By Pam Walatka
Good news: Bob Newhart is not going to retire. He believes those who have the ability to make people laugh have an obligation to continue doing so. Besides, he loves making people laugh. His book, “I Shouldn’t Even Be Doing This: And Other Things That Strike Me as Funny” (Hyperion, 2006), replays his most famous bits, recounts the major events of his life and throws in chuckles all along the way.
The first line of the introduction reads, “I realize that most people skip the introduction and the acknowledgments. If you are one of those people, then you’re not even reading this.”
Newhart burst onto the comedy scene in the 1960s when he released his first comedy record album, “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart,” which quickly became No. 1 on the Billboard record charts. His second album made him the first performer to hold both No. 1 and No. 2 simultaneously on the Billboard charts.
He had barely begun his comedy career. He had been working as an accountant in Chicago and in the meantime developed humorous routines with a friend over the phone. They recorded the routines, lost money, and the friend gave up, Newhart persevered. Bada-bing, bada-boom, he gets a recording contract and makes an album of one-sided phone conversations.
Whereas previous comedians told jokes in nightclubs, Newhart and other performers, such as Mike Nichols and Elaine May, developed expanded routines wryly following a funny situation, then put the routines on records - thus enabling college students to enjoy them without paying to see the performers at a nightclub.
One of Newhart’s most famous - and still funny - routines involves a driving instructor responding to a terrible student’s actions. We never hear what Mrs. Webb is saying, just the instructor’s reaction to mounting catastrophe.
Newhart’s deadpan delivery makes his routines hilarious. He really was an accountant, and he performs his comedy in the same tone of voice an accountant might use in delivering year-end reports. Mrs. Webb might be running amok, but the driving instructor is unflappable: “All right, let’s get up a bit more speed and gradually ease it into second. Well, I didn’t want to cover reverse this early, but as long as you shifted into it …”
He developed that routine before he was making a living at comedy - he was reading the classified ads daily looking for part-time work and noticed an ongoing demand for driving instructors. “I began to wonder why there was an insatiable need for driving instructors. This led me to imagine what an average day was like for driving instructors. Then I exaggerated it a little bit.”
Throughout the book, his classic routines are interwoven with information about his life, told with his characteristic humor. “I left law school after a year and a half without graduating. I hate the phrase ‘flunked out.’ I failed to complete the assigned courses. I have my explanation for what happened, and the school has theirs.”
Even if you are too young to remember Newhart’s comedy albums and hit TV shows, you probably have seen his recent work in movies and TV (including voice work for such animated shows as “The Simpsons”). He played Morty, the ex-boyfriend of Susan’s mother on “Desperate Housewives,” which he writes, “is either a serious drama or spoof depending on which side of the humor scale you fall.”
He has been married to Virginia Quinn since 1963. She came up with the ending for his “Newhart” show, the scene where the entire series turns out to be a dream and he wakes up in bed with his wife (played by Suzanne Pleshette) from his previous series “The Bob Newhart Show.” TV Guide named it one of the five most memorable moments in TV history.
Here and there you might find entire pages that are not funny, but you can expect to laugh out loud more than once in this book that is every bit as nice, and reserved, as you would expect Newhart to be.
“I Shouldn’t Even Be Doing This” is available at Main Street Cafe & Books.
