Bob Newhart, Ladies Man

Bob Newhart had one of the most successful comedy LPs of all time. So what did NBC do? Turn him into a variety show host.

This was in 1961, long before the CBS series produced by Mary Tyler Moore that became a monster hit. Or the one where he ran an inn in New England that turned out to be a dream of the Newhart character in the first show.

There were sketches, monologues, an announcer, a band, guest singers and a revolving supporting cast that included Joe Flynn, Ken Berry, Jackie Joseph, and comedian Mickey Manners, all in colour. Fans of cartoon voice people will be pleased to see that making on camera appearances were Mae Questel (Olive Oyl), Henry Corden (the second Fred Flintstone), Jim Backus (Mr. Magoo), Jerry Hausner (Mr. Magoo’s nephew) and Cal Howard (yes, that Cal Howard).

Newhart and his show were profiled by the Boston Traveler of November 20, 1961. It won an Emmy for best humour show, but lasted one turbulent season, not coping well in the ratings opposite The Naked City.

By ELEANOR ROBERTS
Know what happens to a comedian when he’s 32, charming, rich and has a weekly Wednesday night show on TV?
He gets proposals—hundreds of them—in the mail.
NICE SENSE OF HUMOR
And since the comedian is Bob Newhart, all these dear ladies in search of the right husband want to marry him because he has such a nice sense of humor. “We’re on the same wave length,” they write. “That’s why I know we’d get along so well.”
Bachelor Bob is getting along beautifully in his single state, than you, and between scraping up enough material for a show a week and playing golf at Bel Air, he’s busy, but busy.
He dates, of course.
“But no starlets,” he told us in an interview from Hollywood.
WRITING AT NIGHT
“When you talk to them, it’s like putting your ear up to a sea shell and listening to the ocean rush in.”
Trying to be consistently funny before a TV audience of 35 million people is quite a grind, but Bob prefers it to a life of night club acts and one-night concert stands.
“I do most of my writing at night,” he explained, “which leaves the days free for golf.
“It’s a great game for relaxation. I suppose it’s a little like drinking—you forget all your problems while you’re doing it, but find out they’re still around afterwards.”
CONSTANT HEADACHE
Newhart’s chief worries are whether or not his sketches go over.
“It’s a constant headache,” he admitted. “You never know. Sometimes you think you have a great show, and it turns out to be a bomb. You can’t second-guess an audience.
“We’ve made some mistakes this year. The greeting-card sketch on our opening show sure laid an egg. But then we discovered, from this, that I couldn’t play the meek little man. And we learned to stay away from it.
“You have to open a new can of peas in this business occasionally,” he pointed out. “But it’s one thing trying out a sketch in front of a night club audience, and quite another making your mistakes in front of a big TV audience.”
HAS STAFF OF WRITERS
Like most comedians of the “new school,” Bob has always written his own material.
But now, with 39 shows to do, he has a staff of writers, and it’s a little like trying to feel comfortable when you’re wearing someone else’s clothes.
“We have our arguments,” Bob said cheerfully. “But then, most writers are creative, opinionated people. The man who has the final say is our producer, Roland Kibbee.
“If I really feel uncomfortable saying certain lines, Roland agrees it’s better not to try them. But he’s had more experience in this business than I have, so I usually listen to him.”
SATURDAY SHOW TAPED
Saturday nights the Newhart show (Ch. 4, Wednesdays 10-10:30 p.m.) is taped. When it’s over Bob, Roland Kibbee and some of the other boys walk across the street to Sailee’s to eat.
“We sit around over a couple of scotches and water, eat hamburgers and whine,” he laughed. “But it gives us a chance to let our hair down. If I went straight home I’d like awake until 4 a.m. I’m so tense.”
We asked Bob what happened to the Fred Allen library he had spoken about using at the start of the season.
“Portland was wonderful to offer it to us,” he said. “But actually I felt Fred’s dry, salty humor was different from mine, and that it wouldn’t be wise to attempt it.”
LISTENERS LOVED IT
One of the first things Bob did when he went “network” was to hire Dan Sorkin as the announcer of the show.
“Dan gave me my first break,” Bob said. “But I gave him the job not only out of gratitude, but because we needed a strong, forceful personality and a new face.”
Sorkin, a disk jockey on Chicago’s WCSL [sic], heard Newhart’s monologue on the airlines, and played the tape on his show two years ago. The listeners loved it.
The station manager thought it was for the birds.
But Sorkin took the tapes to Warner Brothers’ Records Inc., where James B. Conkling, the president, listened to them. After that, Bob was made.
Dan still plays up-tempoed, mass-appeal jazz for his morning listeners at WCSL, commuting to Hollywood each week to appear on the Newhart show.
There’s another bright, bouncy fan of Bob’s who wouldn’t miss his show.
She’s Sister Mary Joan of the Immaculate High School in Chicago, who is Bob’s sister.
And every Wednesday night at the convent all the nuns, with special permission, tune in the Newhart show, and have a ball.

Newhart wasn’t popular with everyone when his first show didn’t take off, and we don’t just mean what NBC-TV sources described in Variety as the “extreme right wing” writing preposterous letters claiming Newhart’s satire was “un-American,” and “must be Communist-tinged.” He fired some writers and his director, and that prompted his producer to quit in protest. Still, the producer rather awkwardly tried to walk the line between praise and criticism. Here’s a syndicated column from Feb. 17, 1962.

Tells Why Newhart Unique
Department Producer Comments
By HAROLD STERN
The Bob Newhart Show of Feb. 28th (already taped) marks the termination of producer-writer Roland Kibbee's affiliation with the comedian. Various reports have indicated that Kibbee's departure is due to illness, to a conflict with Newhart or to almost any other reason you might think of.
Kibbee himself isn't too much help.
"Why am I leaving the show," he answered. "Let’s just say that I'm tired. If you want to know the circumstances that wore me out, that's a long and complicated story I'd rather not go into. Our director Coby Ruskin gave an interview to a Hollywood trade paper in which he blasted Newhart. He was fired and I asked for my release because firing Ruskin over the producer's head constituted a breach of contract. I had asked for my release before, but this time I was justified and I got it.
“Yes,” he continued, "Bob and I have had disagreements, but there is no ill feeling between us. You might say we're both very disappointed at how our affiliation turned out.
“I took the Newhart Show to begin with because it was the sort of challenge I couldn't resist. Ever since Nat Hiken and I were writers for Fred Allen, I wanted to prove this sort of material could exist on TV. I think we have proved it. If another comedian like Newhart were to come along next year and I had a chance to work with him, I would. But I don't expect another Newhart.
"I think Bob Newhart is unique in today's world of comedy," Kibbee said emphatically. "He's able to hide his own personality behind characterizations. He has an ingratiating public image, yet he invariably plays the villains in his sketches. Only in rare instances like the Lincoln sketch or the one about the driving instructor does Bob play the victim.”
All things being equal, Roland Kibbee believes that Bob Newhart should have a 25-year life expectancy in television. However, he feels that Newhart's number 1 problem will always be writing. He believes a permanent three or four man writing-staff (rather than a transient one) would help maintain his level of comedy.

We don’t have Ruskin’s comments (Variety reported Ruskin was irked that Newhart wanted to use cue cards), but we do from one of the show’s writers. This is from Les Wedman’s column in the Vancouver Sun of May 26, 1962. Just before being nominated for a couple of Emmys, the show received a Peabody Award.

There were laughs the other night when Lucille Ball almost ran out of breath reading the 11 of the Bob Newhart Show writers nominated for an Emmy. They were Roland Kibbee, Dean Hargrove, Phil Sharpe, Norman Leibman, Howard Snyder, Bob Kaufman, Charles Sherman, Don Hinkley, Milt Rosen, Bernie Chambers—and Bob Newhart.
Fortunately for the dignity of the show, they didn't win. If they had, the Emmy ceremony could have turned Into Fight of the Week.
The nominations were entered by Newhart, himself included. But Bob Kaufman—also on the list but off the payroll about a month ago—says he told Newhart he'd beat him up in front of 30 million viewers if he dared accept best writing Emmy.
Roland Kibbee, producer and head writer until he left the show months ago, agreed with Kaufman that Bob Newhart hasn't written one line of his own show this season.
"He can't write. He can't even spell," claims Kaufman in a report in Variety, the show biz bible. He says be told Newhart that if he went on stage to accept an Emmy for writing “I’ll take it away from you."
He said "for 19 shows we didn't even let Newhart in the story room. We told him to play golf. He wanted to take out all the jokes."
Contrary to public opinion, Kaufman went on, Newhart didn't want satire on the show. "Now he wants to be a martyr and say he tried but America wasn't ready.” Ralph Levy, who replaced Kibbee as producer of the show, allied himself with the star and his uneasiness at satire.
"Newhart," says Kaufman, "can ad lib, and did. He's the best monologist I've ever seen, but he's no writer. He's a credit-grabber.

Sour grapes? As far as I know, Newhart wrote the routines on his early comedy albums. I have trouble believing he was spelling-challenged.

Kaufman went on to write Divorce American Style and Freebie and the Bean as well as The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington. Newhart went on to be beloved by the entertainment world, thanks partly to two successful television sitcoms, and is mourned after his death at age 94.