Comedian Bob Newhart has enthralled audiences with his trademark stammer, one-sided telephone conversations and hysterical, historical “what if” routines for more than 40 years. What makes him tick? Below, Newhart provides some additional answers:

Q: You’re almost as hot now as you were in your sitcom heyday. How do you explain your longevity?

A: Really, it’s for somebody else to explain. I just keep showing up … I’ve finally come to the realization that I may just have a future in this!

Q: You’ve influenced so many of today’s comics. Who are your comedy heroes?

A: Well, of course Jack Benny, George Burns, any really good comedian who I’ve ever watched, because I would kind of examine how they worked, what made that so funny. And, of course, Richard Pryor. When you take away the language, the ideas underneath the language are so rich. I think he’s the seminal comedian of the last 50 years. I think he’s influenced us all.

Q: Of today’s comics, name a few of your favorites.

A: Jerry Seinfeld, Steven Wright, Jake Johannsen — but not too many people know about him. Garry Shandling, and many others. The other night on Letterman, I watched a comedian that was very funny and very original, but I don’t remember his name — I’m very open to the up-and-comers.

Q: Would you share one or two of your most memorable career moments?

A: I would say one has to be getting three Grammy Awards in (I believe) 1961, including Album of the Year.

Q: You do up to 40 stand-up dates a year. Where do you get the inspiration for your material?

A: The same place: the newspapers, television, just watching people. Comedians are never really on vacation because you’re always at attention … that antenna is always out there. You could be on vacation in Hawaii and all of a sudden you’ll see someone do something funny and you’ll say “Oh, I gotta remember that” or the waiter will have a funny accent. I suppose your source of material is the world. You never know when you’ll come upon something and it’s going to be fodder for new material.

Q: What was your reaction when you heard the recording of your earliest comedy routines unearthed by AMERICAN MASTERS?

A: One of my friends had a copy and AMERICAN MASTERS was nice enough to make me a copy. I didn’t even know it had existed. I listened to some of the bits and to hear Ed Gallagher’s voice, back to that place in time, which was probably 1957, and then to be considered for AMERICAN MASTERS from those humble beginnings, it just really is “you’ve come a long way baby.” Let’s just say that.

Q: Of all your accomplishments, of what are you most proud?

A: I’m most proud of the longevity of my marriage, my kids, and my grandchildren. If you don’t have that, you really don’t have very much.

Q: What’s the secret to a successful marriage and do you think your career choice made a difference?

A: Well, my career choice made a difference because I never would have met my wife, Jenny. I met her through comedian Buddy Hackett. He set us up on a blind date and then we got married. I think one reason for a successful marriage is laughter. I think laughter gets you through the rough moments in a marriage. If you look at Jack Benny, George Burns, or Don Rickles, they’ve all had long, successful marriages. So, I think there’s something about laughter and the durability of a marriage.

Q: Is there anything you haven’t done that you’d like to do in the coming years?

A: I think I’ve done more than I thought I was ever going to do. No, I’ve had a very long and very satisfying career.

Born in Berlin in 1931, Nichols attended a segregated school for Jewish children. His father, a doctor, fled the Nazis by moving the family to New York City when Nichols was still a child. May was born in 1932 in Philadelphia, the daughter of the director, writer, and principal actor of a traveling Jewish theatrical company. She caught the thespian bug early, appearing on stage in the roles of little boys. The two met while attending the University of Chicago, and they first worked together honing their improvisational skills at the Compass Theatre, a Chicago nightclub. Later, Nichols and May decided to take their show on the road. Their meteoric rise as a comedy team began in 1957, when they first performed at the Village Vanguard and the Blue Angel in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.

Masters of the dead-pan dialogue, Nichols and May created flawlessly improvised scenes that were outrageously funny, yet simply understated. Their dry wit and wry satire enabled them to lampoon faceless bureaucracy and such previously sacrosanct institutions as hospitals, politics, funeral homes, and even motherhood. Like other great comedy duos, Nichols and May perfectly complemented each other. They seemed so attuned and at ease with each other that the miscommunication they often based their skits on were all the funnier.

Within a short while of arriving in New York, they were the talk of the town — appearing on THE STEVE ALLEN SHOW, introducing a nationwide audience to a humor unlike any on television. Nichols and May spent much of the next three years traveling the country performing together on stage, radio, and television. Their high-paced satirical sketches played as well over the radio waves as they did on the screen. In 1960, “An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May” had opened on Broadway to rave reviews, but by 1961, Nichols and May would announce the end of their partnership.

Interested in pursuing individual careers, the two left behind one of the most popular and imitated comedy acts of its time. Continuing to work in the entertainment industry, both Elaine May and Mike Nichols have had exceptional careers. Nichols, who concentrated primarily on directing, worked often with Neil Simon and has won seven Tony Awards, for plays including “The Odd Couple” (1965) and “The Real Thing” (1984). Among his better known movies are such classics as WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966), THE GRADUATE (1967), and CATCH-22 (1970). May, who has written a number of movies, including A NEW LEAF (1971) and HEAVEN CAN WAIT (1978), continues to direct and act.

Most recently, the two have come together to work on a new version of LA CAGE AUX FOLLES. THE BIRD CAGE, written by May and directed by Nichols was a triumphant return and one of the funniest movies of 1996. In its perfect timing and over-the-top humor, one could still see the two comic geniuses that first thrilled audiences nearly forty years earlier.

“Everything I know I learned in vaudeville.”
-James Cagney

At the turn of the century in America, the Wright Brothers made their first successful flight, Jack London wrote Call of the Wild, Henry Ford started his motor company, and thousands of people escaped small apartments in big cities to see the amazing acts of vaudeville. Vaudeville was made of comedians, singers, plate-spinners, ventriloquists, dancers, musicians, acrobats, animal trainers, and anyone who could keep an audience’s interest for more than three minutes. Beginning in the 1880s and through the 1920s, vaudeville was home to more than 25,000 performers, and was the most popular form of entertainment in America. From the local small-town stage to New York’s Palace Theater, vaudeville was an essential part of every community.

Throughout the 1850s and 60s, variety entertainment became popular among the frontier settlements and urban centers. These shows, intended for all-male audiences, were often obscenely comical. In 1881 Tony Pastor, a ballad and minstrel singer, created a variety show for families. Other managers recognized that a wider audience meant more money and followed his lead. With an influx of recent immigrants and quickly growing urban populations, vaudeville soon became a central point for American cultural life.

There was usually a dozen or more acts in every vaudeville performance. Starting and ending with the weakest, the shows went on for hours. The performances ranged from the truly talented to the simply quirky. There were musicians, such as the piano player Eubie Blake, and the child star, Baby Rose Marie. There were great acts of physical talent; everything from contortionists, to tumblers to dancers such as the Nicholas Brothers. Actors performed plays, magicians put on shows, jugglers juggled, but the real focus of vaudeville was comedy. Great comic acts such as Witt and Berg and Burns and Allen brought in the biggest crowds.

Vaudeville’s attraction was more than simply a series of entertaining sketches. It was symbolic of the cultural diversity of early twentieth century America. Vaudeville was a fusion of centuries-old cultural traditions, including the English Music Hall, minstrel shows of antebellum America, and Yiddish theater. Though certainly not free from the prejudice of the times, vaudeville was the earliest entertainment form to cross racial and class boundaries. For many, vaudeville was the first exposure to the cultures of people living right down the street.

Some of the most famous vaudeville performers began at an early age. Like the Yiddish theater and the circus, vaudeville was a family affair — singing sisters, dancing brothers, and flying families. For many of these families, the traveling lifestyle was simply a continuation of the adventures that brought them to America. Their acts were a form of assimilation, in which they could become active parts of popular culture through representations of their heritage. Many made acts from the confusions of being a foreigner, while others displayed skills they had learned back in the old country.

Once an act worked, performers repeated it in front of audience after audience. Many performers became known simply by their signature act. With the advent of the radio, however, America found a free and easy way to tap into that variety of entertainment they had looked for in vaudeville. With such specialized skills, the performers continued to perform to smaller and smaller crowds. In time, theaters began to show films, and the few vaudevillians left took what work they could get performing between reels.

Ironically, it is through the movie and TV industry that vaudeville eventually left its greatest mark. Nearly every actor in the beginning of the century either performed or visited vaudeville. The silent movies, with former vaudevillians such as Burt Williams, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, incorporated the animated physical comedy of the vaudeville stage. Many of the big names in vaudeville went on to be movie and TV stars, such as Will Rogers, Bob Hope, Burns &Allen, and Fanny Brice. Even today, shows such as Late Night with David Letterman and Saturday Night Live continue the traditions of popular variety entertainment.

Robert Sherwood, reviewing cowboy hero Tom Mix: “They say he rides as if he’s part of the horse, but they don’t say which part.”

Dorothy Parker: “That woman speaks eighteen languages and can’t say ‘no’ in any of them.”

George S. Kaufman: Once when asked by a press agent, “How do I get my leading lady’s name into your newspaper?” Kaufman replied, “Shoot her.”

The period that followed the end of World War I was one of gaiety and optimism, and it sparked a new era of creativity in American culture. Surely one of the most profound — and outrageous — influences on the times was the group of a dozen or so tastemakers who lunched together at New York City’s Algonquin Hotel. For more than a decade they met daily and came to be known as the Algonquin Round Table. With members such as writers Dorothy Parker, Harold Ross (founder of THE NEW YORKER) and Robert Benchley; columnists Franklin Pierce Adams and Heywood Broun, and Broun’s wife Ruth Hale; critic Alexander Woollcott; comedian Harpo Marx; and playwrights George S. Kaufman, Marc Connelly, Edna Ferber, and Robert Sherwood, the Round Table embodied an era and changed forever the face of American humor.

It all began with an afternoon roast of the NEW YORK TIMES drama critic, Alexander Wollcott. A number of writers met up at the Algonquin Hotel on 44th street and had such a good time that the event was repeated the next day, and the day after that, until the lunch table at the Algonquin was established as a ritual. The core group of friends was sometimes joined by others who attended for short periods or drifted about the periphery of the group, including such notables as actress Tallulah Bankhead and playwright Noel Coward. The Round Table was made up of people with a shared admiration for each other’s work. Outspoken and outrageous, they would often quote each other freely in their daily columns.

Round Tabler Edna Ferber, who called them “The Poison Squad,” wrote, “They were actually merciless if they disapproved. I have never encountered a more hard-bitten crew. But if they liked what you had done, they did say so publicly and whole-heartedly.” Their standards were high, their vocabulary fluent, fresh, astringent, and very, very tough. Both casual and incisive, they had a certain terrible integrity about their work and boundless ambition. Some of the most notable members of the Round Table came together to work on significant collaborative projects. George Kaufman teamed up with Edna Ferber and Marc Connelly on some of his best stage comedies, including DULCY and THE ROYAL FAMILY. Harold Ross of THE NEW YORKER hired both Dorothy Parker as a book reviewer and Robert Benchley as a drama critic.

By 1925, the Round Table was famous. What had started as a private clique became a public amusement. The country-at-large was now attentive to their every word—people often coming to stare at them during lunch. Some began to tire of the constant publicity. The time they spent entertaining and being entertained took its toll on several of the Algonquin members. Robert Sherwood and Robert Benchley moved out of the hotel in order to concentrate on and accomplish their work. In 1927, the controversial execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, whose case had divided the country and the Round Table for six years, seemed to cast a pall over the group’s unchecked antics. Dorothy Parker believed strongly in the pair’s innocence, and upon their deaths she remarked “I had heard someone say and so I said too, that ridicule is the most effective weapon. Well, now I know that there are things that never have been funny and never will be. And I know that ridicule may be a shield but it is not a weapon.”

As America entered the Depression and the more somber decade of the 1930s, the bonds that had held the group together loosened; many members moved to Hollywood or on to other interests. “It didn’t end, it just sort of faded,” recalled Marc Connelly. A decade after it began, the Algonquin Round Table was over. Not forgotten, the Round Table remains one of the great examples of an American artists’ community and the effects it can have on its time.