Every Disney Hero Has a Voice
The Rescuers/Rescuers Down Under
Bernard
Bob Newhart
September 5th, 1929
George
Robert "Bob" Newhart (born September 5, 1929), is an American stand-up comedian and actor.
Noted for his deadpan and slightly stammering delivery, Newhart came to
prominence in the 1960s when his album of comedic monologues The Button-Down
Mind of Bob Newhart was a worldwide bestseller and reached #1 on the Billboard
pop music charts—it remains the 20th best-selling comedy album in history. The
follow-up album, The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back! was also a massive
success, and the two albums held the Billboard #1 and #2 spots simultaneously,
a feat unequaled until the 1991 release of Use Your Illusion I and Use
Your Illusion II by hard rock band Guns N' Roses.
Newhart
later went into acting, starring in two long-running and prize-winning
situation comedies, first as psychologist Dr. Robert "Bob" Hartley on
the 1970s sitcom The Bob Newhart Show and then as innkeeper Dick Loudon
on the 1980s sitcom Newhart. He also had a third, short-lived sitcom in
the nineties titled Bob. Newhart also appeared in film roles such as Major
Major in Catch-22, and Papa Elf in Elf. He provided the voice of
Bernard in the Walt Disney animated films The Rescuers and The
Rescuers Down Under. One of his most recent roles is the library head Judson
in The Librarian. In 2011, Newhart appeared in the film Horrible
Bosses.
Life and career
Early
life
Newhart
was born in Oak Park, Illinois and raised on the west side of Chicago. His
parents were Julia Pauline (née Burns; 1900–1993), a housewife, and George
David Newhart (1900–1985), a part-owner of a plumbing and heating-supply
business. His mother was of Irish descent and his father had Irish, German, and
English ancestry. One of his grandmothers was from St. Catharines, Canada.
Newhart has three sisters, Virginia, Mary Joan (a nun, who taught at a Chicago
high school), and Pauline.
He was
educated at Roman Catholic schools in the area, including St. Catherine of
Siena grammar school in Oak Park, and attended St. Ignatius College Prep, where
he graduated in 1947. He then enrolled at Loyola University of Chicago where he
graduated in 1952 with a bachelor's degree in business management.
He was
drafted into the U.S. Army and served stateside during the Korean War as a
personnel manager until discharged in 1954. Newhart briefly attended Loyola Law
School but did not complete a degree, in part, he says, because he was asked to
behave unethically during an internship.
Career
After
the war he got a job as an accountant for United States Gypsum. He later
claimed that his motto, "That's close enough," and his habit of
adjusting petty cash imbalances with his own money shows he didn't have the
temperament to be an accountant. He also claimed to have been a clerk in the unemployment
office who made $55 a week but who quit upon learning weekly unemployment
benefits were $45 a week and he "only had to come in to the office one day
a week to collect it."
Comedy
albums
In 1958,
Newhart became an advertising copywriter for Fred A. Niles, a major independent
film and television producer in Chicago. It was here that he and a coworker
would entertain each other with long telephone calls about absurd scenarios,
which they would later record and send to radio stations as audition tapes.
When his coworker ended his participation, Newhart continued the recordings
alone, developing the shtick which was to serve him well for decades. In
addition to his various standup bits, he incorporated that shtick into his
television series at appropriate times. The auditions led to his break-through
recording contract. A disc jockey at the radio station—Dan Sorkin, who later became
the announcer-sidekick on his NBC series—introduced Newhart to the head of
talent at Warner Bros. Records, which signed him in 1959—only a year after the
label was formed—based solely on those recordings. He expanded his material
into a stand-up routine which he began to perform at nightclubs.
Newhart
became famous mostly on the strength of his audio releases, in which he became
the world's first solo "straight man". This is a seeming
contradiction in terms—by definition, a straight man is the counterpart of a
more loony comedic partner. Newhart's routine, however, was simply to portray
one end of a conversation (usually a phone call), playing the straightest of
comedic straight men and implying what the other person was saying. Newhart
told a 2005 interviewer for PBS's American Masters that his favorite
standup routine is "Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue," in which a slick
promoter has to deal with the reluctance of the eccentric President to agree to
efforts to boost his image. The routine was suggested to Newhart by a Chicago
TV director and future comedian—Bill Daily, who would be Newhart's castmate on
the 1970s Bob Newhart Show for CBS. Newhart became known for using an
intentional stammer, in service of his unique combination of politeness and
disbelief at what he was supposedly hearing. Newhart has used the delivery
throughout his career. In his 2006 book I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This,
he included the following anecdote:
When I
was doing The Bob Newhart Show, one of the producers pulled me aside and
said that the shows were running a little long. He wondered if I could cut down
the time of my speeches by reducing my stammering. 'No, that stammer bought me
a house in Beverly Hills.'
His 1960
comedy album, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, went straight to
number one on the charts, beating Elvis Presley and the cast album of The
Sound of Music. It was the first comedy album to make #1 on the Billboard
charts. Button Down Mind received the 1961 Grammy Award for Album of the
Year. The album peaked at #2 in the UK Albums Chart. Newhart also won Best New
Artist, and his quickly released follow-on album, The Button-Down Mind
Strikes Back, won Best Comedy Performance - Spoken Word that same year.
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.
Television
Newhart's
success in stand-up led to his own NBC variety show in 1961, The Bob Newhart Show.
The show lasted only a single season but earned Newhart an 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 appeared on The Dean Martin Show 24 times, and The
Ed Sullivan Show eight times. He appeared in a 1963 episode of The
Alfred Hitchcock Hour and The Judy Garland Show. Newhart
guest-hosted The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson 87 times, and
hosted Saturday Night Live twice, 15 years apart (1980 and 1995).
In
addition to stand-up comedy, Newhart became a dedicated character actor,
including a guest role on an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. That
led to other series such as: Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre, Captain
Nice, 2 episodes of Insight, and It's Garry Shandling's Show.
He reprised his role as Dr. Bob Hartley on Murphy Brown and The
Simpsons, and as a retired forensic pathologist on NCIS.
Newhart
guest-starred on three episodes of ER, for which he was nominated for an
Emmy award, as well as on Desperate Housewives (see below in "Other
Appearances"). He also appeared on Committed.
Films
Primarily
a television star, Newhart has been in a number of popular films, beginning
with the 1962 war story Hell Is for Heroes starring Steve McQueen. His
films have ranged from 1970's Barbra Streisand musical On a Clear Day You
Can See Forever, the 1971 Norman Lear comedy Cold Turkey, the Mike
Nichols-directed war satire Catch-22, to the 2003 Will Ferrell holiday
comedy Elf.
Newhart
played the President of the United States in a 1980 comedy, First Family.
He appeared as a beleaguered school principal in 1997's In & Out,
starring Kevin Kline.
His most recent film appearance was a cameo appearance as a sadistic CEO at the end of the 2011 film Horrible Bosses.
Sitcoms
The
Bob Newhart Show
Newhart's
most notable exposure on television came from two long-running programs that
centered on him. In 1972, soon after Newhart 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 pilot series called The Bob Newhart Show, to
be written by Davis and Music. He was very interested in the starring role of
dry psychologist Bob Hartley, with Suzanne Pleshette playing his wryly loving
wife, Emily, and Bill Daily as neighbor and friend Howard Borden.
The
Bob Newhart Show faced
heavy competition from the beginning, launching at the same time as the popular
shows M*A*S*H, Maude, Sanford And Son, and The Waltons.
Nevertheless, it 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.
The cast
also included unfamiliar actors. Marcia Wallace as Bob's wisecracking,
man-chasing receptionist, Carol Kester; Peter Bonerz as dentist Jerry Robinson,
whose offices were on the same floor as Newhart's Hartley; Jack Riley as Elliot
Carlin, the most misanthropic among members of Dr. Hartley's most frequently
seen group therapy sessions; legendary character actor and voice artist, John
Fiedler (the voice of Piglet); Florida Friebus (once the mother on The Many
Loves of Dobie Gillis) as another group member; and, scattered over two
seasons, Pat Finley as Hartley's sister, Ellen, a love interest for Howard
Borden. Future Newhart regular Tom Poston had a briefly recurring role
as Cliff Murdock; veteran stage actor Barnard Hughes appeared as Hartley's
father for three episodes spread over two seasons, and studio film veteran Martha
Scott appeared in several episodes as Hartley's mother. Actress Teri Garr
appeared twice in the 1973-74 season.
By 1977,
the show was suffering lackluster ratings 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?"
Ironically, Newhart's wife gave birth to their daughter Jenny late in the year,
which caused him to miss several episodes.
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 that I used to bring to the set by
the name of Maggie. 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, who invariably yawned; and he'd say,
'See, I told you it's not funny!'" Wallace has 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
finally pulled the plug on his own sitcom 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."
Of Newhart's other long-running sitcom, Newhart, Wallace said, "But
some of the other great comedic talents who had a brilliant show, when they
tried to do it twice, it didn't always work. And that's what... but like Bob,
as far as I'm concerned, Bob is like the Fred Astaire of comics. He just makes
it looks so easy, and he's not as in-your-face as some might be. As so, you
just kind of take it for granted, how extraordinarily funny and how he wears
well." She was later reunited with Newhart twice, once in a reprise of her
role as Carol on Murphy Brown in 1994, and on an episode of Newhart's
short-lived sitcom, George & Leo, in 1997.
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 Dick Loudin. Inexperienced, struggling actress Mary Frann was cast as
his wife, Joanna Loudin, and another unfamiliar prime-time actress and soap
star (who had been a fan of Newhart's since she was 21), Julia Duffy joined the
cast as Dick's inn maid and spoiled rich girl, Stephanie Vanderkellen. A
familiar actor (who had been a fan of Newhart's since he was 17), Peter Scolari
was also cast as Dick's manipulative TV producer, Michael Harris. Well known
actor Tom Poston played the role of handyman George Utley on
"Newhart" and received three Emmy Award Nominations for his role in
"Newhart" as Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, 1984,
1986 and 1987. Like The Bob Newhart Show, Newhart was an
immediate hit, and like the show before that, it was also nominated for Emmys,
but it didn't win any awards. During the time Newhart was working on this show,
in 1985, his smoking habits finally caught up to him, and he was taken to the
emergency room for polycythemia. The doctors ordered him to stop smoking.
Newhart
himself "warmed up" the studio audience with a five-to-eight-minute
routine before the filming of every episode.
In 1987,
ratings began to drop. Newhart ended in 1990 after eight seasons and 182
episodes. The last episode ended with a scene in which Newhart wakes up in bed
with Suzanne Pleshette, who had played Emily, his wife from The Bob Newhart
Show. He realizes (in a satire of a famous plot element in the TV series Dallas
a few years earlier) that the entire eight-year Newhart series had been
a single nightmare of Dr. Bob Hartley's, provoked by "eating too much
Japanese food before going to bed." Recalling Mary Frann's buxom figure,
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.
Julia
Duffy, who played Stephanie Vanderkellen beginning in season two, said,
"Well, he always had this hipness from not being him. I mean, during that
time, when somewhat are overlooked, some frenzy for NBC's Thursday night shows,
we were Letterman's favorite show. Talked about it all the time, Rolling Stone
did a huge article on our show, unsolicited article, praising it. Time Magazine
did as well, because they loved the timelessness of it, our jokes had
absolutely nothing to do with anything current." The last thing Duffy said
about the cancellation of Mr. Newhart's second TV series of the decade when she
was ready to move onto other projects was, "It was really good for me to
see that it got to him, as much as it got to me." After the series'
cancellation, Duffy remained friends with Newhart.
Peter
Scolari, who played conniving, hyperactive TV producer, Michael Harris, for six
of the eight seasons, said of his idol/future TV producer and friend, about
looking for another woman who preceded Suzanne Pleshette (who died in 2008, a
decade after Frann): "I think Bob was right to find a woman, who was, you
know, a completely different kind of woman. I mean, I hate to say it, but
demographically, you don't have this. You get the sense that Suzanne Pleshette,
you know, had played some poker in her time, maybe knocked back a couple of
cigarettes, in her life, and you'd be right to assume that Mary Frann did none
of those things. Mary Frann was such a dedicated actor that this one, I don't
think she missed a mark or screwed up a line in like 60 or 70 performances of
her own, that were flawless."
When
Newhart's co-star had found out Newhart (himself) was trying to stop smoking
was, "And the Pepsi was gone and the cigarettes were finally gone. And he
did a great... you know, he would do a five- to eight-minute routine in front
of our live audience, every single show night; every Friday night for eight
years, he did excerpts and new material. And he did the smoking, and he would
start playing the spotlight. The follow spot was on him. 'And I haven't had any
of the problems that people usually talk about having with the... with the
smoking—impatience, outbursts of anger, appetite. I haven't really... look, put
it on me or get it off me! Just make up your mind!' And he'd freaked out on the
follow spot guy. So, he did this for about eight to ten weeks."
The last
thing Peter also said despite of Mr. Newhart's second show not winning any Emmys,
it also gained recognition for the eight seasons that stayed on the air,
"I think Julia Duffy and I (at the Emmys), lost Bob and Tom, I think in 8
years, would collectively lost 15 Emmys, lost by 4 cast members, and we just
couldn't get arrested, no matter how great a year, we had, it's great to be
nominated, to lose again." After the series' cancellation, Scolari is
still good friends with Newhart, who also plays golf with him.
Other TV
series
In 1992,
Newhart returned to television with a series called Bob, about a cartoonist.
An ensemble cast included a pre-Friends Lisa Kudrow, but the show did
not develop a strong audience and was canceled shortly after the start of its
second season, despite good critical reviews. In 1997, Newhart returned again
with George and Leo on CBS with Judd Hirsch and Jason Bateman; the show
was canceled during its first season.
Other TV
appearances
In
2001, Newhart made an appearance on MADtv (Season 6),
playing a psychiatrist who yells "Stop it!" in a skit. Other
television work includes:
- The Entertainers (regular performer in 1964)
- Thursday's Game (1974) (made-for-TV film)
- Marathon (1980)
- Ladies and Gentlemen... Bob Newhart (1980)
- Ladies and Gentlemen... Bob Newhart
Part II (1981)
- The Entertainers (1991)
- The Sports Pages (2001) (made-for-TV film)
- The Librarian: Quest for the Spear (2004)
- The Librarian: Return to King
Solomon's Mines
(2006)
- The Librarian: Curse of the Judas
Chalice (2008)
- NCIS, season 8: "Recruited" (2011)
- The Simpsons, season 7: "Bart the Fink" (1996)
In
1995, 64 year old Newhart was approached by the Showtime cable network to do
his very first comedy special in his 35 year career. His special Off The
Record consisted of him doing material from his first and second albums in
front of a live audience in Pasedena, California. In 2003, Newhart
guest-starred on three episodes of ER
in a rare dramatic role that earned him an Emmy Award
nomination, his first in nearly 20 years. In 2005, he began a recurring role in
Desperate Housewives as Morty, the on-again/off-again boyfriend of
Sophie (Lesley Ann Warren), Susan Mayer's (Teri Hatcher) mother. in 2009, He
received another Emmy Award nomination for reprising his role as Judson in The
Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice.
On the
2006 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
(which is usually three hours). Newhart "survived" his containment to
help O'Brien present the Emmy Award for Best Comedy Series (which went to The
Office).
During
an episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live, Newhart made a comedic cameo with
members of ABC's show Lost lampooning an alternate ending to the series
finale. In 2011, Newhart appeared in a small but pivotal role as a doctor in
Lifetime's anthology film on breast cancer Five.
Personal
comedic style
Newhart
is known for his deadpan delivery and a slight stammer which early on he
incorporated into the persona around which he built a successful career. On his
TV shows, although he got his share of funny lines, often he worked in the Jack
Benny tradition of being the "straight man" while the sometimes
somewhat bizarre cast members surrounding him got the laughs.
Several
of his routines involve hearing one half of a conversation as he speaks to
someone over the phone. In a bit called King Kong, a rookie security
guard at the Empire State Building seeks guidance as to how to deal with an ape
who is "18 to 19 stories high, depending on whether we have a 13th floor
or not". He assures his boss he has looked in the guards manual
"under 'ape' and 'ape's toes'". Other famous routines include
"The Driving Instructor," "The Mrs. Grace L. Ferguson Airline
(and Storm Door Company)", "Introducing Tobacco To
Civilization", "Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue," "Defusing
a Bomb" (in which an uneasy security division commander tries to walk a
new and nervous security guard through defusing a live shell discovered on a
California beach), "The Retirement Party," "A Neighbour's
Dog," "Ledge Psychology," and "The Khrushchev Landing
Rehearsal."
Quotations
On
pleasure: "All I can say about life is, Oh God, enjoy it!"
On his
ritual: "This stammer got me a home in Beverly Hills, and I'm not about to
screw with it now."
"Laughter
gives us distance. It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it and
then move on."
"It's
getting harder and harder to differentiate between schizophrenics and people
talking on a cell phone. It still brings me up short to walk by somebody who
appears to be talking to themselves."
On
drinking alcoholic beverages on airplanes: "I'm one of those passengers
who arrives at the airport five or six hours early so I can throw back a few
drinks and muster up the courage to board the plane. Apparently I'm not alone
because I've never been in an empty airport bar. I don't care what time you get
there. Even at 8:00 a.m. you have to fight your way to the bar. At that hour,
everyone drinks Bloody Marys so no one can tell it's booze -- at least until
they fall off their chair."
When
asked to do a new sitcom: "My manager, I was surprised was one of the
founders of MTM Enterprises, by Mary Tyler Moore and Grant Tinker, and Mary's
show was such a big hit. He came to me and said, 'Would you like to do a
sitcom?' I was traveling on the road a lot, so, the sitcom I could stay home,
and said, yeah!"
"I
don't have a show anymore. I don't have a check coming in every week. This is
important to me, I got to score a million tonight or it could all be
over."
"My
friends were getting married, buying houses, buying cars, and I wasn't doing
anything. There was the point was I talk to myself to you, every screw up
nature, look at what you've done with your life. But there was always something
on the horizon, that was holding, maybe, you know, this will make you
different."
Writings
On
September 20, 2006, Hyperion Books released Newhart's first book, I
Shouldn't Even Be Doing This. The book is primarily a memoir, but features
comic bits by Newhart as well. As comedian David Hyde Pierce notes, "The
only difference between Bob Newhart on stage and Bob Newhart offstage – is that
there is no stage."
Honors
In addition to his Peabody Award and several Emmy nominations, Newhart's recognitions include:
- Three Grammy awards in 1961: Best New
Artist, Best Comedy Performance (Spoken Word) and Album of the Year for The
Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart (the first comedy record to be honored
as Album of the Year).
- In 1993 Newhart was inducted into the
Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame.
- In 1998, Billboard magazine recognized
Newhart's first album as #20 on their list of most popular albums of the
past 40 years, and the only comedy album on the list.
- On January 6, 1999 Newhart received a
star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
- In 2002 he won the Mark Twain Prize
for American Humor.
- In 2004, Newhart was #14 on Comedy
Central Presents: 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time.
- On July 27, 2004, the American cable
television network TV Land unveiled a statue of Newhart on the Magnificent
Mile in his native Chicago, depicting Dr. Robert Hartley from The Bob
Newhart Show. The statues depict Dr. Hartley sitting in his therapy
practice chair with a pencil held between his hands, and a patients' sofa
next to him. The bronze set is now located in the small park in front of
the entrance of Navy Pier.
Personal
life
Newhart
was introduced by Buddy Hackett to Virginia "Ginnie" Quinn, the
daughter of character actor Bill Quinn (who died in 1994). They were married on
January 12, 1963. The couple have four children (Robert, Timothy, Jennifer and
Courtney), and several grandchildren. They are Catholic and raised their
children as such, but Ginnie said they did not want them to have "the
fears" that came from their upbringing. His son Rob (who portrayed his
father in 1993's Heart & Souls, with Robert Downey Jr.) maintains
his father's official website. Newhart is a good friend of comedian Don Rickles.
In 1985,
Newhart was rushed to the emergency room, suffering with polycythemia, after
years of heavy smoking. He made a recovery, several weeks after, and has since quit
smoking.
Newhart
is the uncle of former Saturday Night Live castmember Paul Brittain.
Filmography
- Hell Is for Heroes (1962) — a World War II drama with a
comedic monologue by Newhart
- Hot Millions (1968)
- On A Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970)
- Catch-22 (1970)
- Cold Turkey (1971)
- The Rescuers (1977) (voice)
- Little Miss Marker (1980)
- First Family (1980)
- The Rescuers Down Under (1990) (voice)
- Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The
Movie (1998) (voice
of Leonard the polar bear)
- In & Out (1997)
- Legally Blonde 2: Red, White &
Blonde (2003)
- Elf (2003)
- The Librarian: Quest for the Spear (2004)
- The Librarian: Return to King
Solomon's Mines
(2006)
- The Librarian: Curse of the Judas
Chalice (2008)
- Horrible Bosses (2011) (cameo)
- Happy Feet Two (2011) (voice)
http://en.wikipedia.org
