Bob Newhart, who died yesterday at 94, was known as the star of The Bob Newhart Show (the one where he played a psychiatrist) and its equally popular follow-up Newhart (where he ran a Vermont bed-and-breakfast) as well as guest appearances stretching from The Ed Sullivan Show and The Tonight Show (he filled in for Johnny Carson 87 times) through The Rescuers, The Simpsons, In & Out, Elf, Murphy Brown, and NCIS. He almost always played a variation on the established Bob Newhart persona: a mild-mannered, mild-looking, dryly funny guy surrounded by, and reacting to, people far weirder than himself. None of this would’ve happened without Newhart’s foundational skill: an impeccable ability to be the funny one and the straight man at the same time, often while performing a phone conversation. The Newhart character onstage and onscreen was by turns befuddled, lightly annoyed, and (especially) a sane man required to deal with a ridiculous situation, trying to keep it together and mostly, but not completely, succeeding. Shelley Berman specialized in the half-heard phone call and got to the idea before Newhart, but his manner was spikier and more irritable, both onstage and off, and his career soon plateaued; Newhart’s hesitant, deadpan approach was easier to like and more durable and (it eventually turned out) adaptable. The laughter often came as the audience mentally filled in the other half of the dialogue, which was sometimes obvious and unsaid but usually redelivered by Newhart’s character, as if for emphasis.
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