#starring Bob Newhart

[icedteaandoldlace]

Had a loooooooooooooong conversation with tech support at work today because one of our registers decided to try something new, and it took a lot of finagling for him to get it up and running right again. He made a Robin Hood Men In Tights reference at one point, and I didn't remember the scene, but I said that I had seen the movie and enjoyed it. Which led to him recommending Young Frankenstein, and I was like "oh my god, I LOVE Young Frankenstein!" And then he told me I needed to see Blazing Saddles, which I have not seen, but my parents saw it in the hospital after my mom's gallbladder surgery ages ago, and they had to turn it off because she was laughing too hard. That was honestly the highlight of my day, 'cause we got some extra Not Smart customers today.

[oldshowbiz]

1960.

A review of Bob Newhart's third ever stand-up gig.

[theprofessor07]

Convinced that Star Trek, Doctor Who, MASH, The Mary Tyler Moore show, The odd couple and the Bob Newhart show are the shows ever

[mthguy]

A singular talent. A comic for the ages. A television legend.

RIP, Bob Newhart (1929-2024)

[tuttle-did-it]

Murder, She Wrote ‘To Kill a Legend’ guest stars

Gail Strickland - character actor of almost 100 credits, including M*A*S*H, Dark Shadows, ST:DS9, ER, Dr Quinn Medicine Woman, Law & Order, 9 to 5, The Insiders, Dallas, Cagney & Lacey, Trapper John MD, Lou Grant, The Bob Newhart Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show. This is the final of her second appearances.

Molly Hagan returns to MSW in her last of two appearances. Character actor from ALF, The Golden Girls, Columbo (1994), Seinfeld, Perry Mason Mystery, ST:DS9, Early Edition, Providence, Becker, Diagnosis Murder, Charmed, Friends, Six Feet Under, NYPD Blue, JAG, Monk, ER, Murder 101, Bones, Switched at Birth, Castle, The Orville, iZombie.

11.03 Episode aired Oct 9, 1994

[tuttle-did-it]

I'm very happy that there are still fans of Columbo, it's such a fantastic, silly, fun show. And I love that my dash is filled with love for not just

Columbo

but also M*A*S*H

Perry Mason

Twilight Zone

The Avengers (the proper stuff, not that Marvel crap)

Deep Space Nine

Buster Keaton

And classic cinema

But I definitely need to see more people talking about

Lucille Ball

Bugs Bunny

Groucho Marx and Marx Bros

Elizabeth Montgomery

Star Trek Prodigy

Magnum P.I. (the proper real one) and Murder, She Wrote

Matlock

Mary Tyler Moore Show

Bob Newhart Show/ Newhart (Bob Newhart Show had one of the first openly gay characters on American television, by the way)

The Odd Couple

The Prisoner

Lavern & Shirley (one of the first shows to focus on working class women in US tv)

The Nanny (I know it is not a high-quality show, but Fran is a delightful Dandy with amazing clothes, and Niles is spectacular)

The Monkees

Maude and Golden Girls

Armstrong & Miller

Taxi

The Munsters

Bob Ross

The Dick Van Dyke Show

And maybe a little Happy Days, too.

babygirl

[iconuk01]

Farewell to one the funniest people ever to appear on TV

RIP Bob Newhart

[glennk56]

Jack O'Leary (1935-1989) Part 1

Active from 1975-1989. American character actor from Louisville, KY. He had many TV credits in one off roles.

Jack O'Leary appeared in the film The Four Deuces starring Jack Palance in 1975.

He appeared in an episode of The Bob Newhart Show in 1975 as a plumber.

O'Leary appeared in the movie Jackson County Jail in 1976.

Jack O'Leary also appeared in the Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor comedy Silver Streak in 1976.

He had a big role in the teen comedy movie Sweater Girls in 1978.

Other roles in the 1970s included appearances on Starsky & Hutch, Alice, The Blue Knight, WKRP in Cincinnati and a role in Bette Midler's The Rose.

[dewitty1]

Bob Newhart, the deadpan accountant-turned-comedian who became one of the most popular TV stars of his time after striking gold with a classic comedy album, has died at 94.

Jerry Digney, Newhart’s publicist, says the actor died Thursday in Los Angeles after a series of short illnesses.

[kwebtv]

Terry Ann Garr (December 11, 1944 – October 29, 2024), known as Teri Garr.  Actress known for her comedic roles in film and television in the 1970s and 1980s, she often played women struggling to cope with the life-changing experiences of their husbands, children or boyfriends.

Garr's quick wit and charming banter made her a sought-after guest on late-night shows such as The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Late Night with David Letterman. On television, she took a guest role as Phoebe Abbott in the sitcom Friends (1997–98). In 2002, Garr announced that she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, the symptoms of which had affected her ability to perform. She retired from acting in 2011 and died in 2024.

Early in 1968, she landed her first significant TV role, featured as secretary Roberta Lincoln in the Star Trek episode "Assignment: Earth", designed as a backdoor pilot episode for a new series that was not commissioned. "Star Trek was the first job where I had a fairly big (for me) speaking part," Garr related in her memoir, "I played Roberta Lincoln, a dippy secretary in a pink and orange costume with a very short skirt. Had the spin-off succeeded, I would have continued on as an earthling agent, working to preserve humanity. In a very short skirt." This led to her being, in her words, "cast as birdbrained lasses," in episodes of other TV shows

In 1972, she landed a regular role in The Ken Berry "WOW" Show, a summer replacement series. Afterward, she was a regular cast member on The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, dancing and acting in comedy sketches.

In the 1970s, Garr had a recurring role on McCloud, and appeared on M*A*S*H, The Bob Newhart Show, The Odd Couple, Maude, Barnaby Jones, and Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers. She hosted Saturday Night Live three times (in 1980, 1983, and 1985), and was a frequent visitor on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, appearing over 40 times.

Garr had several prominent dramatic roles on television in the 1980s, starring opposite Donald Sutherland in an adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent (1983), in the parody miniseries Fresno (1986), and opposite Ellen Burstyn in an adaptation of the play Pack of Lies (1987), which earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Drama or Comedy Special. (Wikipedia)

IMDb Listing

[thebestestwinner]

RIP to a comedy legend, who should’ve won multiple Emmys long before they finally gave him one in 2013.

[justforbooks]

Bob Newhart

US standup and sitcom star who exuded calm assurance in a career that spanned more than 50 years

Bob Newhart, who has died aged 94, employed a deadpan delivery, marked with a sometimes stammering hesitation, that made him an unlikely candidate to become one of America’s most successful comedians. It was in keeping with his character that his successes often went overlooked.

Newhart burst on to the scene with the 1960 release of The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, a recording of his first-ever standup performance just months earlier. It shot to No 1 on record charts, followed six months later by The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back!, which rose to No 2, behind its predecessor. His debut won the 1961 Grammy as album of the year, the sequel won best spoken comedy album, and Newhart was named best new recording artist.

Newhart’s preferred format was the one-sided telephone conversation, where the audience’s understanding of what the speaker cannot see makes Newhart his own straight-man. Abraham Lincoln’s PR man in Washington tries to stop him from changing the Gettysburg Address (“You changed four score and seven to 87? Abe, that’s a grabber!”). An official of the West India Company listens to Walter Raleigh singing the praises of the 80 tonnes of leaves he’s shipping to London (“Then what do you do, Walt? You set fire to it! You inhale the smoke, huh! You know, Walt … it seems you can stand in front of your fireplace and have the same thing going for you!”).

In 1961, Newhart made his debut at Carnegie Hall in New York, appeared in Don Siegel’s war film Hell Is for Heroes (doing a variation of his routine on a walkie-talkie) and starred in his first TV series, The Bob Newhart Show, a variety and comedy sketch show following Perry Como’s Kraft Music Hall on NBC. Though it lasted only one season, it won an Emmy and a Peabody award.

The key to Newhart’s immediate success was suggested by his “button-down” persona. This was the beginning of President John Kennedy’s “new frontier”, where what the British fashion critic John Taylor demeaned as the “simulated negligence” of the unpadded grey flannel suit signified a certain comfort and style, as well as sober conformity. Newhart’s probing of the accepted everyday was entertaining but sharp; a form of subtle satire.

It was a casual approach that he had refined carefully. Born George Robert in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Newhart grew up called “Bob” to distinguish him from his father, George David, who was part-owner of a plumbing and heating business. His mother, Pauline (nee Burns), was a housewife. He attended Catholic schools, and graduated from Loyola University in Chicago with a degree in business management in 1952. After two years in the army working as a clerk, he entered the law school at Loyola, but soon left and began working as an accountant.

In one job, he and a colleague, Ed Gallagher, began recording dialogues in the style of Bob and Ray, an innovative comedy duo. Gallagher left for New York, and Newhart moved to writing ad copy for a Chicago production company, while circulating his own tapes.

Local radio personality Dan Sorkin played some, and Newhart began appearing on local morning TV. Tapes reached the record producer George Avakian, who in 1958 had left Columbia Records to form an equivalent company for Warner Brothers. Avakian wanted to catch Newhart’s standup act immediately; the February 1960 show at the Tidelands Club in Houston – which became his first record – was at the first venue that Newhart’s quickly acquired agent could find to book.

After the success of The Bob Newhart Show, he was immediately busy on the standup circuit. His intelligence and easy-going demeanour made him a popular guest on other talkshows, and eventually he was a regular replacement for Johnny Carson on Tonight. Although he was accused by the comic Shelley Berman of plagiarising the telephone gimmick from him, it had already been a longstanding format used by performers including George Jessel and Arlene Harris. It was his demeanour, knowing but hesitant (which he sometimes said was influenced by George Gobel), that made him such a versatile performer.

The comic Buddy Hackett introduced Newhart to Ginnie (Virginia) Quinn, the daughter of the character actor Bill Quinn. They married in 1963, and the enduring alliance became a running joke when he appeared with the thrice-wed Carson.

Newhart’s film roles were infrequent but often telling: as Major Major in Mike Nichols’ adaptation of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1970); as Gene Wilder’s pal in the Odd Couple-like TV movie Thursday’s Game (1974); and as Papa Elf alongside Will Ferrell in Elf (2003). He also did voices, notably the rescue mouse Bernard in The Rescuers (1977) and its sequel, The Rescuers Down Under (1990).

Unusually, he starred in two long-running TV series. In The Bob Newhart Show (1972-78) he played a psychologist: the perfect manifestation of his standup routine’s listening and commenting. It grew from an appearance on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and was produced by Mary Tyler Moore and Grant Tinker’s MTM Productions. With Suzanne Pleshette as his schoolteacher wife and Peter Bonerz as the dentist with whom he shares an office, the show was an immediate hit. As ratings dropped and Newhart tired of it, he at one point refused a script that introduced children. “It’s very funny,” he told the producers. “Who’s going to play Bob?”

He returned in 1982 with Newhart, playing Dick Loudon, a writer who moves with his wife (Mary Frann) to a rural Vermont inn. With a cast including Tom Poston, who would win three Emmy nominations as the eccentric handyman George, Newhart became the centre of a world whose chaos stretched the kind of calm understanding for which he was known.

In 1985, Newhart was diagnosed with a blood disease, polycythemia, caused by smoking. Having made comedy from tobacco and appeared, with Poston, in Norman Lear’s comedy Cold Turkey (1971), where a town tries to win $25m from a tobacco company by quitting smoking for a month, he now quit himself.

As Newhart drew to a close after eight seasons, a classic final episode, which played off the famous “who shot JR?” finale of Dallas. It was kept top secret by the cast and crew. Struck by a golf ball, Newhart wakes up in the Bob Newhart Show bedroom, next to Pleshette, complaining of a crazy dream he’s had about Vermont.

Two more series were less successful. Bob (1992-93) saw him as a cartoonist trying to adjust to a corporate world when a character he created is revived. George and Leo (1997-98) was another Odd Couple-type scenario, in which his bookstore owner shares a flat with his son’s father-in-law (Judd Hirsch), who’s running from the mob. Newhart joked about the title: “We had used every variation of my name; all that was left was ‘The’.”

Newhart’s three-part guest appearance on ER in 2003, where Sherry Stringfield’s Dr Lewis helps Newhart’s suicidal Ben Hollander adjust to his oncoming blindness, earned him his fifth Emmy nomination. He was nominated again in 2009 for a supporting role in The Librarian, but finally won in 2013, playing Arthur Jeffries in the comedy The Big Bang Theory. Jeffries was Professor Proton, host of the science TV series (based on Watch Mr Wizard) watched by the genius Sheldon. He was nominated twice more, and reprised the role three times in Young Sheldon.

Newhart’s lifelong comedic chalk-and-cheese friendship with Don Rickles was the subject of Bob and Don: A Love Story, a short documentary made in 2022 by Judd Apatow.

Ginny died in 2023, and Newhart is survived by his sons, Robert and Timothy, and daughters, Courtney and Jennifer.

🔔 Bob (George Robert) Newhart, comedian and actor, born 5 September 1929; died 18 July 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[nancydrewwouldnever]

https://people.com/bob-newhart-dead-comedian-actor-was-94-7502376

Bob Newhart passed away

RIP. Not to sound horrible, but I thought he had passed a few years ago. He led a good long life, and made many people happy with laughter. Not many can say that.

[tuttle-did-it]

Murder She Wrote ‘Night of the Coyote’

Graham Greene (The Green Mile, Wind River, Dances with Wolves, Maverick)

Mariette Hartley (California Man, Twilight Zone, Star Trek, WIOU, Columbo, Gunsmoke, Bob Newhart Show, Bonanza, Peyton Place)

Floyd ‘Red Crow’ Westerman (Walker, Texas Ranger, Dances with Wolves, Hidalgo, The X-Files)

S9E6 Episode aired Nov 22, 1992

[gone2soon-rip]

BOB NEWHART (1929-Died July 18th 2024,at 94) American comedian and actor. He was known for his deadpan and stammering delivery style. Beginning as a stand-up comedian, he transitioned his career to acting in television. He received numerous accolades, including three Grammy Awards, an Emmy Award, and a Golden Globe Award. He received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2002.

Newhart came to prominence in 1960 when his record album of comedic monologues, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, became a bestseller and reached number one on the Billboard pop album chart; it remains the 20th-best-selling comedy album in history.The follow-up album, The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back!, was also a success, and the two albums held the Billboard number one and number two spots simultaneously.

Newhart hosted a short lived NBC variety show entitled The Bob Newhart Show (1961) before starring as Chicago psychologist Robert Hartley on The Bob Newhart Show from 1972 to 1978 and then as Vermont innkeeper Dick Loudon on series Newhart from 1982 to 1990. He also had two short-lived sitcoms in the 1990s, Bob and George and Leo. Newhart acted in films such as Catch-22 (1970), Cold Turkey (1971), In & Out (1997), and Elf (2003). He also voiced Bernard in the Disney animated films The Rescuers (1977) and The Rescuers Down Under (1990). Newhart played Professor Proton on the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory from 2013 to 2018, for which he received his first Primetime Emmy Award. Bob Newhart - Wikipedia