NEWHART

Bye Bob! You were great.

Bob Newhart, who just passed away at 94, was more than a successful comedian. He was a big part of my life. When I was young, I heard the amazing Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, the comedy album that became an instant best-seller in 1960. I don’t remember how old I was when I heard routines from that album such as Abe Lincoln getting schooled by his press agent and Abner Doubleday desperately trying to sell the concept of baseball over the phone but it was sometime in the 60s.

Another button-down Newhart album featured monologues that included the Grace L. Ferguson Airline and bus drivers school (“There. Did you see the way he slammed the door in Mrs. Selkirk’s face?”)

Later when I moved to the Midwest, The Bob Newhart Show was part of an amazing Saturday schedule on CBS (a lineup that also featured Mary Tyler Moore, MASH and All in the Family). The Newhart show ran from 1972 to 1978. Living in Peoria, I was getting acquainted with Chicago and here was Bob walking though the Windy City each week while the theme song played.

There was a Peoria show, of course. No, they didn’t do any filming in central Illinois. The 1973 episode, entitled “The Motel,” revolves around Bob and Jerry heading off to Peoria to watch the Bears on TV since the game was blacked out in Chicago (they used to do that, folks). Wouldn’t you know it, the plot revolved around a prostitute with a heart of gold?

Another episode that sticks in my mind is the party at Bob’s apartment where everyone did the Bunny Hop. Try getting that tune out of your head.

Later, Newhart headed up another series, Newhart, running from 1982-1990 (featuring Larry and the brothers Daryl, among others). Now Bob’s an innkeeper in Vermont and instead of Suzanne Pleshette, his wife is played by Mary Frann.

There’s a lot to remember from this one but the opening—a mini-travelogue of Vermont with scenes of a small town, woodsy highway, and boating on a lake—all to the strains of a rollicking Henry Mancini theme—always reminded me of my mother’s place in New Hampshire.

That show pulled off the greatest surprise in TV history when, at episode’s end, Bob wakes up with Pleshette and we learn that the whole Vermont thing has been a dream.

Throw in the fact that one of the videos my kids watched endlessly when they were young was the Rescuers Down Under, that animated Disney film from 1990 with a wonderful George C. Scott villain. Newhart and Eva Gabor were the voices of the meeces we love to pieces (as Hanna-Barbera’s Mr. Jinks would say). So Newhart was always there.

Tributes abound for a man the world found eminently likable. I’ve seen references to an “everyman persona” and “deadpan” wit. Whatever it was that made him special, I’m glad he was around.