Bob Newhart from 2014 and 2018
Marc:I'm sitting out in my car in front of a home in Bel Air.
Marc:Haven't done this in a while.
Marc:And I'm nervous.
Marc:When you're going to talk to somebody like Bob Newhart,
Marc:I mean, I'm a bit in awe.
Marc:This is a guy that's had an amazing career on television.
Marc:But I just spent the morning listening to his first three records.
Marc:The Button Down Mind, Bob Newhart, Return of the Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart, and Behind the Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart.
Marc:And these all were recorded roughly between 1959, 1961.
Marc:The first album, The Button Down Mind of Bob Newhart, won two Grammys.
Marc:1961, the Grammys.
Marc:Won the best album of the year, Best New Artist.
Marc:And Return of the Button Down Mind won Best Spoken Word Album the same year.
Marc:So this is an amazing amount of output.
Marc:And these were huge records.
Marc:And these were game-changing records.
Marc:in terms of what I see as the evolution from the comedian to the stand-up comedian.
Marc:I don't think Bob Newhart gets the proper respect that he should as a standup comic and as somebody that really invented the form of one of the main inventors of the form of, you know, American standup, you know, shifting away from joke telling and from, you know, straight up comedic entertaining to actually doing cultural commentary and satire.
Marc:I mean, people are familiar with or at least familiar with the name of Lenny Bruce or the name of Mort Sahl.
Marc:But this is a little after those guys put out their records that Bob was working.
Marc:And these records are profoundly important in terms of creating what the possibilities of standup could be, of point of view comedy, of criticizing satirically
Marc:The forces that were at that time, marketing, advertising, politics, bureaucratic employment, what was being presented as the future of America.
Marc:This is an interesting time that I don't know about historically that often, but it's a transition time.
Marc:You know, in the middle of the Eisenhower administration, it's before Kennedy, but it's post-war.
Marc:And there was a certain amount of momentum going on in America.
Marc:You know, there's a big change going on.
Marc:You know, the beatniks were already around.
Marc:As I said, Lenny was already around.
Marc:There was a counterculture.
Marc:But Bob Newhart becomes huge, really speaking truth to power in a very palatable way.
Marc:He did comedy that it wasn't just him on the phone talking to someone we couldn't hear.
Marc:But on some of these records, there's characters.
Marc:He's doing characters that are engaging with each other.
Marc:He's setting up scenes in offices, on the telephone, driving instructors, on vacations.
Marc:Yet he's doing full scenes.
Marc:What I heard one reviewer say about Cosby, he's peopling the stage with these characters.
Marc:This is not something you see much anymore, where comedians will do a series of characters within a scene.
Marc:There's a few guys that do it, and I love it.
Marc:It's a rare thing.
Marc:And it was rare even then, obviously, to do well.
Marc:In my mind, Bob Newhart's one of the most important stand-ups ever.
Marc:As I said, a lot of people know him from his TV shows, and I think those are fine.
Marc:I think they're great.
Marc:They're obviously amazing.
Marc:They were hilarious, both the Bob Newhart show and Newhart years later.
Marc:But there was a period where he was just doing stand-up.
Marc:You know, he guest hosted The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson over 80 times.
Marc:He was on the Dean Martin Variety Show, you know, dozens of times.
Marc:Ed Sullivan made appearances in movies.
Marc:But if you think about it, and I'm not sure you would unless I told you, you know,
Marc:The three records that happened between 59 and 61 were over 10 years before the Bob Newhart show, which really familiarized everybody with Bob Newhart.
Marc:That's a long time.
Marc:I wonder what was going on in those times.
Marc:I wonder what was going on in his mind as he made the shift into stand-up.
Marc:I guess I'm going to find all these things out as soon as I pull into his driveway.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:just sitting out here weirdly in Bel Air, talking on a microphone parked on a fairly secluded lane.
Marc:And he's in his 80s now.
Marc:I'll try and keep my act together here.
Marc:I've made a bunch of notes here.
Marc:I've got two pages of handwritten notes in the margins all over the place.
Marc:It's just like my brain splattered it onto a piece of paper, all the things that I should know.
Marc:But ultimately, it's going to really come down to me and him and I sitting there and talking.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:I feel this way a lot.
Marc:I felt this way when I was sitting outside of Jonathan Winter's house.
Marc:I felt this way when I was in the parking lot of Mel Brooks' office.
Marc:Sitting outside of Carl Reiner's house.
Marc:Sitting outside Dick Van Dyke's house.
Marc:These guys are guys that were sort of there at the beginning.
Marc:And
Marc:it's always daunting to me to sort of, how do I encapsulate that?
Marc:How do I, you know, get a sense of that?
Marc:How do I get it all in or at least get that moment?
Marc:You know, moments of, I've got to shut up.
Marc:I should probably, I can't even head inside yet.
Marc:So I'll just sit here.
Marc:So we were just talking about Jonathan Winters when I spent time with him.
Marc:You said that he was one of the first guys you ever saw?
Guest:He was, Johnny and I got to, well, there was a club in Chicago called the Black Orchid.
Guest:And somebody, I think somebody fell, I had never worked a nightclub, but I had a kind of minor reputation around Chicago.
Marc:As what?
Guest:As just a funny guy.
Guest:I did a local television show there.
Guest:I did a man on the street show.
Guest:And a guy, Tom Racine, was the host.
Guest:He was a man on the street show in 19...
Guest:Now, A Man on the Street Show was revolutionary in 1947, but it was no longer revolutionary in 1958.
Guest:So it was hard getting people to stop because they'd just push you out of their way.
Guest:Here comes a gentleman.
Guest:We'd like to talk.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Guest:They'd had enough of it already.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So he would do regular interviews, and then I would be the comic relief, and I would do...
Marc:On a topic, usually, or just?
Guest:No, just whatever I wrote the night before.
Marc:That was on you.
Marc:Whatever struck me.
Marc:Show up prepared.
Guest:Whatever struck me.
Guest:It's funny.
Guest:We were on opposite today in Captain Kangaroo.
Guest:Tough spot.
Guest:Very tough spot.
Guest:It was five days a week.
Guest:And we were on for 16 weeks.
Guest:We got one postcard.
Guest:We weren't even sure if the signal was getting out of the building.
Marc:The postcard said, why are you guys still on?
Guest:No, the postcard, I did a guy, the most famous human interest storyteller in the world.
Guest:This man has published many books of human interest, just strictly on.
Guest:So Tom asked me, what is your favorite story?
Guest:Of all the stories you've written, you must have a favorite human interest story.
Guest:So I tell this story about it.
Guest:I said, well, it's the family, and they had this dog.
Guest:They had a little dog.
Guest:And the dog had been with the family for, oh, years and years.
Guest:And somebody left the gate open, and the dog got out.
Guest:And one of the kids came back from school and said, where's Sparky?
Guest:And...
Guest:The mother said, I don't know, is he in the house?
Guest:I said, no, I look in the backyard.
Guest:He said, not in the backyard.
Guest:So they started looking for the dog, and the dog, and they were, hey.
Guest:It just became blibbering, you know.
Guest:The car was a guy, he wanted to buy the book.
Guest:He thought it was a real book?
Guest:He thought it was a real book.
Guest:So I said, oh my God, we're not even getting through to people lately.
Guest:They don't know it's a shtick.
Marc:That still happens, you know.
Marc:I'm sure.
Marc:There's a sucker board every minute.
Guest:People just believe everything literally.
Guest:Poor guy, you moved him.
Marc:It all worked up.
Marc:Just wanted the book.
Marc:So, you know, I listened to, you know, all the records, you know, well, the first three records.
Marc:And...
Guest:First three were the best.
Marc:Well, it was an amazing amount of output, you know, and it was a flood.
Guest:It was a I mean, the first three albums were just they just poured out.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And leading up to that, before we get into exactly what happened.
Marc:So you're around Chicago.
Marc:You grew up there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Do you go back still?
Guest:Yeah, I go back.
Guest:You got people there?
Guest:Yeah, it's a great city.
Guest:Yeah, I love that city.
Marc:You still have family there?
Guest:Yeah, my three sisters are there, yeah.
Marc:And so when you grew up, what was your family like?
Marc:What was the life like?
Marc:What did your old man do?
Guest:He drank.
Guest:Well, I mean, but see, I thought everybody's life was that.
Guest:That's what a kid does.
Guest:I mean, he worked during the day.
Guest:He was a heating and air conditioning and heating salesman.
Guest:And then he'd come home, and then we'd have dinner.
Guest:Sometimes as...
Guest:A family, other times not.
Guest:And then he would leave around 8 o'clock and he would go to this bar with all his friends.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then he'd come back about 11, 30, 12 o'clock.
Guest:And he had a snoot full, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I thought that's what every father did.
Marc:And in retrospect, what do you think?
Guest:Well, I don't think he wanted to be with us.
Guest:It finally dawned on me that maybe we weren't there.
Guest:In fact, I guess my career is all about just trying to get my dad's attention.
Guest:Hey, and I had this conversation with Steve Martin.
Guest:He had the same upbringing.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Not that his father was an alcoholic, but his father was a...
Guest:was just uninterested.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Detached.
Guest:And he spent his time just, you know, trying to impress his dad.
Guest:And so I'm devoted.
Guest:I mean, I want to thank him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because if I grew up in a normal house, I'd be an accountant somewhere, you know.
Marc:It's interesting how many comics I talk to that have an experience like that, you know, whether their father's detached or absent or, you know, this need for this approval to prove yourself.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Marc:But there's also like a weird anger at the core of that as well.
Marc:Like, you know, why?
Marc:You know, so so I guess your mother was was solid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:She was, yeah, very, she kept it going.
Guest:But in a way, she allowed him to do it.
Marc:Well, that's the classic structure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Put him to bed, picked him up, walked in there.
Guest:Not that so much.
Guest:He wasn't that kind of drunk.
Guest:He just was, he drank every night.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Until a doctor said to him, George, that was his first name, he said, George, you can't drink anymore.
Guest:You're allowed one drink.
Mm-hmm.
Guest:And my dad said, okay.
Marc:And that was it?
Guest:That was it.
Guest:From then on, he had one drink during the day.
Guest:That's all he had.
Marc:And was he a different guy?
Guest:No.
Guest:Probably not as much fun.
Marc:Are you the oldest or where do you fit in with the whole?
Guest:Second oldest, yeah.
Marc:And where did your sisters end up doing?
Marc:How did it all go?
Guest:My oldest sister is a nun, a religious.
Guest:Really a nun?
Guest:Yeah, why would I lie about that?
Guest:I'm not going to make anything up.
Guest:She was the first astronaut, first woman astronaut.
Marc:The first astronaut nun.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:The flying nun was based on her.
Marc:So you brought up religious?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:You could say that, yeah.
Marc:Catholic.
Guest:Catholic, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The fear was put in you early on.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:And you remained religious.
Yeah.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I guess you've got to have something that holds you together, right?
Guest:Yeah, I guess.
Guest:It works for me.
Guest:I'm not as religious as I used to be.
Marc:Show business will do that to you.
Guest:But I like Francis.
Guest:I like a lot of the stuff he's doing.
Marc:Who?
Guest:Pope Francis.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I call him Francis.
Marc:Okay, you talked to him this morning.
Guest:We're very close.
Guest:I just got off the phone.
Marc:God calls me for advice.
Marc:That's a new bit.
Marc:You're on the phone with Francis.
Marc:Yeah, he seems like certainly a more open-minded fellow.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, have you been over there?
Marc:Have you been to Rome?
Marc:Have you seen the heart of it all?
Guest:Yeah, went to Rome with the Rickles, as a matter of fact.
Marc:When did that friendship start?
Guest:That friendship started because my wife, Jenny, of 51 years.
Guest:We're married 51 years.
Guest:She and Barbara Rickles, who was then Barbara Sklar, was a secretary for an agent that Jenny was going out with.
Guest:Not while we were married, but before we got married.
Guest:Because I would have put my foot down.
Guest:You would have said something.
Guest:Hey, wait a minute.
Marc:Not the situation I had planned.
Guest:No.
Guest:So I had never met Don.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I knew, of course, knew of Don.
Guest:So I was at, I think, the Sands in Vegas in the main room.
Guest:I always bring that up, the main room.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Because there's a pecking order.
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Guest:Not in the lounge.
Guest:He was in the lounge at the Sahara.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So Ginny said, and they had just gotten married.
Marc:So this is a young, sweaty Don Rickles.
Guest:It's the same Don Rickles you see.
Guest:I just saw him in Canada.
Marc:Did you see, yeah.
Marc:I saw him do the Q&A at the end because I was doing a gala show after him.
Marc:And when I got there, he was.
Guest:Oh, that's right.
Guest:He just did the.
Marc:And he was sitting up there.
Guest:Just for laughs.
Marc:Yeah, taking questions.
Marc:And it was phenomenal.
Marc:And he always speaks very highly of you.
Marc:And, you know, and it's just the yin and yang of it.
Marc:The kind of the differences in your personality.
Marc:I guess it was meant to be.
Marc:I'm surprised you guys never did the Sunshine Boys.
Guest:We talked about it.
Guest:Did you?
Guest:Yeah, we had talked about it.
Guest:By that time, it meant learning a lot of words.
Marc:So it was recently.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I would say five years ago.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Guest:So anyway, so Ginny says, oh, Don and Barbara are in town.
Guest:He's in the lounge, so why don't I set up and we'll have a late dinner with him because his hours were like, he started at 1 in the morning and went until 6 in the lounge.
Guest:So we said, fine.
Guest:So we go to the Sahara, as I remember, the coffee shop.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah, the all-night diner thing.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And we're talking.
Guest:I'm talking to Barbara, and Jenny's talking to Don.
Guest:And now it's time to go and see Don's 3 o'clock show in the lounge.
Guest:So now we're in.
Guest:Don goes back to change into a tux.
Guest:He still wears a tux.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Everybody, Cosby, everybody else has given up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, Cosby's in sweatsuits, you know, but...
Guest:And I'm just in a jacket, but Don still, he wears the traditional tux.
Guest:So he's going back to getting his tux.
Guest:So we're walking into the showroom, to the lounge.
Guest:And Ginny says to me, he's such a sweet man.
Guest:He's such, oh, he just wants to be with his family, and he hates being on the road.
Guest:I said, honey, that isn't the man you're going to see, okay?
Guest:I mean, you know, yes, he is that way.
Guest:She'd never seen him.
Guest:She had never seen him, no.
Guest:He walks out.
Guest:First thing he says, and they put us in the front row, first thing he says, he said this stammering idiot from Chicago was in the audience with his hooker wife from Bayonne, New Jersey.
Guest:So I look over, her jaw is dropped, and I said, I tried to tell you.
Guest:I said,
Marc:what he does and that was the introduction then we started taking trips together and we just that was it we just have a good time we just enjoy each other well it's interesting to me when I listen to your records again like today is that in my mind and one of the reasons that I have such respect for you is that there was a difference in what you were doing as a performer at that time I mean you know Don Rickles is he's his own thing he's Don Rickles but he's a club comic yeah
Marc:And it seems to me that you are part of this legacy of what really became – in my mind, there's a difference between a stand-up comedian and a comic.
Guest:There was a sea change in comedy.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Around 58.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And it was – the comic now had a point of view.
Marc:He had a way to speak a certain amount of truth to power.
Marc:He was able to take his time and it wasn't all based on old jokes.
Marc:There was no jokes rating.
Marc:It was a specific –
Guest:Which was the reason.
Guest:And it was probably more Saul first.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Then Shelly.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Mike and Elaine.
Guest:Johnny Winters, myself.
Guest:Lenny?
Guest:Lenny.
Guest:And that was pretty much it.
Guest:The reason they couldn't do Take My Wife Please because it was college audiences.
Guest:And they didn't relate.
Guest:I don't have a wife.
Guest:Tell me something that affects me.
Guest:And so they didn't go to nightclubs.
Guest:Because that's what I'll burn a hole in the coat.
Guest:All the punchlines.
Guest:which everybody had stole from everybody else.
Marc:And that was their parents anyways.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So now they had to find their nightclub.
Guest:Their nightclub was a college dorm, and they ordered pizza and beer, and they sat around and played... More tall, Lenny Bruce.
Guest:...whosever record it was.
Marc:Because I think it seems like Jonathan...
Marc:Really came out after you on record.
Marc:And I guess Shelley and Mort and Lenny had done a record.
Guest:Preceded, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, just a couple of years.
Guest:And I think Mike and Elaine.
Marc:And Mike and Elaine.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So when you're coming up, I mean, before you started doing comedy, because you really didn't start doing stand-up until after the record came out, right?
Yeah.
Guest:I did stand-up to make the record.
Marc:Right.
Guest:The first place I played as a stand-up, we recorded the album two weeks later.
Marc:That's mind-blowing.
Marc:I know.
Marc:Because knowing that and having read that, I was sort of listening to that record.
Marc:It was like, he's a little nervous.
Marc:He's a little nervous.
Oh, yeah.
Guest:Try terrifying.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Wait, there's another.
Guest:So Warner Brothers, they finally found a place that would take a chance on a comedian who had never played a nightclub.
Guest:We're going to tape on Friday night and on Saturday.
Guest:One show on Friday night and two shows on Saturday.
Guest:Friday night, I get a drunken woman in the front row.
Guest:That's the worst thing a comedian can get.
Marc:It's still the worst thing.
Marc:Yeah, still the worst thing.
Marc:That and the bachelorette party, the worst.
Guest:Yeah, because you can do... Same thing.
Guest:With a woman drunk, you can do maybe two lines and then you better stop because the sympathy immediately shifts to her.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:When she's drunk, so I'm doing...
Guest:of Abe Lincoln, who I'm doing the driving circuit.
Guest:And she's saying, that's a bunch of crap.
Guest:That's a bunch of crap.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:It's true the entire... So we go up to Georgia Buckingham, and she's clearer than I am.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's a bunch of crap, so... I'm the take.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:We had to throw Friday night out.
Guest:I got two.
Guest:I'm nervous enough anyway.
Guest:And where are you?
Guest:In Houston, at the Tidelands.
Guest:In Texas?
Guest:In Houston, Texas, yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:Why that choice?
Guest:Because they're the only ones who would take a chance.
Guest:It took them a year to find a club to hire a comedian who had never played a nightclub.
Marc:A nightclub in Chicago, there's tons of them.
Marc:No one would give a local guy...
Marc:No.
Marc:It was that tight?
Guest:There was a second city.
Guest:They were approached, and I was told they said, that isn't our kind of stuff.
Marc:What does that even mean?
Guest:I guess improv.
Guest:I guess it means improv.
Guest:I guess that's what it means.
Marc:All right, so all you got is Saturday night now.
Guest:All I got is two shows Saturday night, yeah.
Marc:And you nailed it.
Guest:what you heard was that's what happened.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And you could, you could hear that nervousness in the, well, not like nervousness, but like knowing what I knew, you know, and knowing that, you know, this was it, you know, like I, there was an intensity to it because, you know, by the time I got to a behind the button down mine, I mean, your flow was different.
Marc:Your comfort level was different.
Guest:You know, I'm not even aware of it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, but this is just me being sort of like, you know, obviously the material was great, and you were great.
Marc:I mean, it was a huge record.
Marc:It was the first record to, you know, to win, you know, won two Grammys.
Marc:So that was phenomenal.
Marc:That had never happened before.
Marc:And out of nowhere, your first night on stage, basically, as a stand-up comic, you won three Grammys, and it's a national phenomenon.
Marc:It sells all over the world.
Guest:I did a show one time.
Guest:I'm getting ready, because I only had people, they don't even understand, I only had one side of the album.
Guest:People don't know what you mean by one side, because they're used to CDs.
Marc:So what, four bits?
Guest:Three.
Marc:Three bits.
Guest:And you have three, three and a half.
Guest:You had three bits going into the show in Texas?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I had a driving instructor, Abe Lincoln, and submarine commander were the three I had.
Marc:So at that time, recording an album was no small task.
Marc:I mean, it was big equipment.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Well, you couldn't see it, but there were microphones hanging all over the place.
Guest:So I got three routines.
Guest:So I go out one night, and I come off, and I go by the maitre d', and he said, they're applauding.
Guest:He said, go back out.
Guest:I said, I don't have anything.
Guest:I said, that's all I have.
Guest:He said, well, go back out.
Guest:They're applauding.
Guest:I went back out, and I said, which one would you like to hear again?
Marc:That's all I had.
Marc:So leading up to this, what was the trajectory?
Marc:So you go to school and then you go into service?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And how long were you in the service?
Guest:Two years.
Marc:Were you in Korea?
Guest:No, I was in California.
Marc:That wasn't as hard a battle.
Guest:No war stories.
Guest:I lived in Chicago at that point 22 years.
Guest:They sent me to California.
Guest:Now I run into the California weather and I'm like...
Guest:Great.
Guest:Why didn't someone tell me about this?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I've been freezing to death or perspiring from heat.
Guest:And no one told me about California.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I said, you know, as soon as I get $300, I'm coming back out here.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you went to, would you go to school on that GI Bill?
Marc:How'd that work?
Guest:Yeah, afterwards.
Guest:I went to law school for a year and a half on the GI Bill.
Marc:And you bailed?
Guest:I flunked.
Marc:I'll use that from now on.
Marc:But it wasn't your thing?
Marc:You weren't interested?
Guest:I was too busy with, no.
Guest:Well, I was a law clerk.
Guest:Like I'd go to school in the morning and part of the afternoon, then I'd be a law clerk in the afternoon.
Guest:And then at night I was active in a play group.
Guest:So something had to suffer and it was law school.
Guest:At least that's my version of it.
Marc:You were doing sketches and stuff?
Guest:No, plays.
Guest:Just full plays?
Guest:Yeah, full plays, yeah.
Marc:When was the accounting period?
Guest:That was after I flunked out of law school.
Guest:So then I went into accounting.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And worked two and a half years as an accountant.
Marc:Was it horrible?
Marc:I mean, were you like, you know, this can't be my life?
Guest:Bored to death.
Guest:Yeah, bored to death.
Guest:That's how the Bob and Ray thing came about because...
Guest:At the end of the day, this guy I was in the play group with, Ed Gallagher, he'd call me on the phone and we'd do bits over the phone just to break the monotony of accounting.
Guest:And so I did two and a half years and then I thought, I just gotta try comedy.
Marc:I just... And when was the advertising gig?
Guest:That was after accounting.
Guest:That was a very short time, maybe six months.
Guest:A friend of mine was in advertising.
Guest:He got me a job in advertising.
Marc:And that didn't appeal to you?
Guest:I got fired.
Guest:I got, well, no, I mean, again, my side of it is I was on the wrong side of the room.
Guest:You know, I worked for a guy named Fred Niles.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who had this building, which is now Oprah, or was Oprah's building in Chicago.
Guest:And I was on the wrong side of the room.
Guest:And so he fired half the room and I was on the, that's my version of it.
Guest:Don't ask Fred because he's gone.
Guest:But I think he has a different version of it.
Guest:Anyway, at that point I said, I got to try this.
Guest:If I fall on my face, I fall on my face.
Guest:Okay, I'll go back to accounting or whatever, advertising.
Marc:But some of this stuff was so pointed, your experience in accounting and your experience in advertising, your experience in sort of a face with bureaucracy, but also your experience in what really became the dominating force of American culture, which was advertising.
Marc:Did it play into, like, because it seemed like on the first record, the couple of bits, the press agent, Nate Blinken,
Marc:and certainly the marketing of the Wright Brothers, that these were very pointed satires about image and about what people thought were true.
Guest:That's why they came up with the button-down mind.
Guest:That's why it was called the button-down mind of Bob Newhart, which wasn't even my idea.
Guest:That came out of Warner Brothers, that...
Guest:the uniform of the day on Madison Avenue was a button-down collar.
Guest:And so much of the material was about advertising and marketing and that kind of thing that they called it the button-down mind.
Marc:That was a pretty smart marketing person.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know where he is.
Guest:I never got a chance to thank him.
Marc:He did you right with that one.
Marc:I don't know that mainstream America had seen that type of satire really, you know, as accessible as you made it.
Marc:That...
Guest:I was just doing what I thought was funny.
Guest:I can't say there was a giant overall plan.
Marc:But it was definitely, you know, you had, you know, there was a certain chutzpah to it.
Marc:I mean, you know, it was the world that you sort of had been in a little bit.
Marc:And it was a world that everybody was starting to understand that was becoming public.
Marc:I mean, this was, it was a pretty powerful time for America.
Marc:So post-war, everything was moving forward.
Marc:The economy was good, right?
Right.
Marc:Yeah, Eisenhower.
Marc:But there was this weird beatnik thing that was happening.
Marc:There was a shift that sort of led into the 60s.
Guest:Actually, they always said nothing happened in the 50s.
Guest:A lot was happening in the 50s.
Marc:Things were breaking apart.
Guest:Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce and Shelley.
Marc:All right, so when you say you're going to start doing comedy and you've got this idea...
Marc:You know, how did you first start to approach it?
Marc:Because it all happened so quickly once you, you know, got the record.
Marc:But did you start going out and watching people?
Guest:No, I don't know.
Marc:You just were going to, Bob and Ray did it.
Guest:Bob and Ray, yes.
Guest:I thought my dream would have been to have become a writer for Bob and Ray.
Guest:That would have been, that's the epitome.
Guest:That's...
Marc:Well, there's that dynamic.
Marc:I mean, you can certainly hear a bit of that, but there's only you.
Marc:There's just Bob.
Marc:And the beats were filling in the blanks in reaction to this fictional person, this unheard person.
Marc:But so you didn't go out and study anything.
Marc:You're just sort of like, I'm going to do this.
Marc:Did you realize it was crazy at the time or did you really think of it as a reasonable career?
Yeah.
Guest:No, I just had to find out.
Guest:You just wanted to do it.
Guest:I just had to find out.
Guest:People were telling me, gee, you're funny.
Guest:You ought to go to New York and get in a play.
Guest:And then you go to New York and nothing happens and you come back.
Guest:The guy who told you to go to New York says, gee, I thought that would work out for you.
Guest:Now you've wasted five years of your life, and all this guy says is, gee, really, I thought that would work out for you.
Marc:So what was the series of events then?
Marc:So you had these bits that you wrote with the guy on the phone, with your buddy from accounting?
Marc:Ed Gallagher.
Marc:Ed Gallagher.
Marc:So you put these on paper.
Guest:There was a guy, I think Chris Peterson was his name.
Guest:He put up the money so we could make an acetate of like 10 routines that we had that Ed and I had developed over the... And a lot of them were improvised.
Guest:They were just... It was an open mic and I said, oh, um...
Marc:You mean the two of you were just working?
Guest:I'll be a submarine commander.
Guest:Okay, and then I'll introduce you as you're walking.
Guest:Okay, fine.
Guest:And then we'd just go.
Guest:So we sent these, and we got three replies.
Guest:We got Northampton, Mass., which I think was a girls' college near there.
Marc:You sent it out as an audition reel.
Guest:Yeah, we sent 100 of them.
Guest:This guy put up the money for it, Chris Peters.
Guest:We sent out 100 acetates.
Guest:Three replied.
Guest:It should have told us something.
Guest:Northampton, Mass., Jacksonville, Florida, Idaho Falls, Idaho.
Guest:Almost coast to coast.
Guest:Not quite.
Guest:Select cities.
Guest:We need Seattle and then we would have been...
Guest:So, okay, now we got, Ed said, what did we charge?
Guest:I said, I have no idea.
Guest:I said, I don't know.
Guest:Five five-minute routines a week for 13 weeks.
Guest:I said, I don't know, $7.50, $7.50.
Guest:No, no, come on.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I said, yeah, I think.
Guest:Well, we found out the tape cost more than $7.50.
Guest:So one of the stations stiffed us.
Guest:I don't know which one it was, one of the radio stations.
Guest:Two wanted to renew us on this basically poor man Bob and Ray program.
Guest:And we wrote him back and said, I'm sorry, we can't afford to do this anymore.
Guest:You know, it cost us money.
Guest:So then Ed was offered a job in New York in advertising, BBD&O.
Guest:So I'm in Chicago.
Guest:And Ed had to take the job because he had kids and he's married.
Guest:And we had nothing going.
Guest:We weren't making money.
Guest:So now I say, okay, I either have to find another partner as good as that or I go out on my own.
Guest:So I decided to go out on my own.
Guest:So a lot of the conversations, somebody is still there.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's on the other end of the phone.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And leading up to the record, how did the record deal sort of come together?
Marc:You couldn't audition.
Guest:No.
Guest:What happened was a disc jockey friend of mine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A guy named Dan Sorkin.
Guest:He was a great disc jockey.
Guest:He was like just off the wall kind of.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So the Warner Brothers record people were coming through Chicago.
Guest:So they call on Dan because he's a very big disc jockey.
Marc:To see what's going on?
Guest:To just, you know, handshake and, oh, by the way, we've got the Everly Brothers.
Guest:Oh, right, right, right.
Marc:Really like you to play this hot piece of wax.
Guest:So he said, I had this friend of mine.
Guest:I was on a, they had the tar show in Chicago.
Guest:We got huge ratings.
Guest:And it was off at 11 o'clock.
Guest:NBC decided, what do we do with this audience that we've got?
Guest:So they decided to build a show around Dan Sorkin, the disc jockey.
Guest:A TV show.
Guest:A TV show to keep the power audience.
Guest:I was a writer and performer.
Guest:And the show lasted, I think,
Guest:for weeks, I think.
Guest:The director, he said, if you were at home and you opened the window when the Parr show went off and the Dan Sorkin show came on, you could hear an audible click of television sets all over Chicago being turned off.
Guest:So anyway, Dan is familiar with my material.
Guest:So they're one of other people.
Guest:So he says, I have this friend of mine.
Guest:I think he's very funny.
Guest:And I said, okay, we'll listen to him.
Guest:So Dan calls me up.
Guest:He said, borrow a tape recorder and record Abe Lincoln, submarine commander and driving instructor.
Guest:So I do.
Guest:I take the tape down there.
Guest:They listen to it.
Guest:They say, okay, we think it's very funny.
Guest:And we'll record you at your next nightclub.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I said, I've never played a nightclub.
Guest:They said, well, then we'll have to find you a nightclub and record you at that nightclub.
Guest:And that was the year.
Guest:Unbelievable.
Guest:And that took a year to find him.
Guest:Because I called him up at one point because I had signed a recording contract with Warner Brothers.
Guest:And I said, whatever happened today?
Guest:They said, we're still trying to find a place that will take a chance on it.
Marc:I can't believe that's so astounding to me that the industry was so intimate at that time and so controlled that if you wanted to, you couldn't just rent a place.
Marc:But that wasn't really a possibility because you needed the audience.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:You needed to walk into an established joint.
Marc:You know, it's amazing to me.
Marc:Okay, so it takes a year, you end up in Texas, you knock this thing out, and your expectations around it, you knew you did well, right?
Guest:No, no, no, I didn't know.
Guest:I thought the record might sell.
Guest:25,000 copies.
Guest:And so if I went into a city, maybe there are 50 people that heard the end would come in to see it, to see the guy.
Marc:So you make a little bit of money.
Marc:You think you could get started.
Guest:And it's a great adjunct to a stand-up career.
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Guest:I had no idea it was going to explode.
Marc:What do you think that was?
Marc:What do you think that moment was?
Marc:I mean, you know, culturally.
Marc:Because, I mean...
Marc:Before, I mean, you were familiar with Lenny Bruce, you knew Mortzwell.
Marc:You know these guys were aggressively taking on politics and aggressively pushing the envelope.
Marc:And you seemed to find a level.
Marc:I guess I'm answering my own question.
Marc:You can tell me if I'm right or wrong.
Marc:that he found this level where it was clean and not menacing to sort of get the message of kind of sticking it to corporate America, kind of sticking it to these shadow forces.
Guest:There was a... I remember Milstein, his last name, and he was a writer for the New York Times.
Guest:And he came down, he interviewed me at some place, maybe the Hungry Eye, where I was playing at the time.
Guest:And...
Guest:He wrote an article and he called it the man who bites the hand that's feeding him, which is kind of what we're talking about.
Guest:He's biting the advertising.
Guest:He's making fun of the advertising world that the advertising people are going to see this man who then makes fun of what they do.
Marc:That's a tricky business.
Marc:Because if you go too far, they're going to be like, screw that guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That guy's finished.
Marc:He's a troublemaker.
Marc:But somehow or another, you found a very diplomatic line.
Marc:There's nothing better than being able to rip somebody and have them laugh.
Guest:Without them knowing it.
Guest:Sometimes without them knowing it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because they're saying, I know that guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it's him.
Oh, yeah.
It's him.
Guest:I guess that's something you share with Don Rickles.
Guest:That might be the core of your friendship.
Guest:You're much more subtle, but you're kind of doing the same thing.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I'll take that.
Guest:I knew where I stood in terms of politically...
Guest:But I also knew I was doing something important.
Guest:I knew I was making fun of the large corporation.
Guest:And I was making fun of the military, the highly organized organization.
Guest:I was just doing it in a little different way.
Marc:You're humanizing it.
Marc:In the sense that, because you were doing characters.
Marc:And these characters, even though you don't hear Abe Lincoln talk, what he became in that bit was sort of like this overly earnest, not quick character.
Marc:And the shtick of the press agent was like, you know.
Guest:Plus the fact that this is one of the most revered presidents in American history.
Guest:And I'm saying the guy isn't real bright.
Marc:He's thick.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I think it kind of released some steam in the American culture.
Marc:It's phenomenal.
Marc:Like in just listening to this stuff this morning, it's so fresh in my head that a lot of that stuff still holds up.
Marc:And the thing with the rocket scientist is a great bit.
Guest:See, that's weird because that's one of the really obscure things.
Marc:I love it.
Marc:I love it because, you know, you're dealing with, you know, I mean, Lenny did a bit about Hitler, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That bit about he's a painter, MCA and Hitler, you know, but it's still Hitler.
Marc:So Hitler is on the periphery of the rocket scientist.
Marc:But to actually, you know, to actually draw attention to the fact that, you know, these these rocket scientists were Nazis.
Marc:You know, and then, you know, the whole bit is this sort of like, it turns out, hey, William, you're going to pay me later.
Guest:And the best line in it, make a long story short, we lose the war.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But that's provocative stuff.
Marc:And I don't know that Americans were necessarily, certainly people that weren't, you know, intellectuals or paying attention, had not put that stuff together at all, necessarily.
Guest:Okay.
Yeah.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:All I'm saying is it struck me funny, and I did it.
Guest:Did you feel like... I wasn't setting out to blaze any new trails or... Right, but it was just this is where your mind was working.
Guest:But this was in my gut that these things upset me.
Marc:Oh, they did upset you, and you had a point to make.
Guest:Yeah, the large unfeeling corporation, the military, this man, this submarine commander rises...
Guest:At least seven levels above where he's competent.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And very calmly explains this horrendous trip that they made.
Guest:Two years underwater.
Guest:Underwater.
Guest:And the sick line is what we save, as you know, we knocked two minutes off the previous record, four minutes and 29 seconds, and surfacing, firing at the toward target and then resubmerging.
Guest:I think a lot of the time we saved was because of the men we had to leave on deck.
Guest:I think they, in no small way, had an awful lot to do with the two minutes that we cut off the record.
Guest:And none of us will soon forget their somewhat stunned expressions as we watched them through the periscope.
Guest:I'm not even sure that's on the album, is it?
Guest:I'm not sure.
Guest:I don't think it is.
Guest:You know why?
Guest:Because Don...
Guest:Don Adams stole it.
Guest:He stole it?
Guest:I tried to, I had nothing going.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I tried to sell him the submarine commander.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he turned it down.
Guest:And then just took it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, before you did Button Down Line?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:How did you come in touch with Don Adams?
Guest:Because at this point, nothing was happening.
Guest:Oh, for that year?
Guest:No, even before.
Guest:When Ed had gone to New York, and I don't know what the hell direction to go in, and I said, okay, I'll become a comedy writer.
Guest:So I tried to sell it to Don Adams.
Guest:Don and I are good friends, and we get about it.
Marc:Is he from Chicago?
Guest:No, Don's from New York.
Marc:How were you meeting these guys?
Marc:Who else did you meet?
Guest:He was at the Cloister in Chicago.
Guest:I'd seen him on television.
Marc:So there was a period where you were going to be a comedy writer and you'd go out and try to pitch gags to guys?
Guest:Only to Don Ed.
Guest:That's the only one.
Guest:Because he stole it.
Guest:And he did me a favor because, well, I said, well, if they're going to steal it, I may as well do it myself.
Guest:So that was your one experience in writing jokes.
Guest:I just took it.
Guest:All right, kids.
Guest:It's a good idea.
Guest:I can't use it.
Guest:I'll tell you what happened.
Guest:I did it for him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was staying at the Mayflower Hotel in the Cloisters.
Guest:And I stood up and did the submarine commander for him.
Guest:He said, I'm trying to get away from that particular character.
Guest:So here's my address and keep in touch.
Guest:So I'm at home and I'm watching the Steve Allen show.
Guest:And he comes on.
Guest:And he's doing the submarine commander.
Guest:And I'm yelling at the TV.
Guest:That's mine.
Guest:That's mine.
Guest:He did the whole bit.
Guest:He did the guts of it.
Marc:Yeah, and that one part that you weren't able to put on the record.
Guest:So when I made the record, I took that part out because I was afraid people were going to say, oh, he stole that from Don Adams.
Marc:So that was an issue with that generation of comics at the beginning, this idea of the bits being yours, especially if they were original.
Marc:I mean, there's a difference between an old joke.
Marc:and a unique take on something.
Marc:And everyone was aware of that.
Marc:And also the darkness, see that's the other thing.
Marc:It started to drive me nuts when I was coming over here and thinking about talking to you is that I think that most people know you from the television shows.
Marc:And that you made these seminal, amazing records.
Marc:and there's a darkness to it, there's a cut, there's a bite to it, you were sticking it to them, you had a point of view.
Marc:I mean, the ledge psychology bit, even as simple as that, I don't know that anyone was humanizing these, because it reminded me,
Marc:You know, that bit that Lenny did about the guy who put his mother on the plane with the insurance policy?
Marc:Oh, yes.
Marc:You know, so like there's this idea where you got this story where a cop, he's going to talk a guy off the ledge and he doesn't.
Marc:But not appear to.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:He's got to play it cool.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you think it's all going well.
Marc:Where'd that guy go?
Yeah.
Marc:You know, there's a darkness to that.
Guest:But you finally talk them out of it, and then you're going to disappoint a lot of people.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Some of them, they've been down there two, three hours, you know.
Guest:They need a show.
Guest:Which is, again, you're attacking those strange people down there.
Guest:Who were expecting the blood.
Marc:Yeah, it was amazing.
Marc:So you do these three records almost back to back, and now all of a sudden, out of nowhere, without being run down by the road, I think that you were given a gift in that direction.
Marc:Do you think your point of view could have survived just going out and doing nightclubs without the amazing sort of success that happened all at once?
Guest:No, no, I don't think so.
Marc:Could you have handled it?
Guest:No, because I did it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, when I played the Houston, the Tidelands, and then there was about three months before the record came out, so I played a club in...
Guest:In Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
Guest:And it's across from Detroit.
Guest:As an unknown.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The record did not come out.
Guest:And died every night.
Guest:I died two shows a night for a week.
Guest:And Canadians are very nice people.
Guest:They didn't yell anything.
Guest:They'd occasionally look up.
Guest:Oh, he's still on.
Guest:Nothing.
Guest:Nothing.
Guest:Not a snicker.
Marc:In the States, too?
Guest:No.
Guest:Then I went to another club in Winnipeg, and it went great.
Guest:But at Windsor, I was thinking of going back to accounting because I wasn't going to spend the rest of my life standing on the stage with no one paying any attention to me and not laughing.
Guest:It's the same material that was ahead four months later.
Marc:So you learned to listen there somehow.
Guest:Yeah, I'm not sure what it is.
Marc:All right, so now you're a comic.
Marc:I'm a comedian.
Marc:Yeah, stand-up comic.
Guest:Stand-up comic, okay.
Guest:Stand-up comedian.
Guest:Stand-up comedian.
Guest:Jack Benny once said, a comic says funny things.
Guest:A comedian says things funny.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you do the Winnipeg show.
Marc:You got your road chops in between recording your record and the release of the record.
Marc:And you went through a dark night between Winnipeg and Windsor.
Yeah.
Marc:A very condensed experience.
Marc:And then this record blows up, and now you're a made guy.
Marc:You're one of the guys.
Marc:Now, I got to assume that a lot of guys were like, who the hell is this guy?
Guest:Yeah, because they didn't know.
Guest:I wasn't part of, you know, oh, I ran into him.
Guest:Yeah, he followed me.
Guest:Right, all the comics.
Guest:There were hundreds of comics.
Guest:I said, who, yeah, I didn't know any of them.
Guest:Right, where the hell did this guy come from?
Guest:I knew him by reputation, but I didn't know him.
Marc:I mean, the one benefit of it is and the miracle of it is, is that, as we said before, if you would have just started out on the road, who the hell knows what your style would have become.
Marc:So now your record becomes popular exactly the way you wanted to do it.
Marc:And now people are like, we want to see that guy.
Marc:And they're coming out to see it.
Marc:It's an amazing gift.
Marc:You didn't get all beaten up.
Guest:Because it's all attitude.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's all attitude.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:And if you were out there grinding away trying to entertain people as an unknown, you might not ever come up with what you want.
Marc:You might never have arrived at what you want.
Guest:To hell with it.
Guest:I'm not going to go through this.
Marc:I'm not cut out for this.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So what happened?
Marc:It must have just been like a rocket.
Marc:You must have just been like overnight almost.
Guest:It was crazy.
Guest:It was just crazy.
Guest:Then it was the Hungry Eye.
Guest:Then it was the Crescendo.
Marc:In San Francisco?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you're meeting all the guys.
Marc:Who are you meeting?
Guest:Well, no, I'm not meeting all the guys.
Guest:Not yet?
Guest:I met them as I go along.
Guest:I meet Buddy Hackett.
Guest:Oh, God, he was so funny.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Inventive.
Guest:So inventive.
Marc:Just like, but he was one of my favorites.
Marc:Like when I was a kid, I sent him, I sent away for his autographed picture.
Guest:Did he send it?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Somebody sent it.
Guest:You were one of the lucky ones.
Marc:Somebody sent it.
Marc:My grandmother loved him.
Marc:You know, she'd go to Vegas a lot, my grandmother.
Marc:She'd see Shacky Green, Buddy Hackett, Rickles.
Marc:What she said about Rickles was funny.
Marc:He's very mean, nasty.
Marc:But after the show, he apologizes very nicely to everybody.
Marc:and she loved Buddy Hackett.
Marc:But what first started to happen?
Marc:Because we're talking 1961, it's still 10 years before the Bob Newhart show where America gets to know you as a television personality.
Marc:So what happens?
Marc:I know you did the Dean Martin show a lot, you did Sullivan.
Guest:I'm getting calls.
Guest:The record explodes.
Guest:And I got a call, do you want to do six Ed Sullivan's or eight Ed Sullivan's?
Guest:I'm like, what the hell's going on?
Marc:I don't know, just like that.
Guest:But I'm enjoying the hell out.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And how do you record the other two records within two years?
Marc:How does that happen?
Marc:Did you just get manic and just start jamming?
Guest:No, it was a flow.
Guest:It just kept...
Marc:As you were performing more.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I'd get a germ of an idea and then I'd expand on it and say, oh, okay, that's starting to work.
Guest:I'll throw that in tomorrow night and I'll add this until you had a bit.
Marc:And then you started to, it seemed to me, that you started to enjoy acting characters.
Marc:I watched some of this stuff with Dean Martin.
Marc:It just looked like you guys were having so much fun.
Marc:We were.
Marc:We were.
Guest:I mean, how many times did you work with him?
Guest:I did...
Guest:I did 24 Deans.
Guest:Because Greg knew that.
Marc:Who's Greg?
Guest:Greg Garrison, who produced the Dean Martin show.
Guest:He said, why don't you take some of your routines and include Dean?
Guest:Because Dean came in Sunday.
Guest:That was it, you know.
Guest:That's the day they shot?
Guest:Yeah, that's the day.
Guest:He came in around noon, 1 o'clock.
Guest:So he'd play golf in the morning.
Guest:He came in.
Guest:Now, sometimes he'd be in his dressing room, and they'd have a camera, a TV set, and he'd watch it and see what he was supposed to do.
Guest:Other times he'd get involved.
Guest:So I'd do the thing with the hairpiece.
Guest:He had never seen it.
Guest:So when I started doing it,
Guest:Now it breaks him up about returning the hairpiece.
Guest:So he was a great audience.
Guest:He's a great audience, yeah.
Guest:Because he wasn't at rehearsal.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:It's just funny to him.
Guest:So Greg said, I need a short thing at the front, you and Dean.
Guest:I said, okay, I'm a plate act.
Guest:Plate act, you know, with the sticks.
Guest:But I'm from Europe, Eastern Europe.
Guest:So Dean said we're very lucky to have one of the great plate acts of Eastern Europe with us, Greg or somebody, whoever I am.
Guest:Gregor, nice thing.
Guest:Thank you very much, Mr. Martin.
Guest:He said, I'd love to have you.
Guest:Would you do your famous plate act for the people?
Guest:I said, I lost the plates.
Guest:I said, I took the plane.
Guest:The sticks in the plates are lost.
Guest:I don't know where they went.
Guest:He said, well, could you do it anyway?
Guest:I said, do it without the plates?
Guest:Yes, could you do it without the plates?
Guest:You want me to do the show without the plates?
Guest:That's all.
Guest:I said, yeah, that's all.
Guest:There's nothing.
Guest:There are no plates.
Guest:He's just spitting mime plates.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It's funny.
Guest:If a play-down loses his plates, what has he got?
Guest:And Dean was just cracking up.
Guest:That was a challenge.
Guest:Every week to break Dean up.
Guest:Was it hard?
Guest:I never knew that about him, but that makes so much sense because he was so in the moment.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He would finish something and then Greg would be there.
Guest:Gene, you walk over here.
Guest:And just read those cards.
Guest:Which is what he was doing with me.
Guest:He was just reading the cards over my shoulder.
Marc:Great entertainer, though.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So in that decade there...
Marc:You were doing Vegas?
Guest:Prior to, yeah, prior to the.
Marc:To the TV show.
Marc:So you're doing Vegas, and you got a family, you know, you got a wife.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And that must have been a strain.
Marc:Was it?
Guest:Well, they wouldn't go on.
Guest:Well, they'd go on the road with me, too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But mostly I'd play Vegas, and they'd come up.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But then on Sunday night, they'd go home.
Guest:Jenny and the kids wouldn't go home because they had to go to school.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But then they come up Friday night.
Guest:So it was as normal of a life as you could have as an entertainer.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you weren't doing the road, per se.
Guest:Yeah, I'm still doing the road.
Marc:And what about the Variety Show?
Marc:How did that come about?
Guest:You know, the Variety Show was the result of the record album.
Marc:The first one again.
Guest:Yeah, the first one.
Guest:That was 61 to 61.
Marc:So there was a feeding frenzy.
Marc:This guy, we got to get this guy.
Guest:Yeah, just get him on television.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:There were some very good shows in there.
Guest:I wasn't very good.
Guest:I was fine.
Guest:It was a monologue, girl singer, guy singer, sketch, actor, sometimes an actor, Charles Lawton.
Guest:Random Charles Lawton.
Marc:Just a guy you remember.
Marc:Charles Lawton was there, I think, one day.
Guest:Charles Bronson.
Guest:Before he was Charles Bronson.
Guest:And we do a sketch.
Guest:I was terrible in the sketches.
Guest:I'm so used to peopling the monologue with people.
Guest:And then there are these people that I know he doesn't look like the guy I thought.
Guest:That I made up.
Guest:That's in my head.
Marc:So you had trouble making the jump from solo to interacting.
Guest:To sketches, yeah, to sketches.
Guest:Plus the fact at the end of the first year, they were going to renew the show.
Guest:It was borderline.
Guest:They said, but you've got to make some changes.
Guest:You have to get rid of the announcer, Dan Sorkin.
Guest:I said, no, no.
Marc:The radio guy?
Guest:The radio guy.
Marc:You brought him along?
Guest:He was my announcer, yeah.
Guest:I said, no, no, I can't.
Marc:You did him a solid.
Marc:That's a loyalty thing.
Guest:I guess so.
Guest:I guess so.
Marc:I love knowing that people take care of their friends.
Guest:Well, if he hadn't played the record for Warner Brothers, I'd... Yeah.
Marc:No, I get it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So I said, plus the fact that I was doing a monologue every week, 33 monologues, and they weren't of the quality.
Guest:They occasionally were of the quality, but they weren't of the quality of the record.
Marc:Of the stuff that you wrote alone?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you had writers?
Guest:I had writers, and I'm writing some of it myself.
Marc:Sure, of course, of course.
Guest:But the pressure of every week is... So to me, the quality of the monologue was...
Marc:So... And you have a very specific style.
Marc:It's not like you're just doing jokes off the news.
Marc:I mean, you got to, you know, these are elaborate bits.
Marc:Your monologues are probably one bit, right?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:That's a different game.
Guest:I, one time, this was in, I wasn't yet along with a producer.
Guest:at that time.
Guest:So I went home to Chicago at Christmas time.
Guest:This is how naive I am.
Guest:I call up my manager, Frank Hogan.
Guest:I said, Frank, why don't you call NBC?
Guest:I really don't want to do this anymore.
Guest:So why don't they put in another show?
Guest:And I'll just do college concerts.
Guest:Well, the next thing I know, a vice president of MCA has flown into Chicago.
Guest:No, you can't do it that way.
Guest:You can't say this isn't working out.
Guest:Bob doesn't enjoy this as much as he thought he would.
Guest:So can you just put something else in there?
Guest:That's what I thought.
Guest:They sent the heavies.
Guest:And now they see their commission going away because they don't own the next show that they're going to replace.
Guest:So I make it to, I did 33 shows, I think.
Marc:So after the vice president, if he held your ground, the next guy would have had brass knuckles and lived near you in Chicago.
Marc:We got a guy here.
Marc:Maybe talk some sense in this new art character.
Guest:So, okay.
Guest:So I'm going in.
Guest:They're talking about renewing me.
Guest:I'm thinking, do I really want to do another 33 shows?
Guest:We're trying to do a good monologue every week.
Guest:And then they said Dan Sorkin.
Guest:Then I said, no, I don't want to.
Marc:So that's incredibly bold.
Marc:You realize the integrity of what... Or stupid.
Marc:Yeah, but did you have regrets about it at that time?
Marc:No, no.
Marc:Because you were making money on the road.
Marc:Well, everything has turned out great.
Marc:But the reasons were the integrity of what you do and sort of like the treatment of your friend.
Marc:I mean, those are big artistic choices.
Marc:There's nothing worse than saying lines.
Marc:You know, that you...
Marc:that you know aren't right.
Marc:They're not funny.
Marc:And then you got a bunch of people saying, like, just do the joke.
Marc:You know, it's a funny joke.
Marc:It's funny enough.
Marc:What do you got to go crazy for?
Guest:As you're doing, as you're writing a new routine, they're saying funny, funny.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, it's great.
Guest:That's funny.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:No change of expression.
Marc:There's a producer over at Conan.
Marc:Funny idea, funny idea.
Guest:And if you actually make them laugh, it's like, oh my God.
Guest:If that's what you're really laughing, like you've been bullshitting me for what, five a year now?
Guest:That's the first time you laughed.
Guest:It's like you're walking down the street, you know, and you come to a corner of a building and you hear this terrible noise and you turn around and you see this safe has fallen and just missed you by about three feet.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's your life.
Yeah.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:I almost got that.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:So then you're just, you know, for those years, you're doing TV.
Marc:You know, this is after the variety show.
Marc:You're doing D. Martin's show.
Marc:Do you feel like you're part of the crew at some point?
Marc:Like you're doing Johnny's show a lot and you're doing D. Martin's show.
Marc:I mean, you're hanging out with Buddy Hackett, with Don Rickles and Jackie Queen.
Guest:Yeah, now I'm getting to know, especially in Vegas, you'd get to know.
Guest:Opening acts and you get to know closing acts.
Marc:And who are some of the guys you work with that you really got close to?
Guest:Well, Shecky, Don, Buddy.
Marc:Do you talk to Shecky still?
Guest:I saw Shecky.
Guest:Yeah, I did a date last year in the Springs.
Guest:I saw Shecky.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Is it good to see these guys after so many years?
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I wish I'd seen him.
Guest:Shecky, he was, yeah, he'd just make it up.
Guest:He'd just...
Guest:He'd just walk on stage and just start making it up.
Guest:Killed.
Guest:Great stories.
Guest:Vegas, they wanted the opening act to do a half an hour and the closing act to do an hour.
Guest:And that's what they wanted.
Guest:They didn't want 31 from the opening act or an hour and one.
Guest:They wanted an hour.
Guest:That's all.
Guest:Because they wanted to get the people back in the casino.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So Shecky is in the lounge at the Riviera.
Marc:He sort of invented lounge comedy, didn't he?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And the lounge at this point is a small showroom.
Guest:It's beautiful.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so he's in the middle of his act.
Guest:So he's gone over the hour.
Guest:So they start turning out the lights.
Guest:And he's on stage.
Guest:So he takes a match.
Guest:He lights it.
Guest:He does the rest of his act.
Marc:He seemed like a pretty exciting character.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And Buddy Hackett live was amazing, too, huh?
Guest:I saw a buddy one time.
Guest:He came out and he said, I was talking to Joe Kelman.
Guest:I knew Joe Kelman.
Guest:Joe Kelman was a guy in Chicago.
Guest:He had a glass company.
Guest:And I got married to Sherry, my wife Sherry.
Guest:Sherry Dubois was her name, Sherry Dubois.
Guest:Her actual name was Esther Cohen, but she changed her name to Sherry Dubois.
Guest:And he goes on, and he does his bits.
Guest:And now 20 minutes in, he says, oh, what was I talking about?
Guest:And the audience, as one person says, Joe Kelman.
Guest:Oh, yeah, Joe Kelman.
Guest:And I think, you son of a bitch, you knew exactly where you were.
Guest:But you made it look like he was making it up.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's a good trick.
Marc:Great.
Marc:But you always stuck by the script of what you did.
Marc:You didn't improvise much, or you didn't like it.
Guest:I'll tell you a story.
Guest:I had a thing, because I started really at the top.
Guest:Most comics start, opening act,
Guest:for 10, 15 years.
Guest:But in the back of their minds, when I make it, I'm going to buy a Maserati and I'm going to buy the home.
Guest:in Beverly Hills.
Guest:Now, I started at the top.
Guest:So I've got to learn at the top.
Guest:I've got to learn my craft at the top because I don't know my craft yet.
Guest:So every night in Vegas, I peek through the curtains to check out the audience and, oh, it looks like a troubled table.
Guest:Yeah, he's drunk.
Guest:He's going to be trouble.
Guest:Oh, shit, there's not a woman over there.
Guest:She's going to be trouble.
Guest:So I thought,
Guest:You feel it, don't you?
Guest:Huh?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Every show.
Guest:It's a ritual.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I'm talking to my manager and I hear my bow music.
Guest:I thought, I haven't looked through the curtains yet.
Guest:And I thought to myself, well, I'll handle it.
Guest:Whatever happens, I'll handle it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was a big shift.
Guest:That's when I knew it.
Guest:I learned.
Marc:I feel that, too.
Marc:You go in the room and you're like, there's a bad energy.
Marc:What's happening right there, that's going to be the problem.
Marc:Sometimes they're not, though.
Marc:No.
Marc:You know, they're just people.
Marc:Some of them know how to behave.
I get it.
Marc:Some of them realize they're at a show.
Marc:I'm surprised.
Guest:And now, after 53 years, there's a respect that they don't yell up at you.
Guest:The reason I had a problem with drunks or hecklers
Guest:Because I'm in the middle of something.
Guest:I'm in the middle of the rocket scientist.
Guest:And now there's some drunk and he's yelling out something.
Guest:Now I got to go outside the bit to put him down somehow and then get back in into the bit.
Marc:It ruins the continuity.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And sometimes depending on how the crowd work goes, it's hard to get back into the bit.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you've had to do that.
Guest:That's why I hated it.
Guest:And that's why I look for the trouble.
Guest:But even if you look for the trouble, even if you see them, you're just preparing yourself.
Marc:You still can't stop anything from happening.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:I didn't realize you guest hosted The Tonight Show so much.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:That's unheard of now.
Marc:No one does that.
Marc:Everyone's so afraid of losing their job.
Marc:No one would ever think.
Marc:87 times or something.
Marc:And Johnny would just, what, you'd just get a call?
Marc:I mean, your relationship with Johnny was good?
Marc:Were you guys friends?
Guest:Yeah, no, we were friends.
Guest:Good friends, yeah.
Marc:And he was a hilarious guy.
Guest:Oh, quick, yeah.
Marc:And he just trusted you with that gig.
Marc:It seemed like there was only a few people during that period.
Guest:Well, see, here's what he would do to me.
Yeah.
Guest:You go to a pre-interview.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're going to do Johnny's show.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Pre-interview.
Guest:Jess came back from a trip with Rickles, has a funny story about Don in Venice.
Guest:Okay, that's the first.
Guest:Second one, Jess has a new dog, has funny stories about a dog in the house.
Guest:Ladies and gentlemen, Bob and Hart come sit down next to Johnny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do you ever go skeet shooting?
Yeah.
Guest:And I'd look at him like, you son of a bitch.
Guest:You know I have nothing on speech.
Guest:What are you doing?
Guest:And he'd have this kind of smile on his face.
Guest:He set you up.
Guest:But he trusted me.
Guest:And we'd make something out of it.
Guest:But he did that all the time.
Guest:Oh, that's hilarious.
Guest:And, of course, what I loved is when he came out and died.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And called him like...
Guest:See if the mic's on.
Marc:He invented something, I'll tell you that.
Marc:And did you like doing that?
Marc:Do you like hosting or anything?
Guest:Yeah, it was a challenge, but it was so powerful.
Guest:I mean, plugging appearances.
Guest:Yeah, so you fill up places.
Guest:But I did it for three weeks one time in New York.
Guest:I filled in for Johnny.
Guest:He was having salary disputes with NBC, so they were looking for people who maybe would take Johnny's place.
Yeah.
Marc:But he knew that?
Guest:Yeah, oh, sure.
Guest:This is in the 70s.
Marc:Did you have to ask him first?
Marc:He said, I know you're into contracting.
Guest:No, no, I was just kind of aware of it.
Guest:No one ever said it, but it was kind of in the... So I did it for three weeks.
Guest:The writers took the three weeks off, because I'm not going to fire a writer.
Guest:So they would give me three bad jokes, and then they'd work on their play.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I've got 18 bad jokes.
Guest:So I'm at the end of three weeks.
Guest:I'm a basket case.
Guest:I'm brain dead.
Guest:And the man did it for 30 years.
Guest:I did it for three weeks, and I'm brain dead.
Guest:It takes a special person to do that.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Marc:To do that show.
Marc:It's insane.
Guest:A dedication that's incredible.
Marc:And in terms of movie acting, it seems like you did a few meaty parts, but you'd show up and they'd know exactly.
Marc:It seemed like people, when they cast you, they were like, well, Newhart would be good for this.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And you didn't really do really serious parts until fairly recently, right on television.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Do you like doing that?
Guest:It depends on the project.
Guest:Right, right, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I never studied acting.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, I was in that group, but I never really studied it.
Marc:What was that group?
Marc:Did it have a name?
Guest:Just Oak Park Playhouse.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:It wasn't Second City, wasn't it?
Guest:No, no, suburb of Chicago.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we were doing...
Guest:Pygmalion and those kind of.
Marc:With no guidance, just a director.
Guest:No.
Guest:And I played very cheap sets, you know, that barely held up through the performance.
Guest:Someone sat in and they broke and fell apart.
Marc:But Catch-22 was a big role.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And that was a bizarre movie.
Marc:And a great movie, a great story.
Marc:Mike Nichols directed it.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:Did you know Mike previous to that?
Guest:No, I only knew of Mike through Michael Ryan.
Guest:And then, of course, when he started directing.
Marc:The cast on that was astounding.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And, you know, when you did that, did you feel like your movie career was going to really take off?
Guest:That's an odd... Mike came to us and said, you're all figments of Yossarian's imagination.
Guest:You don't actually exist.
Guest:You're figments of Yossarian's imagination.
Guest:which is the Catch-22 of I want to get out of... You've got to be crazy to fly.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But if you're crazy, then you're not crazy.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:Because everybody does.
Guest:So I didn't, frankly, I didn't know what the hell Mike was talking about.
Marc:so I just played it for laughs I just played major major major I made it funny yeah it was funny now you're seasoned you can act you're one of the guys before I get to that was there resentment of you coming in as green as you were from other comics did you feel that at all
Guest:Probably.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:That's diplomatic.
Guest:A little bit, maybe.
Guest:I just know comics, and I've got to assume you're taking a bit of shit here and there.
Guest:I won't tell you who the comic was, but he could be in Venice for six months, staying at a beautiful hotel, great money.
Guest:Sitting, reading Variety and casting.
Guest:I would have been perfect for that.
Guest:And he's mad.
Guest:And perfect.
Guest:I would have been perfect for that.
Marc:I had a friend who used to call the TV the resentment box.
Guest:How the hell did that guy get that?
Marc:I guess it never changes, you know?
Marc:It's a tough business.
Marc:So the opportunity, had you been given other opportunities to do sitcoms before that, before the Bob Newhart show?
Marc:And you were just too busy on the road or didn't want to do it?
Guest:I don't think so.
Guest:No?
Guest:I don't remember.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they didn't, I read them and they didn't seem right.
Marc:So how did this come about?
Guest:This came about because MTM was founded by Mary Tyler Moore, Grant Tinker, and Arthur Price.
Guest:Arthur Price was my manager.
Guest:So he came to me, and this Mary's show was a big hit.
Guest:He said, would you like to do a television show?
Guest:And I said, yeah, Artie.
Guest:I said, you know, you get off the road, you know, and have a normal life.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:Just drive over to Burbank or wherever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he said, okay, okay.
Guest:So he said, I got a couple writers in Dave Davis, Lorenzo Music, and the three of you sit down and kind of knock out what you'd like to do.
Yeah.
Guest:So we started talking about, okay, based on the record, Bob listens to people well.
Guest:He's a very good listener.
Guest:Okay, what's a profession where people listen?
Guest:Psychiatrists.
Mm-hmm.
Guest:I said, well, psychiatrists really, they deal with seriously ill schizophrenics.
Guest:And much as I would like to get my humor from schizophrenics.
Guest:I don't think America's ready for it yet.
Guest:So then we said, maybe a psychologist.
Guest:Yeah, okay, psychology.
Guest:They do kind of lesser disturbed people.
Right.
Guest:Then we started casting.
Guest:Then we saw... Bill Daley?
Guest:Well, I knew Bill from Chicago.
Guest:Bill wasn't in the original.
Guest:The original pilot was Susie.
Guest:Susie was on, she was on The Tonight Show with Johnny.
Guest:And my manager, Arthur Price, had seen, he said, I think I found your wife.
Guest:Comedian, I didn't know she was missing.
Guest:He said, Suzanne, I said, Suzanne would be great.
Guest:I said, I didn't think she'd want to do weekly television.
Guest:He said, well, I'll make a phone call.
Guest:And so she said yes.
Guest:So then we built the show around the condominium that we stayed in in Chicago and the condominium meetings.
Guest:And we shot that pilot.
Guest:Between that time, then we re-shot it.
Guest:We shot it with Bill Daley, Mrs. Paley, or Bill Paley, who ran the network, owned the network.
Guest:I'd seen her on a Merv Griffin show.
Guest:She'd be very funny on what's-his-name's show.
Marc:Your show.
Marc:Bill Paley, you were What's-His-Name.
Guest:One of many What's-His-Names.
Guest:So I had worked with Peter on Peter Bonners on Catch-22.
Guest:And I knew we were going to do the show.
Marc:So who was Paley talking about, Marshall Wallace?
Guest:Marshall Wallace, yeah.
Guest:So I knew we were going to do the show in front of a live audience, which every show did.
Guest:So I knew we needed people who were used to live audiences because as a stand-up, I was used to live.
Guest:Peter was in the committee up in San Francisco.
Guest:Marsha had done some acting.
Guest:Susie, of course, had done a lot.
Guest:Never done...
Guest:Well, she had done Broadway, but serious stuff, you know.
Guest:And Bill Daley, Bill was doing stand-up about the same time I was doing stand-up.
Guest:So we reshot the show with those people at it.
Marc:Yeah, I was wondering, because I was going through the first disc, and then the second disc starts with a pilot.
Guest:I think it's in there.
Marc:It is in there, yeah.
Guest:It's in there, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So now you've got this great cast of characters, and then you've got the recurring cast of the people in the group sessions and the patients, the fellow who played Mr. Carlin, who was amazing.
Marc:What was his name?
Marc:Jack Reilly.
Marc:Unbelievable.
Marc:Was he a comic?
Guest:No, he wasn't a stand-up.
Guest:No, he was...
Guest:He was part of what I call the Cleveland Mafia, which was Pat McCormick.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He was funny.
Guest:Jack Riley.
Guest:Tim Conway.
Guest:Ernie Anderson.
Guest:Anyway, he was...
Marc:They were out here.
Guest:Yeah, Jack was more an actor than a stand-up, yeah.
Marc:So funny.
Guest:Great character.
Marc:Is he still around?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And so that's how history was made, is that you were set up because you were good.
Marc:Listening is one way to put it, but I think reactor.
Guest:Well, that's the other word they used.
Guest:Yeah, Bob reacts to it.
Marc:Yeah, and that's sort of like, I guess that's where the comparisons to Benny come from.
Marc:that you have that moment, that take, that's very specific to you.
Marc:I don't see a real correlation, but it's just a comic thing.
Guest:They say I have his timing, but you can't teach somebody timing.
Marc:No, that's the weird thing.
Guest:What Jack was, was he was brave.
Guest:He was one of the bravest.
Guest:Oddly, Jack Benny, with his walk and all that, was one of the bravest comedians who ever lived.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because he would take the time.
Guest:He wasn't afraid of silence or quiet or anything.
Marc:That's a lot of lessons that we learned from that.
Marc:To own it.
Marc:And decide your own pace.
Guest:I'll tell you a story.
Guest:Dick Martin told me the story.
Marc:From Rowan and Martin?
Marc:Rowan and Martin.
Guest:Jack is appearing at the Sahara in Las Vegas.
Guest:The opening act is the Will Mass Trail with Sammy Davis Jr.
Guest:They come out.
Guest:They open for Jack.
Guest:Destroyed the audience.
Guest:They're screaming, standing on the tables pounding.
Guest:They go up.
Guest:Jack comes up.
Guest:He says, aren't they wonderful?
Guest:Aren't they just wonderful?
Guest:He said, in the afternoon, sometimes I'll have some tea, usually around, I don't know, 4.30 in the afternoon, quarter of five.
Guest:Five, sometimes five.
Guest:And I was in a movie with this actor, and I can't remember his, I can't, oh, I promised Sammy Davis he could do another, would you mind if Sammy, coming out, the birth of the blues, destroyed, now you thought they destroyed him the first time, they're pounding on the tables, Jack watches them go off.
Guest:Clive.
Guest:Clive.
Guest:That was his name.
Guest:Did he pull him around?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Killed it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's amazing.
Guest:That's brave.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's brave.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's a hell of a reset after a big musical act, I bet.
Marc:So that show, the Bob Newhart show, I think it sort of set the standard for a comedian...
Marc:being in a sitcom in a way kind of yeah i mean it was like revolutionary i mean mary tyler moore was one thing that was an ensemble cast but to build a show around a stand-up it seems to me that was one of the first ones really of that model i yeah i think so because you didn't have to spend six episodes explaining who the guy was right you know
Guest:You knew who Cosby was when he walked on.
Guest:You knew who Roseanne was.
Marc:And that all happened after you.
Marc:And you were obviously comfortable with the material and the character and you liked your writers.
Marc:Now, was it a struggle at all to sort of honor your voice?
Marc:How much did you have influence in that?
Guest:Well, I had total control if I wanted to.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, if I wanted to exercise it.
Guest:In the sixth year of the show, and I had already said that was going to be the end of the show, the sixth year of the Bob Newhart show, they came to me with a script where Suzanne is pregnant.
Guest:Now, I had specified in the very first show I didn't want to have children.
Guest:That isn't the kind of show I wanted to do.
Guest:So in the hopes that maybe I would consider not ending the show with the sixth year and maybe go on to the seventh or eighth, that maybe if they introduce Suzanne's pregnant and has a baby.
Guest:So I read this over the weekend.
Guest:And so Mike Zinberg, the producer, calls me.
Guest:He said, did you get the script?
Guest:I said, yes, I read it.
Guest:He said, what did you think?
Guest:Very funny.
Guest:I said, it's a very funny script.
Guest:He said, oh, good, because we were worried.
Guest:We didn't know if you'd like it.
Guest:I said, yes, it's very funny.
Guest:I said, who are you going to get to play Bob?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was that.
Guest:So it's there.
Guest:The power is there.
Guest:If you choose to exercise it or not, it's, yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you know it's there.
Marc:But that wasn't your thing.
Marc:They knew and, you know, there was never.
Marc:So that ran for what?
Marc:Six.
Marc:Six.
Marc:And that was it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that was enough.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's just, it's a feeling.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's just okay.
Guest:Yeah, I think.
Marc:And they were okay with stopping it.
Marc:They weren't thrilled.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The network wasn't thrilled.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So now the next show, which happened, what, a few years later?
Guest:Four years, I think, later, yeah.
Marc:And you just wanted to keep working, doing the TV?
Guest:No, I knew I was going back to television.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just, I loved the medium.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I enjoyed it.
Guest:I understood it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was a normalcy to it.
Marc:You had a job.
Guest:you go home and have normal hours.
Marc:That went for like what, eight years?
Guest:Eight, that went eight, yeah.
Guest:The first two were kind of shaky.
Guest:We were feeling our way and then,
Guest:the second year we brought in Julia Duffy, who was wonderful, and then Peter Scolari.
Guest:Tom Poston was in from the Bob Newark show.
Guest:Yeah, he was the peeper.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then it took off.
Guest:But the first couple years were kind of... But they held in.
Marc:They stayed with you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I think a loyalty to me and Larry Daryl and Daryl.
Yeah.
Guest:Those were the guys.
Marc:You had a hell of a job as a straight man with that crew, huh?
Guest:Well, whenever they came in, I was always behind the counter putting keys away or something because there was going to be about 30, 40 seconds of applause when they came in.
Guest:And when they left, there would be 30, 40 seconds of applause.
Guest:People loved them.
Yeah.
Guest:The first show they came in, we had a witch who was buried in the basement of the inn.
Guest:And I called Larry, Daryl, and Daryl, not knowing who they were.
Guest:I said, we have a problem and we need someone to come over.
Guest:They formed a company.
Guest:They called anything for a buck.
Guest:That was what they were known as.
Guest:And I said, well, I need somebody to dig something up in our basement.
Guest:He said, well, we're very busy and we couldn't make it until like next Friday.
Guest:I said, I'm sorry, we need somebody before that.
Guest:He said, just out of curiosity, what is it?
Guest:I said, it's a dead witch is buried in our basement.
Guest:He said, we'll be right over.
Guest:So he comes in.
Guest:Hi, I'm Larry.
Guest:This is my brother, Daryl.
Guest:This is my other brother, Daryl.
Guest:The audience goes crazy.
Guest:I said, how are you doing?
Guest:He said, I hurt my back.
Guest:I said, oh.
Guest:He said, it sounds like, how'd you hurt your back?
Guest:He said, crawling under a house.
Guest:I said, oh, it sounds like rough work.
Guest:See, it wasn't work.
Guest:I just enjoyed crawling around their houses.
Guest:That guy was funny.
Guest:What was his name?
Guest:Bill Sanderson.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So that goes into syndication.
Marc:The Bob Newhart Show goes into syndication.
Marc:You know, where were you at mentally?
Marc:Were you done?
Marc:Were you sort of retired from television in your mind?
Marc:Had you done enough?
Guest:Yeah, kind of.
Guest:My feeling was, I'd say, no, I still have my fastball.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which, actually, it's a change-up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's not a fastball.
Guest:And they wanted me for a show.
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:Well, no, I came back.
Guest:It didn't work.
Guest:That was...
Guest:It was kind of, the idea was we want to give them a Bob Newhart they'd never seen.
Guest:Well, the audience didn't want to see a Bob Newhart they'd never seen.
Guest:Too late in the game for that.
Guest:So that didn't work.
Guest:Then George and Leo, they talked me into George and Leo.
Guest:They came to me and said, you have to, you have to.
Guest:That didn't work.
Marc:But you were still doing stand-up dates occasionally?
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Marc:And you still do it now?
Guest:I do about, yeah, about 20 a year.
Guest:How do they go?
Marc:You love it still?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I hate getting there.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I hate the flying.
Marc:Do you generate new stuff or no?
Guest:Well, some they want to hear.
Guest:I usually do.
Guest:I'll do one.
Guest:I'll do a driving instructor or one of the old because I know that's where some of the people want to hear that.
Marc:Didn't you do a special that was like in the 90s that was really... At the Raymond Theater.
Guest:All the...
Marc:The first, those three records.
Guest:The first, yeah, pretty much.
Guest:It's amazing.
Guest:But live.
Guest:Right.
Guest:In front of an audience.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:As opposed to on a record.
Marc:That's over, that's 35 years after.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And all those bits, I imagine, held up really well.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was amazing.
Marc:The only one that seems dated is the automaton one.
Marc:You know, the machines.
Guest:Well, and Khrushchev.
Guest:Khrushchev doesn't hold up.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:Because no one has a point of reference for it.
Marc:But, I mean, I thought that the machine one was prescient.
Marc:I mean, it did happen.
Marc:Not exactly that way.
Guest:Well, that depends on...
Guest:how America feels about the military at that point.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Guest:Whether they like them or don't like them.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:How did you weather the 60s when everything kind of blew open?
Marc:I mean, because you just were sort of, you know, on your own trajectory, but it seemed like, you know, you got guys like Carlin and you got guys like, you know, prior in the late 60s that really kind of locked into that.
Guest:Because that wasn't who I was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just, you know, I'm a comedian.
Guest:I'm a stand-up comedian.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But...
Marc:You didn't feel pressure.
Guest:I don't inform people.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Well, I do, but I do it very quietly.
Guest:I do it.
Guest:Who am I?
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:That's kind of my attitude.
Marc:And, you know, like looking back on all of it, you know, in all the comedy, because you seem to be a tremendous fan of comedy, which I love.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And, you know, you bring up Pryor.
Marc:Oh, amazing.
Marc:The best, right?
Marc:Genius, yeah.
Guest:No question about it.
Guest:Here's what Pryor did for me.
Guest:I made this comparison before.
Guest:I got the Mark Twain Award.
Guest:Pryor was the first recipient of the Mark Twain Award.
Guest:And what Pryor did and Mark Twain did are virtually the same things.
Guest:Twain wrote about...
Guest:life on the Mississippi, life on the frontier really, 1900.
Guest:Mississippi was the frontier in many ways.
Guest:Richard did life in the inner city.
Marc:The thing that always struck me about him outside of
Marc:you know, the bits was his vulnerability as a performer.
Marc:Like, you know, there was a sort of real tangible kind of emotional rawness to him that, you know, you felt like a lot of stuff was really happening in that moment and that, you know, he was really putting his heart out there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And...
Guest:Painful stuff, too.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:When you read about his life.
Guest:But you read it.
Guest:He does the African-American minister.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:The African-American minister in the black community occupies a position that the pastors and ministers, they don't occupy in the white community.
Guest:They are much more of a force.
Mm-hmm.
Marc:Yeah, the weight he brought to that thing.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:George Slaughter had some kind of comedy awards or something.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, the comedy awards, right.
Guest:I presented him with the award.
Guest:Then Richard looks at me and he said, he said, I stole your album.
Guest:I said, what did you say, Richard?
Guest:He said, I stole your album, Peoria.
Guest:I went to the rec store and put it in my jacket.
Guest:With the first record?
Guest:First record.
Guest:So I said, well, you know, Rich, I get 25 cents an album.
Guest:He says, give me a quarter.
Guest:Somebody got a quarter?
Guest:Give me a quarter here.
Guest:Here you go.
Guest:He was something else.
Guest:No, he was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Beyond.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Beyond.
Guest:You love comedy.
Guest:When I was in, I'd be in Vegas.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm there for four weeks, and this is the third week and two shows a night, and you're not sure what day it is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm getting ready to go on.
Oh, God.
Guest:Jenny would play me prior.
Marc:Really?
Guest:She put the record prior.
Marc:Which album?
Marc:Do you remember?
Marc:Any of them?
Guest:Any one of them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Mudbone is...
Guest:It's uber comedy.
Guest:It's beyond comedy.
Guest:It's Mark Twain.
Guest:It's cultural.
Guest:It's a whole...
Guest:culture.
Marc:Were you familiar with him before he became?
Guest:Yeah, but I knew of him like when he was doing the road show Cosby stuff.
Guest:And he'd be on the Sullivan show.
Guest:And he did Rage.
Guest:I think he was a poet.
Guest:Wasn't he a poet and he did stuff?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Very toned down.
Guest:I was in Vegas, and he was at a different place.
Guest:I think that's when he said, screw it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Screw it.
Guest:This is what I'm going to do.
Guest:Because I know he attacked a guy in the front row who happened to be one of the executives for the Hughes Corporation, a guy named Dick Danner.
Guest:And he said, what?
Guest:What are you shaking your head for?
Guest:And then he started doing... That's when he started doing... He broke open.
Guest:What made him famous.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And just talking about...
Guest:being black in Peoria and the mother.
Marc:You were in Vegas that night where he did that?
Guest:Yeah, because I heard about, because they fired him on the spot.
Marc:Right, and that's when he went to Berkeley and regrouped this whole thing.
Guest:He said, this is what I'm going to do.
Marc:I can't be this guy anymore.
Guest:Yeah, I can't be a road company, Cosby.
Marc:Yeah, but you put Pryor in this other world.
Guest:Rickles is not thrilled about that.
Guest:He would never hear this all the time.
Guest:Unless somebody rats on me and tells them what.
Marc:Well, it's a different game, you know.
Marc:Like, if you look back at, you know, and you still watch a lot of comics, you know.
Guest:That's my favorite thing, seeing Letterman or something, a great new comedian.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Comes out and kills.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Because you can relate to it.
Guest:Good luck.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Good luck.
Guest:I tried it, yeah.
Guest:But, you know, with comics, you want to see them and you don't because you see one and then, like, two weeks later you'll start doing a bit and it's all falling into place and you start saying...
Guest:Wait a minute.
Guest:Did I see this?
Guest:Yeah, you got it.
Guest:Am I making this up, or did I see this somewhere?
Marc:It's true.
Marc:You know, if you're immersed in it.
Guest:And for a while, I wouldn't watch other comics for fear, because the new stuff that I came up with, the first album, it just flowed.
Guest:It just...
Guest:How long do you want to make it?
Guest:Do you want to make it 12 minutes?
Guest:Do you want to make it 8 minutes?
Marc:Yeah, you do.
Marc:You sort of have to keep away from it.
Marc:Were you ever able to meet some of those other guys?
Marc:Did you ever have any contact with Lenny Bruce or Mort Sahl or those guys?
Guest:I met Lenny a couple times, yeah.
Marc:It seems like there's a line drawn between him and everything else.
Marc:Not in a good way, necessarily.
Marc:It seemed to me to the comic community, to some of them, they're like, that guy's overrated troublemaker.
Guest:He was uneven, though.
Guest:Lenny would be uneven.
Guest:He would be just great one night.
Guest:And then the next line, he wouldn't be so great.
Guest:And then he got into that whole...
Guest:assassination and you know oh with the Kennedy assassination yeah yeah with Jackie trying to get out of the car yeah it was it was bold no he was yeah he was so but he was a mixture of show business chicky baby and yeah yeah and Yiddish yeah yeah yeah people don't realize how much Yiddish he spoke yeah it was all very second nature to him
Marc:And then the battle became the battle with drugs and with the authorities.
Marc:And that just crushed them.
Marc:The other thing I want to ask you, I know you did these two series, one for six seasons, one for eight seasons.
Marc:You never won an Emmy.
Marc:You got nominated a lot.
Marc:And then you do some Big Bang theories and they give you the Emmy.
Guest:Was there a building bitterness about that?
Guest:No, because, all right, I did six years, eight years, 14 years, and then 15, 15 counting the Bob Newhart show, the variety show, and then 17 or 18 with Bob and George and Leo.
Guest:So that's 18 years on television.
Guest:I was nominated six or seven times.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:For several years, I didn't submit my name for the award because I didn't feel what I do doesn't get awards.
Guest:But that's all right because that's what I do.
Guest:I'm not going to change what I do to get an award.
Marc:So you're like, I'm not even going to put myself in the ring.
Guest:I didn't, yeah, for six years.
Guest:So...
Guest:So I've been nominated enough.
Guest:I was beat by people who were very good.
Guest:No, there was no... Would I like to have had one?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And I have one.
Marc:Good, good.
Marc:And you did SNL a couple times?
Marc:That must have been fun.
Marc:I think Lorne must have a tremendous amount of respect for you.
Guest:I hope so.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, yeah.
Guest:That show is amazing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, to do it.
Guest:I couldn't do it today.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Physically, to do it.
Marc:And you work with Will Ferrell on Elf.
Marc:Elf.
Marc:He's a very funny guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, like, he's got to be up there.
Guest:He also doesn't get a lot of credit for his role in Elf because that could have been just a big, dumb guy.
Guest:who didn't get it.
Guest:But it wasn't a big dumb guy.
Guest:It was this very likable person who thought he was an elf.
Guest:You know, it would have been very easy for that to, for people to say, oh, come on.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:He's a special guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:A very sweet guy.
Marc:But when he turns, he's one of those guys where I interviewed him.
Marc:Low-key, very amicable.
Marc:And he's one of those guys where you sit and talk to him and you're kind of half-waiting.
Marc:You know, like, something's going to happen.
Guest:I'm talking to him for an hour going, uh-huh.
Guest:When are you going to do the funny thing?
Guest:See, it's what we talked about off mic.
Yeah.
Guest:Which was to talk to somebody else who's done stand-up.
Guest:It's just, you can't explain it.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Special club.
Guest:Yeah, it's a very private club filled with a lot of crazy people.
Guest:That's for sure.
Guest:Always, right?
Guest:Who was the guy who committed suicide?
Marc:Rich Jenny?
Guest:Jenny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I thought he was wonderful.
Marc:Great.
Marc:Great comic.
Marc:Great.
Marc:Yeah, who knows?
Marc:Something went wrong.
Marc:Yeah, you see it all the time, and it's a lot of the same reason why we're comics.
Marc:We don't fit in.
Marc:Whatever's going on out there ain't right for us.
Marc:And there's a certain amount of acceptance.
Marc:That's the beautiful thing.
Marc:It's like, you know, obviously for generations it's been true.
Marc:You got a bunch of loose screws out there, and they're with us.
Marc:And, you know, what would be sort of overwhelming to just a regular working person is just a liability of our business.
Marc:Oh, yeah, I know that guy.
Marc:He's out of his mind.
Marc:I wouldn't get into a car with him, but you can eat with him.
Marc:You know, that kind of stuff.
Marc:Don't give him your phone number.
Marc:Great act.
Marc:Don't give him your phone number.
Marc:So that's been going on since the beginning.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Dick Martin told me this story.
Guest:Dick Martin, he has never lied to me in his life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You think comics are crazy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There's a ventriloquist named, if I remember, Pat Patrick.
Guest:He's on a plane, a small plane, with the dummy.
Guest:He jumps out of the plane, leaves a note, the dummy did it.
Guest:He killed himself?
Guest:He killed himself.
Marc:I hope that's true.
Guest:I hope it's true, too.
Marc:So I know the box set is out of the complete Bob Newhart show from the Shout Factory.
Marc:I know that there's a few available of Newhart as well.
Marc:The records are always available.
Marc:Outside of the first three, you did like seven, right?
Marc:All together.
Guest:I think so, yeah.
Guest:And one was a compilation, I think.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Now, like looking back, as I was saying, the Mudbone bit.
Marc:Now, if you were to say one bit of yours that you thought was that's just the gem, the one you like doing the most or the one that you thought that was the best bit you ever wrote, what would it be?
Marc:And I'll play it on the show.
Guest:Okay, the cliché is which child do you want me?
Marc:Right, yeah, Sophie's choice.
Guest:But I like them for different reasons.
Guest:I like the driving instructor because I think that's the one that pushed the record that drove the first album.
Marc:Very accessible.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I love the submarine commander.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's the big corporation where some guy gets to the top who's totally incompetent.
Guest:I love Abe Lincoln because it says something that's even truer today than it was before.
Guest:53 years ago, the focus groups and manipulation of.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:The people who are really running things.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I got to tell you, it was a tremendous honor for me to talk to you.
Marc:Thank you.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:And we got into great areas.
Guest:I appreciate it.
Guest:That I love to get into.
Marc:Well, thanks for talking, Bob.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Thank you very much.
Guest:Many of you may have read The Hidden Persuaders.
Guest:It's about advertising.
Guest:And one of the points the book made was that the real danger of the public relations man or the advertising man was that they were creating images.
Guest:And they felt that in the presidential campaigns, the candidates were really getting closer and closer together.
Guest:There was no real difference between them.
Guest:And you were really voting for the man.
Guest:And this got me to thinking, supposing this science were as far advanced during the Civil War as it is today, and there was no Lincoln.
Guest:Now the advertising people realizing this would have had to create a Lincoln.
Guest:And I think they would have gone about it something like this.
Guest:This is a telephone conversation between Abe and his press agent just before Gettysburg.
Guest:Hi, Abe, sweetheart.
Guest:How are you, kid?
Guest:How's dead at birth?
Guest:Sort of a drag, huh?
Guest:Well, Abe, you know them small Pennsylvania towns.
Guest:You've seen one, you've seen them all.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Listen, Abe, I got to know it.
Guest:What's the problem?
Guest:You're thinking of shaving it off.
Guest:Abe, don't you see that's part of the image?
Guest:Right, with a shawl and a stovepipe and a string tie.
Guest:You don't have the shawl.
Guest:Where's the shawl, Abe?
Guest:You left it in Washington.
Guest:What are you wearing, Abe?
Guest:A sort of cardigan?
Guest:Abe, don't you see that doesn't fit with the string tie and the beard?
Guest:Abe, would you leave the beard on and get the shawl, huh?
Yes.
Guest:All right, now what's this about Grant?
Guest:You're getting a lot of complaints on Grant's drinking, huh?
Guest:Abe, to be perfectly honest with you, I don't see the problem.
Guest:I mean, you knew he was a lush when you pointed him.
Guest:You're gag writers.
Guest:Yeah, you're gag writers.
Guest:You want to come back with something funny, huh?
Guest:Maybe an anecdote about a town drunk.
Guest:Well, I can't promise anything, Abe.
Guest:I'll get them working on it.
Guest:Abe, you got the speech.
Guest:Abe, you haven't changed the speech, have you?
Guest:Abe, what do you change the speeches for?
Guest:A couple minor changes, I'll bet.
Guest:All right, all right, all right, what are they?
Guest:You what?
Guest:You typed it.
Guest:Abe, how many times have we told you on the backs of envelopes?
Guest:I understand it's harder to read that way, Abe, but it looks like you wrote it on the train coming down.
Guest:Abe, could you do this?
Guest:Could you memorize it and then put it on the backs of the envelopes?
Guest:We're getting a lot of play in the press on that.
Guest:How are the envelopes told now?
Guest:You can stand in another box.
Guest:All right, I'll stand in.
Guest:All right.
Guest:What else, Abe?
Guest:You changed four score and seven to 87?
Guest:I understand you're not the same thing.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Abe, that's meant to be a grabber.
Guest:Abe, we test marketed that in Eerie, and they went out of their minds about it.
Guest:Well, Abe, it's sort of like Mark Anthony saying, friends, Romans, countrymen, I've got something I want to tell you.
Guest:You see?
Guest:You see what I mean, Abe?
Guest:What else?
Guest:People will little note nor long remember.
Guest:Hey, what could possibly be wrong with that?
Guest:They'll remember it.
Guest:Hey, they'll remember it.
Guest:It's the old humble bit.
Guest:You can't say it's a great speech.
Guest:I think everybody's going to remember it.
Guest:You come off a bragger, don't you see that?
Guest:Hey, do the speech the way Charlie wrote it, would you?
Guest:The inaugural address swung, didn't it?
Guest:All right, anything else?
Guest:You talk to some newspaper men now.
Guest:Abe, I wish you wouldn't talk to newspaper men.
Guest:Well, you always put your foot in.
Guest:No, that's just what I mean, Abe.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:You're a rail splitter, then an attorney.
Guest:Abe, it doesn't make any sense that way.
Guest:I mean, you wouldn't give up your law practice to become a rail splitter, don't you?
Guest:Would you read it by Og, Abe?
Guest:You'll save a lot of trouble on this end.
Guest:Abe, listen, before I forget, the manufacturer is coming out with the Abe Lincoln T-shirt on Tuesday.
Guest:Could you work that into the address somewhere, Abe?
Guest:Play it by ear, whatever you can do.
Guest:Abe, have you got a pencil and paper there?
Guest:Will you take this down?
Guest:You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time.
Guest:But you can't fool all the people all the time.
Guest:Well, you keep doing it differently, Abe.
Guest:The last quote I got was, you can fool all the people all the time.
Guest:Abe, hold on.
Guest:They come up with a thing on Grant.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Good.
Guest:Yeah, all beautiful.
Guest:Abe, listen to this.
Guest:They got a beautiful squelch on Grant.
Guest:The next time they bug you about Grant's drinking...
Guest:You tell him you're going to find out what brand he drinks and send a case of it to all your other generals.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:It's like the brand was the reason he won.
Guest:No, no, no, no.
Guest:Use it.
Guest:It's funny.
Guest:Trust me, Mr. Saturday night.
Guest:Oh, Abe, I'm sorry.
Guest:I'm going to be in New York Saturday night.
Guest:A bridge party at the White House?
Guest:Oh, Abe, I'd love to make it.
Guest:How about Seward?
Guest:You try him?
Guest:He'll be out of town, too, huh?
Guest:Oh, that's just... You and... What's your name?
Guest:Be home alone.
Guest:Mary, be home alone.
Guest:Listen, Abe, why aren't you taking a play?
I'll be talking to you.
Go on.
Marc:I just got done.
Marc:I just got out of Bob Newhart's house.
Marc:Now I'm driving home.
Marc:What an amazing conversation.
Marc:What an amazing history.
Marc:What an amazing memory and clarity the guy had.
Marc:And I was really happy and honored to talk to him.
Marc:And I shut the equipment off.
Marc:I was packing up my bags and we were chatting.
Marc:And they went out to my car to get my phone to take a picture.
Marc:And the phone had overheated.
Marc:So I came back and I was waiting around.
Marc:And Bob was, you know, showing me pictures that were in his office.
Marc:You know, it was a letter from President Kennedy...
Marc:You know, a picture of him and George Burns, a picture of him and Jack Benny, a picture at a party at Buddy Hackett's house with Shecky Green, Don Rickles, Jerry Vale, Dom DeLuise, Norm Crosby, Norman Fell.
Marc:You know, pictures.
Marc:You know, it's just, you know, he's taking things off the wall.
Marc:He's showing me pictures of the cast of both shows.
Marc:What an amazing career, what a sweet guy.
Marc:You know, what an amazing life he had.
Marc:And it really went differently than a lot of other comics I talked to in just in terms of a guy who got these amazing opportunities, you know, based on not very much experience, but really, you know, showed up and, you know, was the real deal.
Marc:It's a hell of a thing to start at the top and stay there.
Marc:It was an amazing afternoon for me, and I'm happy to share it with you.
Marc:And I hope he's around for a long time.
Marc:Okay, I should probably drive and not talk on the mic.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:All right, so this is exciting.
Marc:Bob Newhart, who I love and respect a lot, has a new audio series exclusively on Audible.
Marc:It's called Hi, Bob.
Marc:Bob Newhart in conversation with famous friends.
Marc:I actually wrote and recorded the foreword for the show, and the show features talks with people like Will Ferrell, Lisa Kudrow, Sarah Silverman.
Marc:So...
Marc:Get that on Audible now.
Marc:Start a free subscription if you don't have one already.
Marc:And this is me, you know, just touching base with Bob on the phone a little while back about the show and about, you know, him and, you know, we'll think, we'll phone thing with Bob Newhart.
Marc:Hi, Bob.
Marc:Hi, Mark.
Marc:So I haven't talked to you in a while, Bob.
Marc:How are you feeling about everything?
Marc:Okay.
Okay.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Considering I'm 88 and a half, I'm doing pretty good.
Marc:So are you going to be recording these episodes of Hi, Bob for Audible up there at your house?
Marc:Are you going to have people over to the house?
Guest:No, they're recorded already.
Guest:Where'd you record them?
Guest:At the hotel, the Bel Air Hotel.
Guest:Oh, that's fancy.
Guest:So you just rented a room and got some mics out and sat there in a suite?
Guest:No, in a bar, actually.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:The sound was great.
Guest:And then we did a couple, Sarah Silverman we did in one of the rooms, and it's...
Guest:It worked out quick.
Guest:It was very quiet, you know.
Guest:And this all came from, I feel then for Johnny, you know, 79 times.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was guest host for Johnny.
Guest:So part of that was interviewing, you know, the guests.
Guest:And the night before they'd hand you the notes and you'd try to pick out the ones that you thought were going to lead somewhere or that you and the person had some...
Guest:kind of contact with.
Guest:So I always enjoyed it.
Guest:So this came up through Audible.
Guest:And you don't have to get on a plane.
Guest:And you don't have to sleep in a strange hotel room anymore.
Guest:And it's...
Guest:And it's interesting.
Guest:It keeps the mind active.
Guest:Yeah, of course, of course.
Guest:I've been lucky so far.
Guest:And those interviews you did on Carson, those were shorter interviews, I imagine, and you didn't have a lot of time to get in depth with people.
Guest:And I assume that these interviews are a little longer and more of a conversation.
Guest:Yeah, you're exactly right.
Guest:I tried to make them conversational as opposed to
Guest:And then bring a unique kind of experience that I've had of almost 60 years of doing stand-up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And talking to other stand-ups and how much different that world is now.
Guest:Last night, we went to the, Jenny and I, my wife and I, went to the improv because it was Billy Crystal, 70th.
Guest:70th birthday uh-huh well improv and comedy clubs they they weren't part of my life uh so i always found it interesting like talking to sarah what is that world like yeah it sounded it sounded terrible i mean it sounded like a cattle call and you're just you're just all wait and maybe you get five five minutes oh yeah very end if you're lucky and uh
Guest:And it's totally foreign to me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The system is different because, as I recall from our conversation, you know, you had put together your act.
Guest:And I think your story is unique to you that you had put this together, your act in a vacuum and very quickly were able to perform it in a nightclub.
Guest:And it just proved to be that all the stars aligned and everything worked out for that first record.
Guest:And I guess that the process of becoming a comic was different.
Guest:Entirely different.
Guest:The thing that people...
Guest:that I've talked to, like young comics, they'll say, when you recorded that, that comedy album, that, you know, the button down mind of Bob Newhart, you had never worked at nightclub before.
Guest:And I said, no, no, I hadn't.
Guest:So yeah, that's, that's kind of different.
Guest:But as you learned from the get go, you got to pretend like, you know what you're doing, because if you don't, it makes the audience nervous.
Guest:And the,
Guest:So you've got to summon all the bravado you have.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or you're going to bomb.
Guest:It's the only thing I had going.
Guest:I mean, I think if that didn't work, it would have been back to accounting or something.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Or back to advertising, right?
Guest:Whatever.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I mean, but I think that that experience, it seems to me, is a common experience.
Guest:I think that half of our job, or if not more than half of our job, is pretending like we're not scared.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, if not 90%.
Guest:And then I was playing these big places.
Guest:I mean, I was playing The Hungry Eye and The Crescendo in Los Angeles and The Crescendo, especially in L.A.
Guest:I mean, I was a major star, was in the audience.
Guest:And they'd be sure to introduce...
Guest:Groucho Marx.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Be sure to introduce me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm trying to learn the business, you know, from the top down, not from the bottom up, but from the top down, and trying to act like I know what the hell I'm doing.
Guest:Yeah, and you pulled it off.
Guest:You did it.
Guest:Well, you know, there was one, I forget where I was.
Guest:I think I was in Texas.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And I came off.
Guest:I had 18 minutes, and I came off.
Guest:And the maitre d' and they were applauding.
Guest:And the maitre d' said, go back out.
Guest:And I said, well, that's all I have.
Guest:And they said, well, they're applauding.
Guest:Go back out.
Guest:So not knowing that much about the business, I went back and I said, which one do you want to hear again?
Guest:That's all I have.
Guest:Did you actually do one again?
Guest:I did one again.
Marc:I forget which one it was.
Marc:So when I guess on the series here, you talk to you talk to Will Ferrell and and Judd Apatow and Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman.
Marc:And some of them have done their professional hosts.
Marc:And one's a professional comic actor.
Marc:One's a comedy producer.
Marc:One's a stand up comedy comedian by trade.
Marc:So what did you find was the commonalities that you had with them or that they had together?
Marc:What did you learn in talking to all these people?
Guest:The odd thing, I'll tell you what happened with Judd.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Judd Apatow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're talking, and he was asking me questions, and we're talking, and I said...
Guest:Judd, I'm trying to interview you.
Guest:And he said, no, no, your life is more interesting than mine is.
Guest:So you have to get it back on track.
Guest:Believe me, I know.
Guest:Well, you know how it is.
Guest:You've done it both.
Guest:You've done stand-up and now the podcast.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, yeah, Judd is a very humble guy, but clearly he's got a lot of experience.
Marc:He probably just feels like he doesn't have as much life experience.
Marc:Did you end up getting him to talk about himself?
Guest:Yeah, eventually, yeah.
Guest:At that point, I think he was going back into stand-up.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He did a good stand-up show.
Guest:I liked his stand-up.
Guest:Oh, I haven't seen it yet, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's on Don Cable, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's on Netflix.
Guest:I mentioned last night we went to Billy Crystal's 70th birthday, and Billy and I, I was playing golf with Tom Poston, and Billy was Tom's guest.
Guest:So we're playing along, we're enjoying ourselves, having laughs, and
Guest:And I said to Bill, I said, Billy, do you still do stand-up?
Guest:And he said, yeah, I'm working on a project.
Guest:I'm going to get back into it.
Guest:I said, you know, Billy, I think people who can make people laugh have an obligation to
Guest:to make people laugh.
Guest:There aren't that many.
Guest:I think that's true.
Guest:I think that's true.
Guest:It's a calling.
Guest:It's a calling.
Guest:Yeah, I hate to call it a gift.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:It's a calling.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's just great.
Guest:I mean, I still do, you know, I'll do this year maybe five stand-ups.
Guest:Yeah, it feels good.
Guest:It's just a wonderful thing to be able to do to make people laugh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You look and laughter is one of the great sounds of the world.
Guest:You know, to me it is.
Guest:I think you're absolutely right.
Marc:And when you interviewed Will Ferrell, like Will Ferrell is one of the funniest people who ever lived.
Guest:But a lot of times when you interview him, he doesn't act funny at all.
Guest:What did he did?
Guest:Was he funny with you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, he was.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:He was.
Guest:But, you know, we had the experience of Elf.
Marc:Oh, that's right, yeah.
Guest:Which was a great experience.
Guest:Because when I was offered Elf, I read it and I said to my wife, I said, this is going to be a perennial.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it became a perennial.
Guest:Yeah, it's funny.
Guest:But I could just see it every Christmas being played.
Guest:And that's what happened to it.
Guest:It was just such a wonderful story.
Guest:And I complimented him on his role because very...
Guest:dangerous kind of role because it was very easy for him just to come off as a large guy who isn't very bright and doesn't realize that he's not that he's an elf right but he was able you were pulling for it so much he pulled that off and that and that wasn't easy because it was
Guest:Very dangerous, and the whole movie could have fallen apart if you didn't believe him.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:He's a very talented guy.
Marc:He's a good actor, a very funny guy, too.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, listen, Bob, I wish you had nothing but success with this thing, and it's a pleasure to talk to you again, and I'm excited for everybody to hear these conversations you had.
Guest:Well, Mark, I'm embarrassed.
Guest:I mean, we're talking on the phone.
Guest:I mean, you had the president come to your place.
Yeah.
Marc:But I went to your house.
Marc:We had a nice conversation.
Guest:I know you went to my house, but you had the president.
Guest:Even though, I mean, he had a motorcade.
Guest:I mean, there's a big advantage.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:When you have a motorcade, you know, it really knocks out a lot of the time.
Guest:Well, I'll tell you what, next time you and I talk, I'll have your motorcade pick you up and bring you over here.
Guest:Okay?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Thanks, Bob.
Guest:Thank you, Mark.