Bob Newhart, RIP

[GA Russell]

Bob Newhart has died at 94.  RIP.

https://x.com/RaymondArroyo/status/1814028491781968162

https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/news/bob-newhart-deadpan-comedy-legend-dies-at-94/ar-BB1qezNK

Edited July 18, 2024 by GA Russell

[JSngry]

A true giant of his art. Held in the highest esteem here.

Bye, Bob.

[GA Russell]

I grew up with this one.

[JSngry]

The standup records were already part of the canon, but the late-night and the sitcoms were what created the giant, imo.

The content was already great, but the timing...truly genius. And in place to the end.

I guess it would be too conceptual for somebody do do a skit of a phone call between Bob Newhart & Shelley Berman...on a party line with Betty Walker.

[clifford_thornton]

He was great. RIP.

In library science grad school, one of my projects was to index and encode a video oral history of Newhart for a comedy oral history project. That was quite fascinating.

Even his timing in an oral history was funny!

[JSngry]

16 minutes ago, clifford_thornton said:

He was great. RIP.

In library science grad school, one of my projects was to index and encode a video oral history of Newhart for a comedy oral history project. That was quite fascinating.

Even his timing in an oral history was funny!

I think that show is going to be forever underrated, just because of its rightly illustrious predecessor...

Or did you mean an oral history biography?

[clifford_thornton]

oral history of Mr. Newhart himself, yeah, not the show -- sorry.

[JSngry]

31 minutes ago, clifford_thornton said:

oral history of Mr. Newhart himself, yeah, not the show -- sorry.

NP

[sgcim]

RIP. He was great in everything he was in, even playing Major Major in Catch-22. He was in "Cold Turkey, too.

[Rooster_Ties]

One of my favorite clips of Bob…

an outtake where he forgets the character name of his wife in the “Newhart” series — and Mary Frann’s response and timing are just perfect.

 

Edited July 23, 2024 by Rooster_Ties

[GA Russell]

I came across this over the weekend, so I'll be playing it off and on this week.

[JSngry]

7 hours ago, Rooster_Ties said:

One of my favorite clips of Bob…

an outtake where he forgets the character name of his wife in the “Newhart” series — and Mary Frann’s response and timing are just perfect.

 

Mary Frann understandably was in the shadow of Suzanne Pleshette, but all things being equal...I dunno...

[Rooster_Ties]

7 hours ago, JSngry said:

Mary Frann understandably was in the shadow of Suzanne Pleshette, but all things being equal...I dunno...

Unrelated to your comment, but it’s interesting that the older I get, the more I see older shows — sitcoms, WKRP, etc, Carol Brunette, and the 80’s & 90’s Star Trek series too…

…the more I see them NOW (literally now, as I’m watching the original episodes) I’m often imagining what the actors were experiencing creating and inhabiting these characters, and interacting with each other (as actors) both in and out of character. And what fun it must have been, or what it was like to ‘be’ these characters before they were fully developed.

Maybe it’s a byproduct of the VAST about of interviews now available online (both contemporaneous, and also years later in roundtable interviews, cast reunions, etc) — many of which are great fun and interesting to enjoy.  There’s also a vast episode-by-episode fan wiki for damn near every Star Trek series, with tons of episode-specific quotes from actors taken from fanzines of the day, and Trek convention appearances and other interviews over the years. (Thus, NOW, it’s easy to imagine — almost hard NOT to imagine — the making of all those Star Treks while watching them.)

Anyway, it must have been incredible fun bringing those two Bob Newhart centered sitcoms to life — and Bob must have been such an interesting, VERY different and unique kind of ‘star’ to have at the center of everything.

[gmonahan]