Sitcom Star Bob Newhart, Comic from Vegas’ Golden Age, Dies at 94

Posted on: July 18, 2024, 05:12h. 

Last updated on: July 19, 2024, 12:02h.

Corey Levitan Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Las Vegas Myths.

Bob Newhart, one of the most popular sitcom stars in television history, died Thursday at age 94. His publicist said he had recently battled a series of brief illnesses.

Bob Newhart performs his unique, oblique brand of standup comedy in the early ‘60s. (Image: Getty)

Newhart is best remembered as the star of two hit sitcoms, “The Bob Newhart Show” (1972-78) and “Newhart” (1982-1990), a rare feat in such a fickle medium.

In both series, he played a level-headed everyman reacting stoically to the insane situations created by the eccentric characters surrounding him — making expert use of a trademark deadpan stare and stammer.

This was an extension of the act with which Newhart commanded the Congo Room stage at the Sahara during his 1963 Las Vegas debut. Newhart talked into a prop phone on which he pretended to hold one-sided conversations with historical figures and assorted unreasonable people.

In one, he advised Abraham Lincoln: “Say 87 years ago instead of fourscore and seven.”

Bob Newhart’s marquee at the Sands in July 25, 1968, four years before he began a new career in television comedy. (Image: vintagelasvegas.com)

Newhart performed his unique, oblique standup through the early ’70s up and down the Strip, appearing at the Sands, Desert Inn, Riviera, Frontier, and Caesars Palace, as well as the Golden Nugget downtown.

“If normalcy is a gimmick, Bob Newhart had one of stand-up comedy’s greatest hooks,” Gerald Nachman wrote in his 2003 book “Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s.”

Of all the pioneering comedians of the era — including Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, and Woody Allen, Nachman wrote, “Newhart was the most Everyman of them all — nonethnic, nonabrasive, non-angst-ridden, non-you-name-it … His mild-mannered, quizzical nature worked like a sedative for the increasing craziness of the time.”

Newhart’s Desire

Born George Robert Newhart in Oak Park, Ill. to a German-Irish family, Newhart came to performing via a circuitous route. He studied at Loyola University in Chicago, from which he graduated with a degree in commerce in 1952. He then enlisted in the Army for two years before entering Loyola’s law school and flunking out in 1956.

Newhart found himself bored to death working as an accountant for the state unemployment department, so he fleshed some of his riper comedy ideas out while performing in a stock company in suburban Oak Park.

The subtle Newhart and the anything-but-subtle Don Rickles, shown chatting together in 2010, couldn’t be further apart as comedians, but they were close friends in real life. (Image: Associated Press)

Some of those routines ended up on his debut album, “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart.” The first comedy album ever to top the Billboard chart, it earned Newhart Grammys for best comedy album and best new artist of 1960.

The following year, Newhart’s comedian pal Buddy Hackett, known for his riotous Vegas shows, set him up on a blind date with Virginia Quinn — Ginnie to her friends — whom Newhart wed two years later. They remained married until her death last year.

It would be negligent not to mention that Newhart helped create the hands-down funniest moment in sitcom history. At the very end of the last episode of his second hit sitcom, he woke up in bed next to his TV wife from his first hit sitcom (Suzanne Pleshette).

“Honey, honey, wake up,” Newhart’s character said. “You won’t believe the dream I just had.”