IMO, a very well-deserved honor. I agree with those who consider the final "Newhart" episode to be among the greatest TV endings of all time
washingtonpost.com
Bob Newhart Gets the Call For Twain Prize
By Don Oldenburg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 4, 2002; Page C01
Bob Newhart has his ear pressed to the telephone getting laughs again.
"The funny thing is, I don't like to get on the telephone because there is always somebody on the other end," says the button-down comedian whose trademark routine -- the one-man telephone conversation -- launched a career of 40-odd years of stand-up comedy, recordings, films and TV sitcoms. "I'm used to nobody being on the other end."
On Oct. 29, the understated Newhart will be on the receiving end of this year's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, the Kennedy Center announced yesterday. The award, to be presented as the finale of the center's fifth "Celebration of American Humor," is given annually to recognize the comedic arts and honor the laugh legacy of Mark Twain, one of humor's greatest exponents.
"The universal appeal of Bob Newhart's self-effacing, yet clever and pointed humor, makes him a perfect choice," observes Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser. "He is everyone's brother, dad and uncle, and he makes us laugh at ourselves with grace and great skill."
Newhart, 72, was told a couple of weeks ago. "I was quite floored by it," he said from his Los Angeles office yesterday as he prepared to fly to New York to appear on the "Late Show With David Letterman" (airing Friday) and begin his spring comedy tour of campuses and theaters.
Newhart's star began rising in 1960 after appearances on TV variety programs hosted by Jack Paar, Ed Sullivan, Garry Moore and others. He won three Grammys that year, for best album, best new artist and best spoken-word comedy performance. (His debut LP, "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart," was the first comedy album to reach No. 1 on the Billboard charts.)
Although his 1961 namesake comedy-variety show won an Emmy Award and a Peabody Award, it lasted only one season. While continuing his stand-up career, Newhart made several movies, including "Hell Is for Heroes" with Steve McQueen (1962), "Catch-22" with Alan Arkin and "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever" with Barbra Streisand (both from 1970).
His low-key, highbrow brand of humor finally hit the big time in 1972 with "The Bob Newhart Show" on CBS. Produced by the same team that created "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," it ran six years, earning a popular and critical following for its portrayal of stammering Chicago psychologist Bob Hartley. The show poked humane fun at the neuroses that lurked beneath the complacent surface of everyday American life in the '70s, much as Twain tweaked the lunacies of his own times. And the trademark telephone routine, alluded to in the show's opening credits, found its way into almost every episode.
In 1982 he brought his cardigan-sweater persona back to television in "Newhart," a sitcom in which he played subdued do-it-yourself author Dick Loudon, who managed a Vermont country inn. The master of pan was again surrounded by offbeat characters, including his caretaker, George Utley, and three yokel brothers named Larry, Darryl and Darryl. The show's final episode, after an eight-year run, earned kudos as one of the greatest TV endings of all time: Newhart awakens in bed with Suzanne Pleshette (wife Emily from "The Bob Newhart Show") and tells her he just had a peculiar dream about running an inn in Vermont.
It was classic Newhart. "I always thought of my humor as subversive. It doesn't appear to be doing what it is doing, but it does," says Newhart, who came out of the Chicago school of comedians that included Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Shelley Berman and Lenny Bruce.
In Newhart's phone routine, the audience hears only his end of the conversation. In one of his standard Abe Lincoln bits, for instance, he is Lincoln's public-relations man. "Abe's wearing a cardigan, and I'm saying, 'No, no, the focus groups love the shawl and stovepipe hats,' " he says. "It's a very effective device because it involves the audience. The audience is supplying the other end of the conversation. What I am saying is not funny, it's what is not said that is funny."
In the '90s, Newhart had two short-lived sitcoms, "Bob" and "George and Leo." And in 1998, his album "Bob Newhart's Button Down Concert" earned his most recent Grammy nomination. Since then, he has fit a full concert schedule around tee-off times.
And now the award. Mark Krantz, co-producer of the Kennedy Center's American Humor series of comedy-related events, says Newhart is a perfect choice: "The honorees have had careers in film, onstage, in the written word, they make great albums." Previous winners, chosen by the Kennedy Center board, are Richard Pryor, Jonathan Winters, Carl Reiner and Whoopi Goldberg.
Newhart says he has recently reread Mark Twain and is humbled by the durability of his wit and wisdom. "I'm still in shock that I won," he says. Then he laughs at the possibility that, as the award is presented, he'll awaken next to Suzanne Pleshette.
"Honey, I just had a dream you wouldn't believe. I just dreamed I won the Mark Twain Award!" he says, then carries on the other end of the conversation.
"Okay, that's it. No more Chinese food for you before bedtime."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company |
