LOS ANGELES (CelebrityAccess) — George Robert Newhart, the comedian and actor, who helped to pioneer the comedy special, has died. He was 94.
According to the Associated Press, Newhart died at his home in Los Angeles on Thursday after a series of short illnesses. Additional information about a cause of death was not disclosed.
Known for his dry, hesitant comedic delivery style, and one-sided comedic telephone conversations, Newhart began his career as a stand-up comic before successfully transitioning to television in the 1970s.
A Chicago native, Newhart graduated from Loyala University in 1952 with a business degree before he was drafted for service during the Korean War.
Following his stint in the military, he landed a job as an accountant but soon found work as an advertising copywriter for Fred A. Niles, a Chicago-based film and television producer. There, he and a co-worker developed telephone-based comedy routines that soon brought him to the attention of Warner Bros. Records, who signed Newhart in 1959 as he developed a full stand-up routine.
His debut album, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, came in 1960 and topped the Billboard chart, earning Newhart Grammys for Album of the Year and Best New Artist in 1961.
That same year, Newhart began hosting the short-lived NBC variety show titled The Bob Newhart Show but it wasn’t until 1972 that he became a television star when he began starring as the Chicago psychologist Robert Hartley on “The Bob Newhart Show”, which aired until 1978.
He returned to television in 1982 as the Vermont innkeeper Dick Loudin on the CBS sitcom “Newhart” which had an eight-season run, finally coming to rest in 1990.
Newhart’s other film and television projects included the short-lived sitcoms short-lived sitcoms Bob and George and Leo, as well as films such as Catch-22, Elf, and The animated film The Rescuers.
In 2002, Newhart won the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor and in 2004, he was named number 14 on the “Comedy Central Presents: 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time” list.
