Remembering Bob Newhart: ‘I Made People Laugh,’ Late Actor Said Before His Death at 94

In 1995, Saturday Night Live guest host Bob Newhart opened the show with a bit about a security guard at New York’s Empire State Building whose first day on the job coincided with the arrival of King Kong. “Something’s come up, and it’s not covered in the guard’s manual,” Bob said as the man calling for help. “He’s between 18 and 19 stories high, depending on whether we have a 13th floor or not,” he added. “I yelled at his feet. I said, ‘Shoo, ape. I’m sorry, but you are going to have to leave.’”

From the release of his first album in 1960, Bob was comedy’s ultimate straight man. The performer, who died on July 18 at age 94, brought his stuttering everyman persona to recordings, two beloved TV series, and films, including the modern holiday classic Elf. “I thought it might possibly last a couple of years, maybe three or four,” said Bob of his comedy career. “I certainly never expected it to last. I take great satisfaction in that longevity.”

Born in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois, Bob studied comedians on The Ed Sullivan Show, particularly Jack Benny, and began recording funny bits with a friend to pass the time at work. “In 1959, I gave myself a year to make it in comedy,” he said. “It was back to accounting if comedy didn’t work out.” He didn’t have to wait.

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Warner Brothers Records signed him, but he waffled when the label asked him to record his album in front of a live audience. “I said, ‘Well, see, we have a problem there because I’d never played in a nightclub,’” Bob recalled.

His vinyl debut, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, would become the first comedy recording to hit number one on the Billboard charts. It also won two Grammys, including Album of the Year, a category where Bob beat out recordings by Frank Sinatra, Harry Belafonte and Nat King Cole. A follow-up album, released six months later, also topped the charts.

He toured as a stand-up, appeared on late-night talk shows, and even had his own short-lived variety series before hitting pay dirt with The Bob Newhart Show in 1972. As Chicago psychologist Dr. Robert Hartley, Bob showcased his dry, deadpan humor surrounded by a recurring group of eccentric patients and bolstered by his sarcastic-but-loving wife Emily (Suzanne Pleshette). “For 12 years, I’d been on the road doing stand-up, mostly one-night shows,” recalled Bob. “I wanted a normal life where I could be home with my family.”

Bob Newhart’s Lasting Love With Wife Ginnie

A decade earlier, comedian Buddy Hackett set up Bob on a blind date with Virginia “Ginnie” Quinn, who babysat Buddy’s children. Although she was dating someone else, Buddy told her, “[Bob’s] Catholic and you’re Catholic, and I think maybe you should marry each other,” Ginnie recalled in 2013.

The couple wed in 1963 and had four children together — one of whom was nicknamed Buddy. “I don’t care how successful you’ve been in this business, if you haven’t had a good family life, what have you really achieved?” Bob said in 2013. “You can be the richest man in the world, [but what] have you really accomplished? That’s the way I look at life.”

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Bob Newhart’s Dream Job

He returned to television in 1982 with Newhart. This time, Bob played self-help author-turned-Vermont innkeeper Dick Loudon. “I realized how running a hotel was similar to being a psychologist,” Bob told Closer exclusively. “The guests were like the patients — no matter how crazy they were, you had to go along with them.”

The series would last eight seasons and conclude with what is widely considered one of the greatest TV finales of all time. In it, Dick is hit in the head by a golf ball and wakes up with Emily in The Bob Newhart Show bedroom as Bob Hartley — implying that his TV second series had all been a dream.

Ginnie had come up with the idea. “We were apprehensive,” admitted Bob of the finale, which was kept secret until the show’s taping before a studio audience. “When we got the audience reaction, we said, ‘That’s it, no, that’s it.’”

Bob continued to work even after many of his contemporaries retired. He recognized that his role as Papa Elf in the 2003 comedy Elf, starring Will Ferrell, would have longevity. “[It’s] going to be another Miracle on 34th Street, where people watch it every year,” Bob said he told his wife. He was right — in 2022, he confessed that half his fan mail was about Elf.

The performer also scored his first and only Emmy in 2013 for guest-starring as Professor Proton, the childhood idol of the show’s protagonist, on The Big Bang Theory. “I’m going to need a little more time,” Bob joked as he made his acceptance speech. “This is my seventh shot at this.”

He lost Ginnie at age 82 last year and talked about what he hoped for when he joined her. “I’ve been led to believe in heaven — and there’s a God and he says, ‘What did you do?’” Bob said. “I say, ‘I made people laugh.’ [He will say,] ‘Yeah, get in that real short line over there.’”