Newhart played Professor Proton on the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory from 2013 to 2018, for which he received his first ever career Emmy Award, for the Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series.

[6] His parents were Julia Pauline (née Burns; 1901–1994), a housewife, and George David Newhart (1899–1987), a part-owner of a plumbing supply business.

[6][10] He briefly attended Loyola University Chicago School of Law, but did not complete a degree, in part, he said, because he had been asked to behave unethically during an internship.

He later said that his motto, "That's close enough," and his habit of adjusting petty cash imbalances with his own money showed that he lacked the temperament of an accountant.

Newhart's routine was to portray one end of a conversation (usually a phone call), playing the comedic straight man while implying what the other person was saying.

[1] Newhart told a 2005 interviewer for PBS's American Masters that his favorite stand-up routine was "Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue", which appears on this album.

[15] A follow-up album, The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back!, was released six months later and won Best Comedy Performance – Spoken Word that year.

On December 10, 2015, publicist and comedy album collector Jeff Abraham revealed that a "lost" Newhart track from 1965 about Paul Revere existed on a one-of-a-kind acetate, which he owns.

The Peabody Board cited him as "a person whose gentle satire and wry and irreverent wit waft a breath of fresh and bracing air through the stale and stuffy electronic corridors.

In 1972, soon after he guest-starred on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, he was approached by his agent and his managers, producer Grant Tinker, and actress Mary Tyler Moore (the husband/wife team who founded MTM Enterprises), to work on a series called The Bob Newhart Show, to be written by David Davis and Lorenzo Music.

He was very interested in the starring role of psychologist Bob Hartley, with Suzanne Pleshette playing his wry, loving wife, Emily, and Bill Daily as neighbor and friend Howard Borden.

[citation needed] In addition to Wallace as Bob's wisecracking, man-chasing receptionist Carol Kester, the cast included Peter Bonerz as amiable orthodontist Jerry Robinson; Jack Riley as Elliot Carlin, the most misanthropic of Hartley's patients; character actor and voice artist John Fiedler as milquetoast Emil Petersen; and Pat Finley as Bob's sister, Ellen Hartley, a love interest for Howard Borden.

[24] Although primarily a television star, Newhart appeared in a number of popular films, beginning with the 1959 war story Hell Is for Heroes (where he did his one-sided telephone act in a bunker).

His films include 1970's Alan Jay Lerner musical On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, the 1971 Norman Lear comedy Cold Turkey, Mike Nichols's war satire Catch-22, the 1977 Disney animated feature The Rescuers and its 1990 sequel The Rescuers Down Under as the voice of Bernard, and he played the president of the United States in the comedy First Family (1980).

[33] The ensemble cast included Lisa Kudrow, but the show did not develop a strong audience and was cancelled shortly after the start of its second season, despite good critical reviews.

In 1995, Newhart was approached by Showtime to make the first comedy special of his 35-year career, Off the Record, which consisted of him performing material from his first and second albums in front of an audience in Pasadena, California.

[3] In 2005, he began a recurring role in Desperate Housewives as Morty, the on-again/off-again boyfriend of Sophie (Lesley Ann Warren), Susan Mayer's (Teri Hatcher) mother.

[35] On August 27, 2006, at the 58th Primetime Emmy Awards, hosted by Conan O'Brien, Newhart was placed in a supposedly airtight glass prison that contained three hours of air.

[36] During an episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Newhart made a comedic cameo with members of the ABC show Lost lampooning an alternate ending to the series finale.

At that year's Emmy ceremony, Newhart appeared as a presenter with The Big Bang Theory star Jim Parsons and received a standing ovation.

"[44] On his TV shows, although he got his share of funny lines, he worked often in the Jack Benny tradition of being the "straight man" while the sometimes rather bizarre cast members surrounding him got the laughs.

But Newhart said, "I was not influenced by Jack Benny", and cited George Gobel and Bob and Ray as his initial writing and performance inspirations.

In a bit called "King Kong", a rookie security guard at the Empire State Building seeks guidance as to how to deal with an ape that is "between 18 and 19 stories high, depending on whether there's a 13th floor or not."

His other famous routines included "The Driving Instructor", "The Mrs. Grace L. Ferguson Airline (and Storm Door Company)", "Introducing Tobacco to Civilization", "Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue", "Defusing a Bomb" (in which an uneasy police chief tries to walk a new and nervous patrolman through defusing a live shell discovered on a beach), "The Retirement Party", "Ledge Psychology", "The Khrushchev Landing Rehearsal", and "A Friend with a Dog."

Starting in the 1940s, Arlene Harris also built a long radio and TV career around her one-sided telephone conversations, and the technique was later also used by Lily Tomlin, Ellen DeGeneres, and others.

The friendship was memorialized in Bob & Don: A Love Story, a 2023 short documentary film by Judd Apatow, released by The New Yorker, featuring interviews, as well as home videos, with both families.

[59][60] In 1995, Newhart was one of several investors in Rotijefco (a blend of his children's names), which bought radio station KKSB (AM 1290 kHz) in Santa Barbara, California.

[61] In 2005, Rotijefco sold the station to Santa Barbara Broadcasting, which changed its call sign to KZSB and format to news and talk radio.

[65][66][67][68] Upon his death, President Joe Biden released a statement which read, "Today, we mourn the loss of Bob Newhart, a comedy legend and beloved performer who kept Americans laughing for decades.

"[69] Those who paid tributes to Newhart included Reese Witherspoon, James Woods, Julie Bowen, Carol Burnett, Conan O'Brien, Alec Baldwin, Judd Apatow, Kaley Cuoco, Mayim Bialik, Kunal Nayyar, Iain Armitage, Al Franken, Mark Hamill, and Jamie Lee Curtis.