Saturday Evening Post once put it, “He pricks bombastic balloons, disembowels stuffed shirts. He performs the operation so deftly the pompous are unaware they’re being eviscerated.”

One of his biggest fans was Conan O’Brien, who has said, “Bob Newhart is kind of the iconic image of the comedian whose timing and his material is so good he’s not begging for it, you know? You have to go to him.”

Naturally, the success of Newhart’s albums — six more would be released in the 1960s — and his packed nightclub shows attracted television and he became a frequent and popular guest. He hosted his own variety show in 1961 for one season and over his career appeared often on shows hosted by Dean Martin (24 times), Ed Sullivan (8 times), guest hosted the “Tonight Show” (87 times) and “Saturday Night Live” twice, in 1980 and 1995.

In 1972, he was lured into a series by producer Grant Tinker and actress Mary Tyler Moore, the husband-and-wife team who founded MTM Enterprises. In “The Bob Newhart Show,” he played psychologist Bob Hartley, with Suzanne Pleshette as his wife Emily, Billy Daly as neighbor and friend Howard Borden.

You must remember the show’s opening sequence which had Newhart’s character leaving his offices at 430 N. Michigan Ave. and taking a geographically nutty route home. He acknowledged this, saying, “If you’re a native Chicagoan, you know how dumb he (Dr. Hartley) is. He gets on the Ravenswood ‘L,’ he goes past his stop on Sheridan Road, he gets off in Evanston, where the ‘L’ is on the ground, and then he walks back 55 blocks to his apartment. Now, would you want to have that man as a psychologist? A man who misses his stop every day?”

The show was an immediate hit, with Marcia Wallace as his secretary Carol Kester and Peter Bonerz as his office floor neighbor, orthodontist Dr. Jerry Robinson. It was still going strong when Newhart decided to end its run in 1978, after six seasons and 142 episodes.

As Wallace said of the show’s finale, “It was much crying and sobbing. It was so sad. We really did get along. We really had great times together. As far as I’m concerned, Bob is like the Fred Astaire of comics. He just makes it look so easy, and he’s not as in-your-face as some might be. And so, you just kind of take it for granted, how extraordinarily funny and how he wears so well.”

He came back to the television series world in 1982 with “Newhart,” playing a Vermont innkeeper and TV talk show host. Mary Frann was cast as his wife, Joanna. The other members of that memorable cast were Julia Duffy, as the inn’s maid; the late Peter Scolari as a TV producer and Tom Poston as the handyman.

The show ended in 1990 after eight seasons and 182 episodes. The last episode concluded with a scene in which Newhart wakes up in bed with Pleshette, who had played Emily, his wife from “The Bob Newhart Show.” He realizes that the entire eight-year “Newhart” series had been a single nightmare of Dr. Bob Hartley’s.

As the Tribune’s television critic at the time I wrote that the ending was “a memorable and exciting goodbye kiss. It leaves you laughing in the most tender way.” It was later chosen by TV Guide as the best finale in television history.

In 1963 he married Virginia “Ginnie” Quinn, who he met on a blind date set up by actor-comedian Buddy Hackett. They were married for six decades — the couple lived in Beverly Hills where they had four children, Robert, Timothy, Jennifer and Courtney — and she is credited with providing the idea for that 1990 finale. Ginnie Newhart died in April 2023 at the age of 82.

The Newharts’ best friends were Don Rickles and his wife Barbara. The couples met when the men were both performing in Las Vegas in the 1960s. Over the next decades they spent a great deal of time together, frequently traveling the world on vacations.

Those of you who might think this an unlikely pair, listen to what Rickles once told Variety, “We’re apples and oranges. I’m a Jew, he’s a Catholic. He’s low-key, I’m a yeller. But we share the same values, marriage, children and grandchildren. We’ve traveled all over the world together with our wives, and in all that time we’ve never had a serious argument. So many things happen, there’s so much sadness. But we can laugh together.”

When Rickles died in 2017, Newhart said, “He made me laugh and I made him laugh. We never explored too much why the friendship worked — it just did. … He was called the Merchant of Venom, but the truth was he was just the kindest man. Don didn’t have a mean bone in his body.”

Newhart’s later efforts at TV were forgettable duds.

There was 1992’s “Bob,” in which he played a cartoonist. It was canceled during its second season. On the “Tonight Show” following that, Newhart joked he had now done shows called “The Bob Newhart Show,” “Newhart” and “Bob” so his next show was going to be called “The.”

In 1997, Newhart he returned with “George & Leo” on CBS with Judd Hirsch and Jason Bateman. It was canceled during its first season.

But Newhart would charm a new generation when he played Papa Elf in the 2003 Will Ferrell hit film “Elf.” Newhart guest-starred on such shows as “ER,” “Desperate Housewives” and “NCIS.”

He would reach new TV millions when he appeared in CBS’ top-rated sitcom, “The Big Bang Theory.” Series creator Chuck Lorre said, “One of the smartest things I said in a while was, ‘How about Bob Newhart?’ And it worked. He is the master of his craft. You can’t really anticipate what he’s going to do because his rhythms are so unique and his own.”

Astonishingly, he won his first Emmy for the role. Though he and his shows had been nominated previously, neither they nor he ever grabbed a statue, though Poston would win three supporting actor Emmys.

Through his 80s, Newhart continued to perform 20-some stand-up gigs a year and still found it enjoyable to work on new routines. He told a reporter, “That is the enjoyment, taking a new piece of business, trying it out, expanding on it a little and making it a little longer. Before you know it, you have five or six new minutes.”

Throughout his career, his ties to Chicago remained strong. Just before his 93rd birthday, he was honored by the Edgewater Historical Society with a commemorative street sign that acknowledged “The Bob Newhart Show,” which the society said is “arguably the most popular television sitcom ever set in Chicago.” The sign at 5940 N. Sheridan Road is across from the Thorndale Beach North tower, where Newhart “lived” during the show’s six seasons.

He was interviewed at that time by Parade magazine, saying, “When I first started out in stand-up, I just remember the sound of laughter. It’s one of the great sounds of the world.” He also said this: “I think that what comes through in Chicago humor is affection. Even though you’re poking fun at someone or something, there’s still an affection in it.”

He kept tabs on old Chicago friends and our beleaguered sports teams. My colleague Paul Sullivan recently called Newhart “the indisputable godfather of celebrity Chicago sports fans. He wasn’t just a Chicago fan in real life but on TV as well.”

And he remains part of the local landscape, in the form of that life-size bronze sculpture that finds him sitting in a chair next to an empty sofa, now plunked near the east edge of Navy Pier. He has been there since 2004, in winter, summer, spring and fall.

rkogan@chicagotribune.com