Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy.
Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart” — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub.
That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.
A Roman Catholic from the west side of Chicago, Newhart came off as an entirely respectable example of Midwestern nice.
Newhart brought his own kind of neurosis, a comedy rooted in nuanced deadpan and silence.
Persons:
Bob Newhart, Bob Newhart ”, Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Newhart, Shelley Berman, ”
Organizations:
Catholic
Locations:
Chicago