Bob Newhart Interview #1

Interviewer: Start maybe talking a little bit about some of your early comedic influences. And I know one of the people that you’ve cited as a big influence for you was Jack Benny. And I was wonder if you could talk about him and how he influenced you.

Bob Newhart: Well, Jack was a. I think some people compare my timing with Jackson. I’m not sure that you can teach somebody timing. It’s something you hear in your head. I Jacqui’s an influence man because he was he was the bravest comedian that I’ve ever seen. He wasn’t afraid of silence. He wasn’t afraid of how long it took to get to the punch line because he knew the punch line would. Would pay off. And Dick Martin told me story. He was there. Jack was appearing in Vegas, I think. Well, Mastin Trio with Sammy Davis. Was opening for Jack. So they finish and of course, wild applause. And they walked off and Jack walked on. He started talking, said, you know, the afternoon I, I come to I used to order some tea and. And then I then I walked through the casino and I walked through the casino and I ran into an actor I had worked with and, um, and his name was. He said, what? Oh, what was his name? He said, I’m sorry. I’m so I promised Sammy he could do another song. So would you like Sammy to do it? So the warnings went crazy and Sammy came on the birth of the blues and of course, tore the house down and Jack watched him go off in that inimitable way of his. And he said, Nigel. That was his name, Nigel. No. I mean, no comedians in the world would ever put himself in that position. But Jack was so. He was so good.

Interviewer: Did you find that with your own style that you like to have?

Bob Newhart: Well. No, I insist that you have to take the time it takes to tell it, and there’s a clock inside your head that tells you how much time to take.

Interviewer: And you just feel it.

Bob Newhart: They just you know, you just feel it. At. The famous story, of course, by Jack was maybe one of the biggest laughs in radio ever was, was when he’s he’s walking to the park and a guy jumps out of the bushes and he says, Or your money or your life. And there’s this long pause. And suppose longer the audience starts laughing more and more and more. And they must have two minutes that it went on and. And the mugger repeats that I said, you’re your money or your life. And Jack’s reply was. I’m thinking, I’m thinking. So that was the influence Jack had of me.

Interviewer: Didn’t he wasn’t there at the time when he came to see you.

Bob Newhart: He told me one time his favorite routine and mine was was the Abe Lincoln routine. The precedent for Abe Lincoln. And he told me, he said if we ever run into each other at a club and I’m in the audience, he said, drop whatever you’re doing. Finish whatever you’re doing. And then do the Abe Lincoln routine. And so it happened at the Palmer House in Chicago that Jack was in the audience because he was going to open the next day, it was closing night for me. Next day was opening for Jack. And until I finished, whatever I was doing and I immediately did the Abe Lincoln routine. And Jack came backstage afterwards. He said. He said, thank you very much. I said, Jack. My pleasure. And he said, But you left out this and you left out that. And you left. And he was right. Over the years, I had I had truncated the routine down. He knew he knows what he wants. He once asked me, said, did you ever hear of a comedian called Frank say? And I say, I’ve heard the name. He said, Did you ever see him work? And I said, no, I don’t think so. And he said, well, you work very much like him and. And then, of course, once he told me that, then I started finding out what I could about Frank Fay, who turned out he was a marvelous monologist, buddy. He was a terrible human being. It’s awful. He married to Barbara Stanwyck. One point. He had a career kind of in movies, but. I had never seen him work.

Interviewer: Not someone you wanted to model yourself?

Bob Newhart: Not not in real life. No, no.

Interviewer: And what about also. I think you’ve mentioned Laurel and Hardy were also an influence.

Interviewer: Well, I would say anybody who was good was an influence. Any comedian I watched on The Sullivan Show, were it long before I ever thought I would wind up doing this for a living. I would watch them and say, oh, why did that work? Oh, oh, because they did it. So I was always I was I was influenced by every every good can be nice. I was influenced by Laurel and Hardy. And I think time. And it’s proved their durability because of all the people, they’re contemporaries. They have survived, their humor survives today. I’m not sure if chaplains does. I’m not sure feels does. But Laurel and Hardy’s does. And they had a rule. I had to let that stand. Oliver had died. He was living on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. I went to a very modest apartment. He and his wife. And but you could do that. That was a wonderful laughter that he had and that was a. Yeah, that was a kick to tie him to a metal stand because they would they rule. I found out afterwards was. Tell them what you’re going to do. Do it. And then tell them why you do it. And if you watch their movies closely, that’s what they did. They weren’t. And Peter Sellers used to do that. He would say, oh, no, no, Peter, no. You aren’t going to do that. And then he’d he’d that he’d do it and then he’d explain why he didn’t.

Interviewer: Would you like to have a drink of water?

Bob Newhart: Yeah thats very interesting. You know, I still say I get this from time to time and maybe I’ll take some may and may do some good. Well, it wasn’t. No, there’s a.

Interviewer: Good? So let’s talk a little bit about your your background, your upbringing. Tell me where you grew up and. What your family life was.

Bob Newhart: Hum. Well, it’s of. I know I know the you comedians are supposed to have this tortured childhood. I I don’t necessarily subscribe to that. I would say mine was. Fairly dysfunctional. I’ve seen my father. I didn’t really have a great relationship. I don’t want to put it on that basis. I don’t like to. So that’s why I’m the way I am. It was. From the outside in here, a very non. Upbringing. I always said I would see that I was from this upper middle class family. And. Something happened between the time my father got his paycheck and the time he got. We weren’t exactly upper middle class that I was the world. I always I always thought we lived about. About 10 blocks further west in Chicago than we should have. So that’s why I’m a comedian and I don’t. That’s for somebody else to say.

Interviewer: Was there was humor a part of your family?

Bob Newhart: Yeah, very much, yeah, that. My father loved to read books and especially love humor, a challenge Smith. And I love Day Challenge Smith and Robert Benchley and Max Schulman and. They were very formative influences, although they were on the printed page. But the concepts of. We’re rich.

Interviewer: It was your dinner table?

Bob Newhart: No, it was more like and I’m sure my sisters will disagree with it, but it was more like a more like a boarding house. We kind of all came and went our own separate ways. I’d come home from school and in high school and. Do whatever homework was assigned and then we’d have dinner. Generally in silence and which I took as being normal. I thought that’s what all families do. And then I would go and I would smack pins. And my father would go out and. He would go to a bar and. And I I saw everybody live that way. So.

Interviewer: Did you, though, do thinking back? Was there sort of running commentary in your head of humor and, you know, noticing things and thinking they were funny?

Bob Newhart: Yeah, I was always. I always had the ability to make people laugh. I mean, I wasn’t big. So I could be on. A football player and time off to be a basketball player. Athletic enough to be a an athlete. So my niche was making people laugh and. And I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it, but I was never. I was never the class clown. I was never the guy in the center stage with a lampshade on his head. I was a guy in the group and I’d say something. The guy next to me and he would laugh and the guy next to him would say, What do you say? And then he would laugh. And maybe that’s what I’m still doing.

Interviewer: Do you think there’s a particular Chicago style? Or do you think being from Chicago influenced your type of humor?

Bob Newhart: I think there’s a Midwestern universality to number one, you don’t put on airs. You don’t pretend to be something you’re not. Or you don’t let anyone catch you at it. I think audiences on either coast are easy to fool the east and the West Coast. And then when Western audiences.

Interviewer: Why do you think that is? Seeing more of these people or what he thinks that’s about.

Bob Newhart: I don’t know, I just found that. To be. There’s there’s Eastern humor and there’s West Coast humor and there’s Midwestern humor, and it’s it’s amazing how many. Comedians have come out of the Midwest. Tim Conway, Jonathan Winters, Michael Lane, Shelley Berman, Herb Shriner. Tim Conway. Dick Martin. And on a Jack Benny from from Waukegan, Illinois, there were. There were Eastern comics are kind of weird thing happened. There were Eastern Con Borscht Belt comics who who worked and they were and there were regional comics that mainly worked the Midwest and other comics worst worked the West Coast. Other comics at work, the Catskills. But then along came. Along came television and along came The Ed Sullivan Show. And you couldn’t do East Coast humor anymore. You hit your head. You were had to be more. Nationwide, there was a comedian named Phil Foster who had a whole routine on them on. And at that time, the New York, the New York, the Dodgers, the Brooklyn Dodgers. And. And he would do it. He would do it. He did on Sullivan, but that was an example of the regional mix of comedy and. To make it on Sulman, you have to have a more universal appeal.

Interviewer: Yeah, that makes sense. Exactly, I want to talk more about that shift in comedy in a minute. I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about you had a lot of different jobs when you were starting.

Bob Newhart: Let’s see. Accountant. That’s one job ahead had. I worked for the. Illinois State Unemployment Compensation Board behind the counter. I worked at the LNA, which was Abercrombie and Fitch in Chicago and worked behind the counter and and even that phone felt. My job was a tobacco counter. But the department right next to mine, Wasley, was a camera department. So the guy behind the camera department said the containers break through, he said. Watch, would you watch my station for me? So I said, OK. So, um. A guy came in and. Was what I recall calling it. Connecticut mal occlusion. He’s at Hadass. I just love talking. And I said, can I help you? And he said, he’s a no, no, he’s trouble or troubles or Africa a great deal and it’s impossible to find batteries will last. In Africa, because it makes us human humanity. And I thought to myself, boy, you know. You feel sorry for yourself? Look at this. This guy can find batteries that will work in Africa and ones that I worked for. As I mentioned, the Illinois State Unemployment Compensation Board, I worked behind the counter. I still refer to this matter of fact that we got fifty five dollars a week. And the claimants got 45 and and they only had to come in one day a week and. So it took me a couple of days to figure it out. I figured I’ve got to get fired from this job and wind up on the other side of the counter. This was, to put it in context, this was after I left accounting and. And Ed Gallagher and I had started the radio program and. I had to find ways of keeping. I’m earning living while I was waiting for this. Radio should become famous, which it never did. And I’m sure my parents, they thought it was crazy. And there were times I thought I was crazy. There were times I thought. Boy, you have really screwed up your life because my friends, that we all graduated from college and someone on to law school and they became attorneys and others became doctors and they were getting married and raising families and. And I was working at Villani and the unemployment office and. But but I had to find out, I had to find out whether. I didn’t wanna spend the rest of my life wondering if I could have been successful in comedy. I had to find out whether I would be. I’m sure my parents didn’t understand what I was, what I was doing or trying to do.

Interviewer: Did they ever say anything like, you.

Bob Newhart: No. I did. I remember I wrote I created the Abe Lincoln routine and. And run it from my mother. And at the end of it, she said, You. Do men call other men, sweetheart? And I said, Mom, in advertising, they do. The first line is a sweetheart. I don’t know. I don’t think they understood what I was doing. It was just something I just Sundblad. I had to find out.

Interviewer: So you had enough, even though you had doubts, obviously. You must have had enough confidence somewhere.

Bob Newhart: Well, there was always something. Around the corner that was look promising. So that kept me going. And then eventually there was a record album. And then it just became, as I call it, news every night. It just it just took off. That’s good.

Interviewer: And. I want to get to that in a minute, if you can, to talk a little bit more about I think it’s so amazing and unusual that it’s such a successful comedian started out as an accountant. Can you talk about how you as an accountant?

Bob Newhart: Well, I think it’s it’s it’s amazing that that a good accountant could become a comedian. I think in my case, it’s amazing they have a bad accountant, could become a comedian. But there is something about comedy that is there’s something about numbers. And music and comedy, I’m not sure what it is, but it. Comedians, we have what we call the rule of three and the rule of three is there was an Irishman as a Scotsman and an Englishman. And it always has to be three. It can’t be. There’s an Irishman and a Scotsman and a can’t before it can be an Irishman or a Scotsman. Links when a German. There’s something about the rule of three. And no one really understands where it came from. But it’s an odd number. I guess that’s maybe what accounts for it. But. Most comedians that I know also had a. Had an interest in music, Jack, certainly Jack Benny and George Burns and Gracie Alan. Listen, there’s there’s some connection. I’m not sure what it is.

Interviewer: For yourself. You have musical interest right?

Bob Newhart: Bongo’s, yeah, yeah, and Karbasi, I think basically the basically orchestra to me was art weavers. It had the most sense of humor about itself. And he just when do you think it was over, there was. One more once. There’s a humor, there’s a humor in basically music.

Interviewer: You can see. The timing, you know, makes sense to having all those different jobs, though. Were you aware of it at the time or is it only looking back that you see how that kind of fueled your comedy, too? I mean, you found routine’s out of some of those experiences, right?

Bob Newhart: Well, yeah. The retirement party was a result of having worked and having worked as an accountant because I saw it firsthand. The submarine commander was a result of having been in service and and seeing the efficiencies of the military and. And how in large organizations like the military or corporations. A person can rise two or three levels above. Where were they? Their competency? So I think that’s a statement. Probably the submarine commander made that somehow this man wound up in charge of a submarine. Who should never been allowed to command a submarine and had this disastrous trip.

Interviewer: Peter Principle, or something.

Bob Newhart: Peter Principle.

Interviewer: So talk about it. Explain a little bit how during this time is when you met Ed Gallagher and how you guys met and then what came out of that?

Interviewer: Well, Ed and I were in a local stock company in Chicago, regional stock company called the Oak Park Players. And we ran various. Place together and became friends and was in advertising, I that time was going to come. And I would get so bored at the end of the day with accounting that I would call it up and would. We would improvise routines. I remember from one one, I called them up and said that I was at the factory, Harris at the ice factory and we had a fire and the firemen were there and they were throwing water on trying to put out the fire. But as a result, the east was rising and rising. So I kept having to run up another another another flight of stairs somewhat out. So these were things we would do and he would he was a straight man. He would ask me questions and. Someone who’s heard about this and said, you are going to put them out as a. As a radio program, they really were bombing raid routines. I’m a poor man, Bob and Ray routine. A bombing raid with a masters and we were. Imitative of a monori. So we we put, I think, 10 routines on a on an acetate and sent them to 100 stations, which this guy, Chris Peterson, with his name is a metaphor, which he underwrote. And sometime to various nations around the country. Got replies from three. A radio station in Northampton, Mass. Radio station in Jacksonville, Florida. And a radio station in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Which kept us from being coast to coast. Coast Guard station in Los Angeles. We would ban coast to coast. So we didn’t know how to price it. So they said, what do you want to this? And we said. Seven dollars and fifty cents a week for five five minute routines. Which came to funny two dollars and fifty cents a week. Little realizing that it was going to cost us about 50 dollars a week to just physically make them and and ship them. So at the end of the 13 weeks was a traditional buying, buying time in radio. One station stiffed us. I forget which one it was. And and two wanted to renew us. And we had to write them back and say, unfortunately. We can’t afford to do this anymore. But in my case, it was a great. It was a great training ground for writing because it forced me to write. It taught me the discipline of writing a a five minute routine five times a week. And then an ad was offered and was married and. He had kids and he was offered a job in New York. At BBDO, No. And he had it taken, obviously, to support his family. So I was left now either having trying to find another. Partner, another straight man or. Going off on my own, this is a single decided to go off on my own and then spent several years. Nothing much was happening.

Interviewer: And when you when you went off on your own. How did you sort of found a way to salvage some of the material that you had?

Bob Newhart: I think I think the submarine commander was one of the original routines it at night. There’s an awful lot of improvising. We were just. Start the tape machine. And I’m going to say that. I’m going to I’ll be a. I’ll be a submarine commander. And I’ve had this disastrous trip. And one time Ed came down with pneumonia and we were in danger of of not meeting our our deadline. So we had to do like. In one night, we had to do like 10, five minute routines and. So we just we we we just did it. I mean, we just improvised on. It’s a little like the short shows. You know, I mean, if if the show shows, as everyone knows, it’s impossible, it’s impossible to write an hour and a half show every week for as many years as it would accept. There was an. But we were doing all kind of impossible to. But there was no one to tell us. You can’t do that. So we just came up with 10, five minute routines and one one evening.

Interviewer: So I will I will try that.

Bob Newhart: You can certainly trust these people, you know.

Interviewer: Exactly. Yeah, I will. I will definitely. Thank you. Are you good? Yeah, I’m good.

Bob Newhart: How is the sound. All right, very good. OK. A lot of coughing.

Interviewer: OK. Um, so, yeah, if you could just talk about, again, how you you had to find a way to make two man teams one.

Bob Newhart: Well, all right, if I pick it up where that is now left for New York and I’m faced with doing, I’m going out on my own. And really, I thank you for being a stand up comic. I mean, that was the furthest thing from my mind. I saw my future in local television in Chicago or local radio in Chicago. And Jack Paar had a huge audience in Chicago. And NBC wants to take the local NBC station, WAMC, who wanted to take advantage of that. So they went to Dan Sorkin, who is a. The very popular disc jockey in Chicago and wanted him to host a variety show, and Dan somehow and I don’t even recall exactly how it happened, Dan had heard of me or it me. Doing something locally in Chicago. And asked me to to be a writer on the show and also a performer. And the show lasted. The show lasted, I think, four shows. I think. We weren’t able to. Quite the audience that we know everything from a Jack Bach to. So Dan and I became friends and. And then there was a Chicago there was a. There was a strike of some kind. So they couldn’t they couldn’t broadcast the local Emmys. So someone had heard about or maybe had seen Dan talking to myself, because I guess I did at that time the Abe Lincoln Rudy. And so they said, well, would you you know, it’s not going to be televised, but we’re going to have everybody who’s anybody in Chicago and radio or television. And it’s going to be at the. I think was a Tribune tower, as I recall. And. And so I got up and I did the Abe Lincoln routine and it was well received. And. Alex Dryer, who is a local. TV personality newsman. But before that had been a war correspondent. He got up and. And he said, what do people mean, there’s no talent here in Chicago? So that led to my job. The Man on the Street program with them. With ABC and Chicago. In. So I did. I did the man on Street show with. Tom Racine, Thomasin was the host and I was. The guest. Every day I would be somebody different. So that lasted about 13 weeks. And. Then shortly after that went off. The Warner Brothers Records people came to Chicago and called upon Dan because Dan was a big was a big important disc jockey. And Dan said, I had this friend of mine who I think is really funny. And they said, well, to have them put some some of his routines down on tape and we’ll listen and listen to him because comedy records were just starting. Mort Saul and Mike Alane and Shelley Berman, Jonathan Winters, Lenny Bruce were just starting to make some noise and records is broken. Spoken word. So Dan called me up, he said, put down the routines you have so I can play him for these record people. So I put him down and. Down the tape and they listened to him and they liked him. George, a vacuum. Jim Conkling, president of Warner Brothers Records and Jimmy Hilliard. And they said, OK, we like we like it. We like what we hear. And. We’d like to record you at your next nightclub. And I said, well, we have a problem because I’ve never I’ve never played in my club. And they said, well, then we’ll have to get you into a nightclub. And they got me into the Tidelands in Houston, Texas. I walked out in February of 1960. I had one side of the album, I didn’t have the other side. That’s when albums have two sides to before C.D.. And so while I was there, I was the opening act for a closing act whose name was Cañon Mitzie Welch, who later wound up writing special material for Kilbane. At that time, they may have been a maven on the Gary Moore Show. And I’m not sure that in that capacity. So every night after the show, after I did my section and they did theirs. We go to their their room. And I said, here’s another idea I had. And then I would do it for them and they’d say, OK, do that tomorrow night, you know. Try that. So in in the two weeks that I was there. I was able to come up with three more routines to fill up. Fill up the album, Terrified Out of My Mind every night. But pretending it’s something you learn. Probably the first time you ever walk on a stage that you can’t show any fear so I pretended like I knew what I was doing.

Interviewer: It is remarkable to go from talk about how that changed your life.

Bob Newhart: Well, then after that, they they they said the album would be out probably in April. So some friends of mine said whatever happened to that record album? And I said, you know, I haven’t heard any more about it. So I called up Warner Brother Records and said, yeah, he said it was going to be released in April. And they said, well. Every copy we’re able to press, we’re shipping to Minneapolis because it’s gone absolutely crazy up there and people are putting in the paper the times that you can hear the driving instructor or the submarine commander or Abe Lincoln or the Wright brothers or baseball. Then it caught on in other cities. And then all of a sudden I was getting calls to do that, Sullivan shows. It was I mean, I wasn’t I really wasn’t prepared for it. It would just I saw the album as maybe an adjunct to maybe a nightclub career. Is that. And all the while, I’m just kind of swept just swept along by events. You know?

Interviewer: And tell me, what was their living situation during that time?

Bob Newhart: Well, I was on the road a lot. I still live at home in Chicago, but I was very seldom home. I was on. Winnipeg played. Just outside Detroit, Windsor, Ontario, Canada.

Interviewer: You were still living with your parents. Yeah. Can you say that?

Bob Newhart: Yeah, I’m still living at home with my parents and. But wasn’t really home that much. I mean, I was out largely on the road. And. My manager at that time, Frank Hogan, Jan, said we have an offer. This would have been about May of 1960, as I recall, and he said, we have an offer from Harry’s club in Lake Tahoe. They want you to be the opening comic for for Peggy Lee. And and the pay is two thousand dollars a week. Well, I was getting at that point. I started off it, I think, 350 a week and then finally got up to six hundred a week and then then two thousand dollars a week and. So I said to my manager, will, do they beat you up between shows, I mean, why would you why? Which is two thousand a week. And so I went to Lake Tahoe and I was the opening act for Peggy Lee and I. I do my 18 minutes, whatever it was. And then. On to the back of the room and watch Pengelley every night, which I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

Interviewer: So amazing. I want to get back to a couple of things that we’ve kind of raced over a little bit, which was. You mentioned the Abel Abe Lincoln piece. And I think you’ve said before that if that’s the piece of writing you most proud of and I’m just wondering if. Say that or talk about that and why and what the process was writing.

Bob Newhart: The Abe Lincoln routine I read, I read a book called The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard and. The really good routines come full blown. They just they don’t come in patients. They just. You just you give birth to him. Is really what you do. The Abe Lincoln routine as a piece of writing. It’s my favorite because it’s maybe more true today than it was even when I when I originally conceived it, which was. Nineteen. Well, probably 50. 1958. Certainly with the spinmeisters that are around today. It was a question of how long you wanted to make it. Did you want to make it fifteen minutes long? And did you want to make it eight minutes longer? There was so much material. What what did you want to include? Well. Your kind of. Routines generally ran between five and seven minutes. That was some hidden rule that was the extent of people’s attention span. So I made it. Time segments line when everyone.

Interviewer: Was it your choice to make the first cut on the album?

Bob Newhart: No. No, that was that was a. That was Warner Brothers choice. I just recorded it. I had this view of nightclub’s, which was from motion pictures. Where were the The understudy. Or in this case, a new singer. Gets up on stage and everyone’s talking. And then slowly but surely, people stop talking and turning around and looking and then they started plotting. It was wonderful. And I saw that. That’s what I thought were. They didn’t tell me about drunks that. So that’s a part of working in a nightclub. And the first. We had three shows to tape the album, one on Friday and then two on Saturday and the one on Friday. There was a drunken woman in the front row. And she kept saying that’s a bunch of crap. And just kept repeating it. And so we listened to the tape and she was clearer than I was. So we had two shows, two shows on salary to get the album, which we did.

Interviewer: That’s unbelievable.

Bob Newhart: It is looking back, it’s a it’s a little like, you know, you’re walking on a street and then you hear a crash in and you look around and the safe has fallen and narrowly missed you. Looking back on all the things that could’ve gone wrong, I never do.

Interviewer: And what was that was that also was at the tidelands when we had a certain amount of material in the club?

Bob Newhart: Yeah. One night I went out at the Tidelands and I had at that point just the the 18 minutes I just had really the three routines I was in the process of running the restroom. And the. So I came off and people were applauding and I walked by the maitre d and he said, go back out now. So that’s all I have is, well, go. They’re still applauding. Go back out. So I went back out and said. Which which one would you like to hear again? Yes. I couldn’t think of any other way. Ignorance is bliss, sir.

Interviewer: And what about the title that album title. Were you involved with it at all?

Bob Newhart: I wasn’t involved in that. No, the naming it came out. I wasn’t even aware of it. But a lot of the material had to do with a Madison Avenue. Abe Lincoln. The marketing of the baseball. The marketing of the Wright brothers. I know one of my favorite lines was the Wright brothers was one of the routines I developed. Once I got down to the. Down to Houston and the Tidelands. Anyway, talking on the phone to one of the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, I forget which one it was. He says, not yet. You still have to land every hundred and five feet. And she was a humble. That’s really gonna cut our time to the coast. And if you have to land every hundred, it’s.

Interviewer: And so so that came out in one year and then the second album explain.

Bob Newhart: The first album, because a lot of material had to do with marketing Abe Lincoln and the Wright Brothers and baseball and the uniform of the day on Madison Avenue. Was the button down collar. And so somebody at Warner Brother Records called it the button down mind. And it’s stuck. I had nothing to do with it. I was. That if I had asked him what it meant. My suggestion for for the title, which I was hardly in a position to insist on anything at that point. I was the funniest new comedian since Attila the Hun. And I think that’s kind of a subtitle on the first album.

Interviewer: On the reissue, maybe. Anyway, tell me too. I love your story about the two albums that came out the same year, and they held the record for quite some time.

Bob Newhart: Yeah, I had I had a record. That I didn’t even know I had that until I lost it. And my daughter. My daughter Jennifer told me that because her husband at that point was in the house and was in the music business. And apparently I had the record for the number one and number two album on the Billboard charts for the most number of weeks. And what happened was. The first album went to number one and the second album went to number two. And then the second album went to number one. And the first album went to the number two. And it was for like. Thirty five weeks or something, but recently broken by. Guns and Roses. They they. They had the number one and number two album for for over thirty five weeks. More than 35. And I always say, well, you know, you hate to lose a record, but at least it went to a friend. You know, Axl Rose of Guns and Rose.

Interviewer: Talk a little bit about you were part of this wave of new comics. You started to mention Lenny Bruce and Johnny and all of those people. And if you were kind of aware of the fact that you guys were changing comedy.

Bob Newhart: I certainly was. I don’t like it. It so happened that Time magazine once called us the sick comics. And as you mentioned, it was Jonathan Winters, Lenny Bruce. Myself, Mike and Elaine and Shelley Berman. Because our material was item mine to go back to Abe Lincoln routine, I was. A training, a revered dead president. Ungraciously and Michael Lahm were. Had a routine about going to a funeral home, and of course, Lenny was just out there. Johnny was just he was just out there. So we were all kind of lumped together and. What had happened wasn’t. To that, a lot of the comedians were. Well, there was one stealing that went on. That guy would come up with a joke and another comic would hurt and he would precede him into a city and he would use it. And then the guy would show up. And people would stare at him. So. It was it was just our way of looking at life. But in the process, you couldn’t steal it because it sounded like a Johnny Winners routine or it sounded like a Mike and Lane routine or it sounded like a Lenny Bruce routine. It’s I like Bob Newhart and. But there was no Caballe I mean, we did not get together and say, look, we’ve got to change comedy. And I think looking back, what happened was that the nightclub’s. Nightclub comedians at that time were doing a lot of take my wife, please. Mother in law jokes and. It had no relevancy to the young college crowd. Plus the fact that nightclubs were kind of pricey as far as college kids were concerned. They had a cover charge and a minimum. And so apparently what happened was they would take our comedy routines and they buy pizza and beer and then play them and sit around and nap. And we were there a nightclub. So it wasn’t a sea change, really, in comedy.

Interviewer: You did have one instance though where kind of a light bulb moment for you where something was stolen.

Interviewer: Yeah, I was. This is when I was taking these Part-Time jobs to keep body and soul together and decided at one point since there was nothing on the horizon. That that I would become a comedy writer and I would try to sell the material. So I I took this submarine commander. As a matter of fact, there was a comic appearing in town and. A friend of mine who had much more nerve than I did. Contacted me. So I have this friend of mine who I think is a good comedy writer. So he was appearing at The Cloisters in Chicago. I think was. The hotel doesn’t matter, really. He was dying and we went up to his room. I did the submarine commander form. He said, thank you very much, you son. It’s really not what I’m looking for right now. But if you come up with anything else, here’s here’s my address in New York. And so. Three weeks later, I was at home and watching television. And I’m watching the Steve Allen show and Outcomes as comic. And he proceeds to do the summer Inkerman and. He has since become friends and because he really. I thought to myself, well, if they’re going to steal it, I may as well do it myself. So I’m I’m indebted to that. I decided to. So tough it out.

Interviewer: You earned a lesson I guess.And what about you would also tell me a story where you would sometimes loan material?

Bob Newhart: Did did Bill DeLay my son or your version of it? Did he mention me and Danny?

Interviewer: He did.

Bob Newhart: Again, nothing was happening, which was not an uncommon occurrence. There is nothing was occurring, there was no prospect of anything occurring. So Bill had this Bill Daley, who later became Howard on Bob Newhart Show, was wanted to be a standup comic and. He got a job as he opening comic for for a folksier. I can’t remember his name right now. And he came to me and he said of another routine I’d written was a routine called The Gray So Ferguson Airline and Storm Door Company. And he said, could I could I borrow them? And I said, well, I don’t mean going so short. So he brought it in. I was making the second album and I was one cut short of an album of a complete album. And so I called the bill, I said, Bill, I’ve got to take back the grace of Ferguson airline tornado company. And he said. He said, that’s my strongest routine. Well, Bill, I just wanted to remember. Was that Bill’s version?

Interviewer: Absolutely. Exactly the same thing. Do you think you have a looking at your comedy? Again, going back to this new wave of comics who are coming up at that time, Bruce, Lenny Bruce obviously had a very specific targets for his humor. And would you can you categorize what your sort of targets were or your brand of humor? I mean, are you. What’s the sort of general idea behind a lot of your routines at that time.

Bob Newhart: Well, we’ve. I guess it was a thread running through all the routines. It would probably be the last sane man left in America. There is this man. Me, who keeps looking at the world and saying, this is crazy. And I keep saying to people, don’t you think this is crazy? And they say, yeah, that’s crazy, but that’s the way we do things. And so there was if I had to sum it up in one. In one sense, he probably he too, he thinks of himself as the last same man left on her.

Interviewer: Do you think your your, you know, appearance and demeanor and all those things allowed you in some ways to say things that maybe other comics can get away with at all? Do you think that’s shaped your humor?

Bob Newhart: No, it would just. What struck me funny. I mean, that’s that’s what struck me funny was the. It was my way of. Of finding humor in the world. And it was my way of expressing it. There was never any. I mean, I never said, oh, look, there’s somebody there’s nobody out there with a stammer now, so that would be a good. Maybe I’ll do it wasn’t quite that. It was just my way of dealing with life and. Finding the humor in life, finding the absurdity of the world.

Interviewer: And is your delivery and all that natural to you? I mean, the stammer stuff on.

Bob Newhart: The stamme is? Yeah, I mean, that’s my way. I don’t know if it’s on this. I’m not aware of it, but. We’ll except people finishing sentences for me. Oh, I thought there was a comedian, a wonderful comedian named Joe Frisco. And Joe Fresco stuttered. And stuttering and stammering are two different things. Stuttering is the inability to get past a certain letter, like an S. S like that. No one, no one knew whether really stuttered or whether he used it for comedic effect because it did build attention. But. He once he was reported to run into a friend of his and. And the guy was down on his luck. And George W.. You can stay with me if you want. He was. Joe was in a fleabag hotel and he said, we’re going to have to climb up to a. The fire escape, because if they. If they see what can with me, then they’ll they’ll charge me for double occupancy. So they snuck into Joe’s room, which was four stories up via the fire escape, and the desk manager called up and said, Mr. Fiscal, we know that you have someone staying with you and we’re going to charge you the double occupancy rate and. And Joe said, oh, oh, oh, OK. But said, since I send up another another Gideon Bible. I know no one ever knew whether he. He did that on purpose. Whether he’s whether he stuttered.

Interviewer: And do you think I mean, I think it seems like it would be when words are your. Your tools. You know that for many people, it would be a liability, but for you, you know.

Bob Newhart: Yeah. I, I was at. And it’s an essential part of comedy. His. Is is tension. Because when people laugh, it’s. It’s really the unsatisfied release of tension, the. So an essential part of comedy is is tension. That’s what the stammer does. That’s what the stutter does. It builds attention. That is an. Relieved. Not relieved in the way you expected to be relieved that the unexpected release of atención. My favorite movie is Dr. Strangelove. And my my kids say, oh, you’ll have to go to the house and watch Dr. Strangelove with my father because he got it gets hysterical. Which is true. Which is true in the tension in Dr. Strangelove. It’s very simple. Just see the eradication of the human race as well as. Oh. That’s the only thing that’s possible. But that’s as far as I go in examining humor. It’s it’s there. I’m glad it’s there. Unlike those tribes in the jungles of Brazil that feel if you take a picture of them, that you take part of their soul. I think if you examine comedy too much at. You lose your ability to make people laugh. I will only go so far in analyzing comedy.

Interviewer: If you can go a little farther and talk on the telephone, though, and how why you think that works so

Bob Newhart: Well, I become identified with the telephone, but I’m not sure why. I mean, it’s the telephone has been. Cami writes For long, for a long time. Someone told me that one of the first record albums ever made was a thing called Cohen on the telephone. And George just I had a radio program and he used to end the program on the phone with his mother, explaining to his mother how the show had gone. And the guests were Shelley Berman used the telephone like Alane used the telephone. There are certain routines that lend themselves to the telephone. Abe Lincoln. King Kong. I’m talking to the Wright brothers, talking to Abner Doubleday on the telephone. Sir Walter Raleigh was on the telephone. The interesting thing about the telephone as it is, the audience supplies. The unheard portion of. On the conversation. So they did participate. McLuhan would call that probably that would make it hot rather than passive. And then they at the end, they applaud themselves for having figured out, because if you really look at the Abe Lincoln routine or any of the telephone chains, what I am saying is not funny at all. It’s it’s what aid. It’s what it’s unheard. That’s funny. And the audience is supplying what’s unheard. And then congratulating himself on on their ability to figure that out.