Standup

The late 1950s was the time for hip comics and sickos. Mort Sahl and Nichols and May were redefining the style for satire. Shelley Berman was studying Freud. Jonathan Winters was flying over the cuckoo's nest.

In Chicago, an accountant named Bob Newhart was supplementing his income by writing and performing comedy sketches on the radio. One year he actually made a thousand dollars at his "hobby." He might have remained comfortably pigeon-holed on the anonymous airwaves of Mid-America except for another 1950's phenomenon. Not only were comics big - so were comedy albums.

Newhart's radio style was a natural for records. His material was fresh and different. His "button-down mind" was creating cool, calculated and controlled sketches, satiric but in a new way. Newhart wasn't Lenny Bruce or Shelly Berman, shaking up or lecturing the audience. Newhart was part of the audience himself, gently mirroring the faults and foibles of the unassuming average man.

Few were more unassuming than bland Bob, who came from a stable Chicago household, attended St. Ignatius High School and graduated from Loyola University in 1952. When some of his comedy radio tapes found their way to Warner Brothers Records, Warner assumed Newhart was ready to become its star comic, opposite the Verve roster of wits.

But there was a problem. Newhart had never done stand-up before a live audience. It took a persuasion and a push to get him before a hand- picked audience in the small Tidelands Club in Houston. Even then, it took a few tries to get a usable complete performance.

Newhart may have been a basket-case at the time, but it's hard to tell from the results. His characters were mildly nervous anyway. Hiding behind set pieces, going from routine to routine, his shyness was an endearing example of vulnerability. The audience responded, even under such awkward conditions, with loud, appreciative laughter. Newhart proved that with good material (and a bit of prior experience in radio) he could indeed make the transition to stand-up.

Released in 1960, Newhart's first album offered historical "what ifs," a favorite device of his. These included Abraham Lincoln coached for the Gettysburgh Address, Abner Doubleday laughed at for inventing a complex game called baseball, and the merchandising of the Wright Brothers. Newhart's other favorite device, the nervous monologue sketch, was exemplified by the classic "Driving Instructor" routine, with Newhart as a harried man whose life is in the hands of an outrageously inept student driver.

Many of Newhart's sketches involved average men of the old generation trying to deal with the machinery of the brave new 60s.: airplanes, advertising agencies, even unexploded bombs. He didn't attack modern times, like Shelly Berman. Newhart merely questioned modern times. A cop confronts a suicidal man on a building ledge with, "First time?" A hapless soul pinned to his chair by a huge dog asks his host, "You got him from the Army, did you?" "Whose Army?" And when that unexploded bomb appears on the beach, an official remarks to the frantic telephone caller, "You think that's unusual, finding a shell on the beach?"

The humor of these deadpanned questions was matched by the solutions. Trying to defuse the bomb, the official looks into a coffee-stained manual and mutters, "One wire is kind of bluish gray, and the other ...kind of grayish blue." And as time ticks away, the bureaucratic tells his assistant, "If that thing goes off it's me they'll want to talk to, not you."

Only 15 gold records were issued in 1960, and Newhart had one of them. He was also voted "Best New Artist" at the Grammy Awards and his album was "Album of the Year." Over a million and a half copies of "The Button-Down Mind" were sold, and his follow-up won a Grammy as well.

Newhart conquered most of his performing worries but remained uneasy with fame. The father of three lived a calm, quiet life, going on stage to portray the understated every man caught in embarrassing situations, injecting into his routines about the ad men, PR men, and fools who would've interfered with the destines of Lincoln and Sir Walter Raleigh.

Despite its weaknesses, his third album hit #12 on the charts. 1962 saw "The Bob Newhart Show" on NBC - briefly. He wasn't happy with the limits imposed by the network: "Those who control the medium are obsessed with the notion that if they offend even one viewer, they have one less customer. What the TV biggies don't know is that people like entertainment with bite. They want satire. The growth of the talking record sales proves that. When the public couldn't get satire on TV it turned to records...satire on TV could be the next TV trend."

He was right, just eight years too soon. Still, his short-lived show won an Emmy, and the subsequent album of his TV work was his finest, including "The introduction of Tobacco to Civilization," wherein a telephone call from Sir Walter Raleigh prompts skeptical laughter in England:

"Are you saying "snuff," Walt? What's snuff? You take a pinch of tobacco (starts giggling) and you shove it up your nose! And it makes you sneeze, huh. I imagine it would, Walt, yeah. Goldenrod seems to do it pretty well over here. It has some other uses, though. You can chew it? Or put it in a pipe. Or you can shred it up and put it on a piece of paper, and roll it up - don't tell me, Walt, don't tell me- you stick in your ear, right Walt? Oh, between your lips! Then what do you do to it? (Giggling) You set fire to it! Then what do you do, Walt? You inhale the smoke! You set fire to it! Then what do you do Walt? You inhale the smoke! Walt, we've been a little worried about you...you're gonna have a tough time getting people to stick burning leaves in their mouth...."

Said H. Allen Smith, "That thing about tobacco and cigarettes is possibly the greatest single comedy routine I've seen or heard in my entire life."

Newhart salved his TV ego bruises by playing Vegas. Reflecting the tastes of the Vegas crowd he did routines about nudist camps and topless clubs as well as sharp bits like "The Man Who Looked Like Hitler."

Newhart's last album, appropriately titled "This Is It," might explain another reason for his gradual move away from stand-up. The liner notes report that "Newhart's slow-created tales come uncommonly hard-born... the routines in this album have been gestating around in Newhart's creativity for periods ranging from six months to six years." And for all that, the LP lasted 13 minutes on one side, just 10 on the other.