RIP, Bob Newhart
Jul. 24th, 2024 06:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerAmerican comedian Bob Newhart died last week. He was 94. Newhart gained fame starting in the 1960s with multiple award-winning comedy albums and starring roles in two critically acclaimed TV series. Younger generations were introduced to his dry, understated style of comedy through his minor-character role as Papa Elf in the 2003 Will Ferrell movie, Elf, and his guest-star appearances as Professor Proton in later seasons of The Big Bang Theory. It was for the latter he finally won an Emmy award in 2013.
My own experience with Bob Newhart's comedy began with watching episodes of his second self-named TV show, Newhart, in the mid 1980s. It was a family friendly show. I remember my father thinking it was absolutely hilarious. To me, though, as a teen, it was like, "WTF? This is supposed to be funny?" I mean, there were bits of it that were funny but on the whole it fell flat for me. The humor was slow and bland.
That all made a lot more sense in retrospect last week when I read how Newhart got his start in comedy. He started doing humor as an amateur in the 1950s while bored working as a corporate accountant, then broke out with a chart topping comedy album in 1960. 1960. Of course my boring dad liked him in the 1980s. Newhart was playing to what he enjoyed as a younger adult. Meanwhile, as a teen in the 1980s my notion of comedy was defined by Eddie Murphy's eponymous chart-topping 1982 comedy album. Murphy and Newhart were comedy night and day.
For years I thought of Newhart as a comedy relic best left in the past. That said, I did enjoy his roles in Elf and Big Bang Theory. There, though, he played characters who were clearly written as throwbacks to an earlier time. And with his recent passing I looked up some of his older comedy from the 1970s and 80s. He was funny... but in a bland, safe-for-adults 50+ way. Now that I'm 50+ it hits better.
My own experience with Bob Newhart's comedy began with watching episodes of his second self-named TV show, Newhart, in the mid 1980s. It was a family friendly show. I remember my father thinking it was absolutely hilarious. To me, though, as a teen, it was like, "WTF? This is supposed to be funny?" I mean, there were bits of it that were funny but on the whole it fell flat for me. The humor was slow and bland.
That all made a lot more sense in retrospect last week when I read how Newhart got his start in comedy. He started doing humor as an amateur in the 1950s while bored working as a corporate accountant, then broke out with a chart topping comedy album in 1960. 1960. Of course my boring dad liked him in the 1980s. Newhart was playing to what he enjoyed as a younger adult. Meanwhile, as a teen in the 1980s my notion of comedy was defined by Eddie Murphy's eponymous chart-topping 1982 comedy album. Murphy and Newhart were comedy night and day.
For years I thought of Newhart as a comedy relic best left in the past. That said, I did enjoy his roles in Elf and Big Bang Theory. There, though, he played characters who were clearly written as throwbacks to an earlier time. And with his recent passing I looked up some of his older comedy from the 1970s and 80s. He was funny... but in a bland, safe-for-adults 50+ way. Now that I'm 50+ it hits better.
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Date: 2024-07-26 04:49 am (UTC)I don't think "bland" is quite fair, even though I've looked up a few things and his is not really my humour. It feels to me - speaking structurally, anyway - that he's more extremely low key, intentionally underplayed, working sort of as his own straight man, staying reserved and "buttoned down" (see his first two albums) as his material gets goofier and goofier, creating a higher contrast between person and delivery and content. If that makes sense.
John Cleese does some of the same sort of delivery with the Python troupe, though he also had other tools in his arsenal. And others have done it as well, of course.