Bob Newhart dead: Comedy great from Chicago was 94

Sitcom and stand-up legend Bob Newhart, who was a relatively unknown commodity living with his parents on the West Side when his first comedy album catapulted him to fame in 1960, has died at 94.

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

"The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart" was hailed as a precursor to the modern comedy special. It sold more than a million albums, hit No. 1 on the charts and landed him Grammy awards for best new artist and album of the year (beating out Frank Sinatra for the latter).

It featured Mr. Newhart holding conversations with imaginary characters, like in his angst-filled portrayal of a driving instructor.

His signature stammer provided tension and timing.

In another bit he played a slick public-relations man on the phone with President Abraham Lincoln, trying to convince him to keep the beard and stovepipe hat and refrain from making changes to the Gettysburg Address.

Mr. Newhart was 29 when the album came out.

His followup album "The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back" won a Grammy for best comedy performance of the year. For several weeks the two albums held the number one and two spots on the charts.

In 1961 he moved out of his parent's home and settled in California. He hosted two short lived television variety shows.

But stand-up proved to be his true love and kept him on the road until he turned to television because it provided a regular schedule and a way to be home with his family every day after work after spending years on the road.

His life as a sitcom star began in 1972 with the debut of "The Bob Newhart Show" in which he played the perpetually put-upon Chicago psychologist Bob Hartley. The show was a smash hit for six seasons.

When producers asked him to take it easy on the stammering for the show's pilot, he replied "That stammer bought me a house in Beverly Hills," he wrote in his 2006 memoir "I Shouldn't Even be Doing This."

The show also spawned the "Hi, Bob" drinking game, which featured a tipple at every utterance of the phrase.

From 1982 to 1989 he starred in "Newhart," an immensely popular CBS sitcom about a Vermont innkeeper and the wacky townies who surrounded him.

The finale of “Newhart” became an instant classic when Mr. Newhart woke up to find himself in his bed from his previous show, next to his wife from his previous show, actress Suzanne Pleshette. The psychologist explained to her the horrible dream he'd just had in which he was running an inn in Vermont.

Mr. Newhart's real life wife, Ginnie Newhart, came up with the idea for the show's ending.

The two met in 1962 when Mr. Newhart's pal and fellow comedian, Buddy Hackett, set him up on a blind date with a red headed actress named Virginia "Ginnie" Quinn, who babysat for the Hackett family.

The couple married in 1963 and soon had their first of four children they raised in .

He raised them as Cubs fans.

George Robert Newhart was born Sept. 5, 1929, in Oak Park. He had three sisters, including one who became a nun. His father, George David Newhart, co-owned a plumbing and heating-supply business, his mother Julia Pauline, was a homemaker.

As a kid, he attended St. Catherine of Siena grade school, couldn't drink enough Pepsi and worked as a pin setter at a bowling alley.

He grew up in an apartment at 26 N. Mason St. in Austin, a couple blocks from Oak Park. As a kid, Mr. Newhart was always trying unsuccessfully to get the attention and affection of his father, who spent a lot of time at a local pub, he said in his memoir.

He attended St. Ignatius College Prep and graduated from Loyola University Chicago with a business management degree in 1952. He briefly attended the university's law school before he was drafted into the Army during the Korean War.

Technicality and human error spared him from the front line and he served two years auditing personnel records at bases along the west coast.

Upon completion of his military service, he returned to Chicago and worked as an accountant for U.S. Gypsum and the Glidden Company. But he didn't enjoy the work. It was boring. And his philosophy of "close enough" wasn't industry standard.

To squelch boredom he'd call his friend Ed Gallagher, who worked in advertising, and pretend he was different characters, like the manager of a yeast factory who was calling his boss as the place went up in flames: "The yeast is rising, Sir...hold on...I have to run up another flight of stairs."

The two decided to record the conversations and pitch them to radio stations to air for a small fee.

The recordings were made after hours at the offices of Leo Burnett, the ad firm where Gallagher worked. Their plan worked, a few radio stations signed on, but ultimately fell apart after a few weeks when Mr. Newhart realized they were losing money.

Undeterred, Mr. Newhart pledged to leave accounting and see if he could somehow make a living at being funny while living off the proceeds of part time gigs.

One was at a state unemployment office.

Another was at a department store where he ended up helping a customer with a $3,000 purchase that included ashtrays shaped like roulette wheels. He asked for the man's name. The man replied: Anthony Accardo.

Mr. Newhart realized the head of the Chicago mob was standing in front of him. As he rang up the sale he emphasized that if the items were to somehow be damaged during shipping, responsibility for such mishaps would fall on the shipping department, definitely not on anyone working the register.

A few opportunities came his way. Dan Sorkin, a popular Chicago disc jockey, had Mr. Newhart on his show a few times. He also performed at a local news Emmy Awards ceremony and landed a role doing bits as a man-on-the-street being interviewed on WMAQ-TV's “Adults Only.”

His break came when Sorkin gave some of Mr. Newhart's early radio tapes to a rep from Warner Bros. Records who liked what he heard and wanted to record the bits next time Mr. Newhart performed in front of a live audience.

The problem was — he'd never performed his stuff at a club before. Mr. Newhart scrambled to find a manager and a venue. Five months later ended up stepping on stage at the Tidelands Motor Inn in Houston. On Feb. 10, 1960, his performance was recorded for his new comedy album. It came out in April and shot up the charts.

While television and film — like roles in "Catch 22" and "Elf" make up a large chunk of his resume, his first love was stand-up.

"Performing stand-up comedy is a narcotic that I need, even if I only do it a few times a year," he wrote in his memoir. Comics, he said, have an obligation to make people laugh.

While studying at Loyola, Mr. Newhart learned how to box by sparring with a more experienced classmate who landed a punch and deviated his septum, an experience that aided his career on stage.

“When I perform stand-up and the audience either doesn’t laugh or heckles me, I think to myself, ‘I can get through this because at least nobody is hitting me in the face,'" he wrote in his memoir.

One of his greatest honors was receiving a Mark Twain Prize for humor from the Kennedy Center. Another was an encounter he had with fellow comedian Richard Pryor, who Mr. Newhart revered as a unique talent. Pryor told him that when he was a kid growing up in Peoria, he stole one of Mr. Newhart's albums from a record store.

The occupation kept him on the road for long stretches, including in Las Vegas, where his wife and kids would regularly visit to keep him company.

The family attended Mass in Las Vegas together on Saturdays.

It was in Las Vegas where Mr. Newhart and his wife cemented a lifelong friendship with insult comedian Don Rickles and his wife Barbara.

The couples got together for a bite to eat one night before seeing a Rickles performance.

After dinner, Ginnie Newhart told her husband that Rickles, who'd opened up at dinner about how much he misses his family while on the road, was just about the sweetest man she'd ever met.

Before taking their seats, Mr. Newhart cautioned her that Rickles' act was a little different than the mensch she'd just had dinner with.

Rickles came on stage and proclaimed: "Well, I see that the stammering idiot from Chicago is in the audience tonight with his hooker wife from Bayonne, New Jersey."

It was a story that Mr. Newhart liked to recount with a laugh.

Filmmaker Judd Apatow chronicled their bond in the short documentary "Bob and Don: A Love Story"

The two families went on trips around the world together.

At a roast of Rickles in 1974 Mr. Newhart said "He's my best friend, which just gives you some idea of the difficulty I have in making friends."

Mr. Newhart, who disliked flying, and loved golfing at his Bel-Air Country Club, had several unsuccessful starring television roles, including in a show called "Bob" in which he played a cranky comic book artist.

For years, Mr. Newhart returned to Chicago to see family, attend class reunions and support his alma maters. In 1975 he received the Sword of Loyola. A theater at the lakefront university theater bears his name. He did a benefit show for St. Ignatius in 1992 at the Chicago Theatre.

He continued to work into his later years. He made television appearances in shows like "Desperate Housewives," "ER" and "The Simpsons." He won an Emmy for a recurring role in "Big Bang Theory."

A statue portraying Mr. Newhart in his role as psychologist Bob Hartley about to offer a few words of advice can be found outside Navy Pier.