Classic! Bob Newhart…How He Became His Own Straight Man

In the clip, you’ll see Bob doing what made him famous…being his own straight man in one of his famous one sided telephone calls. In the photo we see Bob at Chicago’s WGN in 1959.

Chicago native, Bob Newhart was drafted into the Army and served in the Korean War as a personnel manager until being discharged in 1954. After the war, Newhart got a job as an accountant for United States Gypsum. He later claimed that his motto, “That’s close enough,” and his habit of adjusting petty cash imbalances with his own money shows he did not have the temperament to be an accountant.

In 1958, Newhart became an advertising copywriter for Fred A. Niles, a major independent film and television producer in Chicago. It was here that he and a co-worker would entertain each other with long telephone calls about absurd scenarios, which they would later record and send to radio stations as audition tapes. When his co-worker ended his participation, Newhart continued the recordings alone, developing the shtick which was to serve him well for decades.

A disc jockey, Dan Sorkin, who later became the announcer-sidekick on his NBC series, introduced Newhart to the head of talent at Warner Bros. Records, which signed him in 1959–only a year after the label was formed–based solely on those recordings. He expanded his material into a stand-up routine which he began to perform at nightclubs.

His 1960 comedy album, ‘The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart’, went straight to number one on the charts, beating Elvis Presley and the cast album of ‘The Sound of Music’. It was the first comedy album to make #1 on the Billboard charts. ‘Button Down Mind’ received the 1961 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. The album peaked at #2 in the UK Albums Chart. Newhart also won Best New Artist, and his quickly released follow-up album, ‘The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back’, won Best Comedy Performance – Spoken Word that same year.

Newhart became famous mostly on the strength of his audio releases, in which he became the world’s first solo “straight man”. This is a seeming contradiction in terms: by definition, a straight man is the counterpart to a more loony comedic partner. Newhart’s routine, however, was simply to portray one end of a conversation (usually a phone call), playing the straightest of comedic straight men and implying what the other person was saying. In the clip, he does just that! Enjoy and share! .

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