Actor And Comedian Bob Newhart Dead At 94

The comedy world is in mourning today following the death of television legend Bob Newhart at 94. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news, reporting he died after a series of short illnesses. 

Born George Robert Newhart in Oak Park, Illinois, Ernest Hemingway's hometown just outside of Chicago, he was the son of a housewife and a heating and plumbing supply salesman. According to interviews with the Television Academy, he worked as a delivery boy for a meat market and as a pin-spotter at a bowling alley in his youth, then studied business and accounting before being drafted into the U.S. Army during the Korean War.

After his time in the military, Newhart worked as an accountant and copywriter, and would later claim that despite his love of comedy — he named Robert Benchley and Jack Benny as favorites growing up — he was "much too practical" for the performing arts to register as a possible career. In the meantime, he kept himself entertained at work by working out two-sided comedy routines with a coworker over the phone. The pair would send their recordings to a local Chicago radio station. Eventually, Newhart's partner would move for work, leaving him to turn the act into a one-man routine, which would eventually be passed along to a talent agent thanks to local disc jockey Dan Sorkin.

Newhart experienced the sort of meteoric rise that most comedians dream of, going from no-name to headliner, while skipping the awkward "pay-your-dues" dive bar phase thanks to his wildly successful comedy records. In 1961, after his album "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart" made history by becoming the first comedy album to summit the Billboard Top 100, he won a Grammy for Album of the Year and another for Best New Artist.

Albums and performances paved the way for an iconic run of television success. While his first series, a variety program entitled "The Bob Newhart Show" for which he'd go on to win a Golden Globe for Best TV Star, only ran for a single season beginning in 1961, Newhart solidified his place as a national celebrity with his sitcom, also called "The Bob Newhart Show," beginning in 1972. That program would run for six seasons and 142 episodes. Newhart would continue to beat the show business odds by doubling down on his win with "Newhart," a second sitcom which ran for eight seasons beginning in 1982 and ended with a finale that remains a high-water mark in mind-boggling meta comedy.

After yet another series, "Bob," failed to capture an audience in the early '90s, Newhart transitioned to guest appearances, to critical acclaim. His work on "ER" and "The Librarian" would earn him a pair of Emmy nominations, and the character of Arthur Jeffries on "The Big Bang Theory" landed him a win for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series in 2013, as well as two further nominations in 2014 and 2016.

Bob Newhart's contributions to popular culture didn't stop at the small screen. One of his most widely known feature film performances came in 1977, when a drawn-out production process finally brought "The Rescuers" to cinemas around the world. He would return to voice the character of Bernard the mouse more than a decade later for "The Rescuers Down Under" in 1990. Newhart went on to make numerous memorable appearances, his iconic stammer breathing life into Principal Halliwell in 1997's "In & Out" and the adoptive father of Buddy the Elf in 2003's "Elf."

In January of 1963, Newhart married Virginia Quinn, and the two remained together until her death in 2023. The two had four children and ten grandchildren by the time of his passing.

Over the course of a career that spanned seven decades, Bob Newhart established himself as one of the defining voices of American comedy in the 20th century. He will be sorely missed as an inspiration to comics, performers, and anyone who's ever imagined breaking out of their dead-end job just by being funny enough to escape.