The legend of stand-up comedy and sitcoms was 94.

Bob Newheit

Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

Bob Newheit, the beloved comedian whose wry humor made him one of the greatest comedians of all time on two critically acclaimed CBS sitcoms, died Thursday morning at the age of 94.

The Chicago legend, who won Grammy Awards for Album of the Year and Best New Artist for his groundbreaking 1960 album, The Flexible Mind by Bob NewheitAmerican actor John Senator has died at the age of 85 at his home in Los Angeles after a series of short illnesses, his longtime manager, Jerry DeGenery, announced.

The former accountant famously didn’t win an Emmy until 2013, when he finally won one for his guest appearance as Arthur Jeffries (aka Professor Proton, a former host of a children’s science show) on CBS. Big Bang Theory.

In 1972, MTM Enterprises cast the humble comedian as clinical psychologist Bob Hartley, who practiced in Chicago, New Hart’s real-life favorite city. Bob Newwhite Show It would become one of the most popular sitcoms of all time, and featured a stellar cast of supporting actors: Suzanne Pleshette, Peter Bonners, Marcia Wallace, Bill Daily, and Jack Riley among them.

Newhart ended the series in 1978 after 142 episodes—surprisingly, it received no Emmy nominations and no series wins—thinking he had run out of tricks. But he returned to CBS in 1982 to helm another MTM sitcom.

in New HeartIn 1992, he played Dick Loudon, a New York author turned owner of the Stratford Hotel in Vermont. The show was a mainstay for eight seasons, and that season also featured a stellar cast (Mary Frane, Tom Poston – who later married Pleshette – Julia Duffy, Peter Scolari, and as the maintenance workers “Larry, Darryl and their other brother Darryl”, William Sanderson, Tony Papenfuss, and John Voldstad).

In one of the most impressive series finales in history, New Heart The eight-season series concluded with a bold final scene in which Loudon wakes up in the middle of the night as Bob Hartley in bed with Pleshette in their Chicago apartment, suggesting that his entire second season was just a dream.

New Hart’s pauses and stuttering were among his hallmarks, and his sarcastic remarks were a result of his observant nature.

“I tend to find humor in horrible things. I would say that 85 percent of me is what you see on the show. The other 15 percent is a very sick man with a very disturbed mind,” he said during a 1990 interview with Los Angeles magazine.

He was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame in 1992.

George Robert Newheit was born on September 5, 1929, in Oak Park, Illinois. He grew up a fan of the Chicago Cubs and participated in the team’s victory parade down LaSalle Street after Chicago won the National League title in 1945. (He was naturally thrilled when the Cubs ended their 108-year drought of World Series titles in 2016.)

Newwhite never dreamed of a career in show business; in fact, the glamorous career was at odds with his Midwestern nature and may have been the reason for his association with Middle America.

After attending St. Ignatius College and then earning a business degree from Loyola University, Newwhite spent two years in the Army and then failed law school. He then worked as an accountant for U.S. Gypsum and then the Glidden Co., which sold paint.

“There’s some sort of relationship between numbers, music and comedy. I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s there,” he once said in an interview with a business professor. “I know it’s like 2 plus 2 equals 5 for a comedian. You take this fact and you take that fact and you come up with this ridiculous fact.”

To combat boredom at work, New Hart and a friend enjoyed making funny phone calls. He refined these calls into what became his signature comedy bit: a one-way phone conversation (where the audience imagines what the other side of the conversation is like).

He and a friend also sold a syndicated radio show in which they performed five-minute comedy segments five days a week for $7.50 a week.

In 1959, another friend who was a DJ in Chicago introduced Newhart to a Warner Bros. Records executive. The accountant, who was now working as a copywriter, had only three demos at the time, but he came up with more material and got a contract with the record company.

“Remember, when I started out in the late 50s, I didn’t say to myself, ‘Oh, here’s a big void to fill – I’m going to be a bald ex-accountant who specializes in simple humor,’” he said. “That’s just who I was and that’s the direction my mind always went, so it was natural for me to be that way.”

The Flexible Mind by Bob NewheitRecorded live at a Houston nightclub, the album became the first comedy album to reach the top of the charts, selling 1.5 million copies and becoming one of the best-selling “talk” albums. The albums included classic songs such as “Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue” and “Driving Instructor”.

At a time when controversial and hard-hitting comedians like Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahle were gaining attention, flexible mind Newhart also won his third Grammy Award for Best Comedic Performance. Suddenly, he was booked in The Ed Sullivan Show.

After two more successful albums, Newhart was offered a weekly television variety series for the 1961–62 season. Bob Newwhite Show It won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Program Achievement in Humor this year as well as a Peabody Award.

But Newhart soon found himself exhausted. “I had complete responsibility for the show seven days a week, 24 hours a day,” he once said, “despite having an excellent production team.”

He was offered a series of sitcoms but turned them down, returning to nightclubs and honing his acting skills through television guest appearances and film work, starting with Don Siegel. Hell for heroes (1962), starring Steve McQueen, and then in other films such as Hot Millions (1968), Mike Nichols Catch 22 (1970) Norman Lear cold Türkiye (1971).

New Heart Show Project co-creators Dave Davis and Lorenzo Music have been wanting to work with comics for some time.

Lorenzo and I wrote a piece for Bob about I love the American way.Bob wasn’t available. So, we got Sid Caesar. And a few years later, we did a script for Bob for Mary Tyler Moore Show“Again, Bob was unavailable,” Davis said. Rich In an oral history of the comedy series. “After we became story editors on Mary’s show, MTM Enterprises decided to expand and asked Lorenzo and I to do a pilot episode. We knew exactly what we wanted to do. We wanted a show with Bob.”

“Arthur Price,” Newheit said. [co-founder of MTM] He was my manager. He asked me if I was interested. For 12 years I had been traveling and doing stand-up comedy, mostly one night shows, and the next day you’d be somewhere 5,300 miles away. I wanted a normal life where I could be home with my family.

“I didn’t have a lot of demands. I didn’t want the show to be about some idiot who everyone loves, who gets himself into trouble and then his wife and kids band together to get him out of it.”

In 1992, he embarked on another new series, Bobplays a sectarian comic book artist, but he didn’t find an audience. And he didn’t find an audience either. George and Leowhere he played a bookstore owner opposite Judd Hirsch.

Newhart appeared on the NBC show ER For three episodes, he played a doctor suffering from macular degeneration (for which he received another Emmy nomination), and played Morty Fleckman, the husband of Lesley Ann Warren’s character, on the ABC series desperate housewives.

Most recently, Newwhite portrayed Judson in the trilogy. Librarians TV movies and then a series on TNT.

Newheath also participated in the championship little lady marker (1980); as President of Buck Henry The first family (1980), with Gilda Radner as his playful daughter; as Papa Elf in Will Ferrell’s film dwarf (2003); and very bad managers (2011). He brought his flat western cadence to the voice work in two films. Rescuers films.

Chicago honored Newheit with a statue on Michigan Avenue, near the office building featured in the film’s opening credits. Bob Newwhite Showwith his picture on a chair and an empty psychiatrist’s couch next to him. He was later taken to the Navy Pier.

In 2002, he became the fifth recipient of the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, and four years later he published his memoirs, i shouldn’t do this.

Newwhite was married to Virginia “Jenny” Quinn (daughter of actor Bill Quinn) from January 1963 until her death in April 2023 at the age of 82. They were set up on a blind date by comedian Buddy Hackett (Jenny was babysitting the Hackett children).

“One day, Buddy came back and said in his unique way, ‘I met this guy named Bobby Newwhite, he’s a comedian and he’s Catholic and you’re Catholic and I think maybe you two should marry each other,’” she recalled in a 2013 interview.

She was the one who came up with the idea for the great ending to the series. New Heart It was shown during a Christmas party that Pleshette was also scheduled to attend.

The New Harts were close friends of Don Rickles and his wife Barbara, and the couple often vacationed together.

Survivors include his children, Robert Jr., Timothy, Courtney, and Jennifer, and ten grandchildren.