Remembering Comic Bob Newhart

Fresh Air

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4.4 • 34.4K Ratings

🗓️ 26 July 2024

⏱️ 50 minutes

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Summary

We remember comic and actor Bob Newhart, who died last week at the age of 94. In his stand-up comedy and hit TV series, some of the laughs came from his an awkward, stammering way of speaking. "It isn't an affectation. It's the way I speak," he told Terry Gross in 1998.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for this podcast and the following message come from Dignity Memorial.
0:04.6	When your celebration of life is prepaid today, your family is protected tomorrow.
0:09.6	Planning ahead is truly one of the best gifts you can give your family. For additional
0:14.2	information visit dignity memorial.com. This is fresh air. I'm TV critic David
0:20.1	Bienkule. Today we're remembering Bob Newhart, the comedian and TV sitcom
0:25.3	star who died last Thursday at age 94. We'll listen back to a conversation
0:30.2	between him and Terry Gross from 1998 and will begin with this
0:34.3	appreciation. Bob Newhart was one of the most successful and durable stars in
0:39.3	the history of television. He first appeared on TV in the 1950s as a guest on Hugh Hefner's syndicated series
0:46.5	Playboys Penthouse. In the 60s he had a Peabody winning variety series. In the 70s he starred for several successful
0:55.4	seasons on the Bob Newhart show playing psychologist Bob Hartley. In the
1:00.4	80s he started another multi-year hit playing a Vermont innkeeper.
1:05.8	He had other sitcoms in the 90s, then spent the 21st century playing recurring roles on everything
1:11.6	from ER and desperate housewives to the sitcoms The Big Bang Theory
1:16.4	and as late as 2020, young Sheldon.
1:20.7	He also was a standout supporting player in such films as Elf and Catch-22.
1:25.0	Bob Newhart's career stretched over most of a century,
1:29.0	yet he didn't enter show business until he was 30
1:32.0	when he stepped on stage as a stand-up comic for the first time.
1:36.0	Bob Newhart was a former accountant in Chicago,
1:39.0	working as an advertising copywriter.
1:42.0	At parties, he would do little comic routines and taped some of them for the fun of it.
	...

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