Bob Newhart Is Dead at 94

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 age 94. Jerry Digney, Newhart's publicist, says the actor died Thursday in Los Angeles after a series of short illnesses, per the AP. Newhart, best remembered now as the star of two hit television shows of the 1970s and 1980s, launched his career as a standup comic in the late 1950s. He gained nationwide fame when his routine was captured on vinyl in 1960 as The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, which went on to win a Grammy Award as album of the year.

While other comedians of the time, including Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Alan King, and Mike Nichols, and Elaine May, frequently got laughs with their aggressive attacks on modern mores, Newhart was an anomaly. His outlook was modern, but he rarely raised his voice above a hesitant, almost stammering delivery. His only prop was a telephone, used to pretend to hold a conversation with someone on the other end of the line. Newhart was initially wary of signing on to a weekly TV series, fearing it would overexpose his material. Nevertheless, he accepted an attractive offer from NBC, and The Bob Newhart Show premiered on Oct. 11, 1961. Despite Emmy and Peabody awards, the half-hour variety show was canceled after one season.

• Take II: He waited 10 years before undertaking another Bob Newhart Show in 1972. This one was a situation comedy with Newhart playing a Chicago psychologist living in a penthouse with his schoolteacher wife, Suzanne Pleshette. Their neighbors and his patients, notably Bill Daily as an airline navigator, were a wacky, neurotic bunch who provided an ideal counterpoint to Newhart's deadpan commentary. The series, one of the most acclaimed of the 1970s, ran through 1978.
• And another: Four years later, the comedian launched another show, simply called Newhart. This time he was a successful New York writer who decides to reopen a long-closed Vermont inn. Again Newhart was the calm, reasonable man surrounded by a group of eccentric locals. Again the show was a huge hit, lasting eight seasons on CBS. It bowed out in memorable style in 1990 with Newhart—in his old Chicago psychologist character—waking up in bed with Pleshette, cringing as he tells her about the strange dream he had: "I was an innkeeper in this crazy little town in Vermont. ... The handyman kept missing the point of things, and then there were these three woodsmen, but only one of them talked!"
• Read the full obituary.

(More Bob Newhart stories.)