Bob Newhart
Bob Newhart
George Robert Newhart, better known as Bob Newhart, is an American stand-up comedian and actor. Noted for his deadpan and slightly stammering delivery, Newhart came to prominence in the 1960s when his album of comedic monologues The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart was a worldwide 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 massive success, and the two...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth5 September 1929
CityOak Park, IL
CountryUnited States of America
When you're going for a joke, you're stuck out there if it doesn't work. There's nowhere to go. You've done the drum role and the cymbal clash and you're out on the end of the plank.
More and more, as I get older, people come up to me and say, 'Thank you for all the laughter.' And my standard answer is, 'It was my pleasure.' But that's the truth.
The first time I got up in front of an audience was terror, abject terror, which continued for another four or five years. There still is, a little bit.
I love portraying the totally indifferent person.
Well, if you’re a native Chicagoan, you know how dumb he [Dr. Robert Hartley] is. He gets on the Ravenswood El, he goes past his stop on Sheridan Road, he gets off in Evanston, where the El is on the ground, and then he walks back 55 blocks to his apartment. Now, would you want to have that man as a psychologist? A man who misses his stop every day?
Because of the spin-meisters and the focus groups and the way politics is run now. It's run by polls and focus groups. So it's even more true today, I think, than it was some 40 years ago.
The problem is that we live in an uptight country. Why don't we just laugh at ourselves? We are funny. Gays are funny. Straights are funny. Women are funny. Men are funny. We are all funny, and we all do funny things. Let's laugh about it.
I've been married forty-five years. I think laughter is the secret.
There are a lot of questions I keep asking myself about why I do comedy. I guess I laugh to keep from crying. And I guess if you ever get me crying, I might not stop. This is the way I look at tragedy or else I'll cry.
I think there's a part, just a part of comedians, that is still childlike.
I don't know how many sacred cows there are today. I think there's a little confusion between humor and gross passing for humor. That's kind of regrettable.
All comedians are, in a way, anarchists. Our job is to make fun of the existing world.
I don't have a stack of scripts.
Jack Benny was, without a doubt, the bravest comedian I have ever seen work. He wasn't afraid of silence. He would take as long as it took to tell the story.