Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - Bob Newhart's deadpan wit is like no other

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Brooks Peterson

Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com

Monday, January 15, 2001

Bob Newhart's deadpan wit is like no other

You know, there are actually times when I think cable TV is worth the money. No, seriously: I mean, sure, after who knows how many waves of high technology, the higher-numbered channels still come in fuzzy.
   But there are compensations as well - little moments that stay my hand when I'm on the point of ripping the cable smack out of the wall.
   Quite a few of these come to us thanks to A&E. Now, granted, A&E isn't quite the ticket for the aesthetes. It is, in fact, essentially middlebrow: i.e., its material is accessible to the ordinary mortal. How are you not going to love an outfit that gives us Inspector Morse and the long-suffering Lewis? Then there's "Biography." The series just continues to go from strength to strength, churning out these things at a prodigious rate without any perceptible fall-off in quality.
   A recent Sunday, though, brought what to my admittedly skewed way of thinking may have been the series' finest hour: a two-hour extravaganza on Bob Newhart.
   I suppose quite a few people out there are but dimly aware of Newhart. If they recognize him, it's only through his roles in a couple of successful sitcoms (and a couple of duds). Maybe it's a generational thing. I was negotiating the treacherous waters of mid-teen-hood when Newhart burst onto the scene with his smash hit LP album "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart" in 1960.
   The stand-up comedy scene back in those days was experiencing profound ferment: You had Mort Sahl and Shelley Berman doing their edgy cultural commentary; you had Lenny Bruce and his "sick humor" (which I suspect would seem downright mild these days); you had Brother Dave Gardner doing his hip Dixie shtick; you had Jonathan Winters being . . . well, being Jonathan Winters.
   But it was this Newhart guy who took the country by storm. At one point, according to A&E, "Button-Down Mind" and "The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back" were the No. 1 and No. 2 LP albums on the pop charts.
   I can't begin to deconstruct the Newhart magic, but I suspect it had something to do with the contrast between, on the one hand, his bland, Midwestern persona and uninflected delivery (he still comes across as the accountant he once was), and, on the other, the hip (sometimes bordering on subversive) content of his routines.
   Newhart raised a specialized genre - the one-way conversation - to heights of inspired lunacy. Often these bits were built around phone calls: for example, Abe Lincoln's press agent counseling him against against shaving off his beard ("It's part of the image, babe").
   In others, he had you envision a familiar scene rendered surrealistic by the Newhart sensibility. A case in point: The skipper of a nuclear sub attempts to complete a months-long, record-setting underwater cruise while at the same time struggling with a mutinous crew. "Men, I can take a joke, but seriously: It's time you returned the executive officer. . . ."
   The "Biography" piece sheds light on other aspects of the Newhart phenomenon: We learn, for instance, that what your see is what you get. Newhart doesn't just come across as Mr. Regular Guy; he is Mr. Regular Guy. He was still living with his parents in a Chicago suburb when "Button-Down Mind" hit the charts. He married an attractive and supportive woman - and remains married to her. He has four kids, all of whom obviously adore him. Scandal has never touched his name. No tantrums. No strutting. No self-importance.
   What is this guy doing in Hollywood?
   Bob Newhart, we learn, is now 70. Though far from retirement, he's taking it a bit easier. And that's fine with me, just so long as he puts in the occasional appearance to remind us that comedy is not confined to the screeching, trash-mouth, crotch-grabbing, scatological assaults that pass for humor in all too many venues in this brave new age of ours.
   Oh, and if you're taking requests, Mr. Newhart, could you do the one about the Grace L. Ferguson Airline and Storm Door Company? . . .



Brooks Peterson

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