My first day, still being coached to use the register, I saw a man waiting in line wearing a cardigan and half-glasses. People were staring. Finally, the woman behind him said, “Aren’t you Bob Newhart?”

He gave a soft chuckle and said, “No, I get that all the time, though.”

“You even sound like him,” she said.

His reply was a sad shrug that implied a burden: he got that all the time, too.

He handed me his credit card. BOB NEWHART. His eyes flicked toward mine for less than a second, and I knew I was supposed to stay quiet, so I did. He bought his books and left.

When he’d hired me, Mike, in his beautiful radio announcer’s voice, suggested certain skills were involved when dealing with the famous. It wasn’t something that could be taught, really, but he could see I grasped the whole Tao of the thing, he said. He kept using Eastern philosophical words even when they didn’t line up with what he meant, but I nodded anyway, because I could see that it pleased him to say things like “Zen” when he meant “tact,” maybe.

Interesting coincidence.

The reason he got hired was that during his job interview, some Japanese customers asked a question. He jumped in and, using his year of Japanese in college, answered their query. The Japanese wanted to know if the books at the upstairs table labeled “bargain” were always on sale, or if they were on sale just for the day. Gold replied, “always on sale.” Some time later, he realized that instead of saying “always on sale” in Japanese, he had actually said “never on sale.” 🙂

I finally heard his comedy albums a few years ago and loved them.

RIP

Clever routines for more innocent times.

Waidmann

This is the first comedy sketch to reach 1 million copies sold! The performer is Joe Hayman portraying a stereotypical Jewish man on the phone with his landlord, and was recorded in London in 1913.

–Joe Hayman, “Cohen on The Telephone” (1913)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvOONWjx5RU

Just one last gig that he did so, so, well.

Here’s an excerpt from Newhart’s immortal routine which imagines Abraham Lincoln being managed by a Madison Avenue advertising firm for the Gettysburg Address:
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You what? You typed it? Abe, how many times have I told you–on the backs of envelopes…I understand it’s harder to read that way, but it looks like you wrote it on the train coming down…

–Bob Newhart, “Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue” (1960)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od82WdGXtuc
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I don’t know who invented that one-sided telephone conversation format, but I think Newhart did it best.

No, The Bob Newhart Show ran from ’72 to ’78. WKRP ran from ’78 to ’82.

https://i.imgflip.com/8k9284.jpg

We NEED insult comedians and comedians who can make the Woke feel really uncomfortable and stupid.