{"id":25852,"date":"2014-06-10T07:23:11","date_gmt":"2014-06-10T11:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eyesofageneration.com\/?p=25852"},"modified":"2021-03-24T10:31:07","modified_gmt":"2021-03-24T14:31:07","slug":"classic-bob-newhart-how-he-became-his-own-straight-man-in-the-clip-youl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/?p=25852","title":{"rendered":"Classic! Bob Newhart&#8230;How He Became His Own Straight Man"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Classic! Bob Newhart&#8230;How He Became His Own Straight Man<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Bob Newhart - Tobacco video (Sir Walter Raleigh phone conversation)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_XDxAzVEbN4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In the clip, you&#8217;ll see Bob doing what made him famous&#8230;being his own straight man in one of his famous one sided telephone calls. In the photo we see Bob at Chicago&#8217;s WGN in 1959.<\/p>\n<p>Chicago native, Bob Newhart was drafted into the Army and served in the Korean War as a personnel manager until being discharged in 1954. After the war, Newhart got a job as an accountant for United States Gypsum. He later claimed that his motto, &#8220;That&#8217;s close enough,&#8221; and his habit of adjusting petty cash imbalances with his own money shows he did not have the temperament to be an accountant.<\/p>\n<p>In 1958, Newhart became an advertising copywriter for Fred A. Niles, a major independent film and television producer in Chicago. It was here that he and a co-worker would entertain each other with long telephone calls about absurd scenarios, which they would later record and send to radio stations as audition tapes. When his co-worker ended his participation, Newhart continued the recordings alone, developing the shtick which was to serve him well for decades.<\/p>\n<p>A disc jockey, Dan Sorkin, who later became the announcer-sidekick on his NBC series, introduced Newhart to the head of talent at Warner Bros. Records, which signed him in 1959&#8211;only a year after the label was formed&#8211;based solely on those recordings. He expanded his material into a stand-up routine which he began to perform at nightclubs.<\/p>\n<p>His 1960 comedy album, &#8216;The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart&#8217;, went straight to number one on the charts, beating Elvis Presley and the cast album of &#8216;The Sound of Music&#8217;. It was the first comedy album to make <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/hashtag\/1\">#1<\/a> on the Billboard charts. &#8216;Button Down Mind&#8217; received the 1961 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. The album peaked at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/hashtag\/2\">#2<\/a> in the UK Albums Chart. Newhart also won Best New Artist, and his quickly released follow-up album, &#8216;The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back&#8217;, won Best Comedy Performance &#8211; Spoken Word that same year.<\/p>\n<p>Newhart became famous mostly on the strength of his audio releases, in which he became the world&#8217;s first solo &#8220;straight man&#8221;. This is a seeming contradiction in terms: by definition, a straight man is the counterpart to a more loony comedic partner. Newhart&#8217;s routine, however, was simply to portray one end of a conversation (usually a phone call), playing the straightest of comedic straight men and implying what the other person was saying. In the clip, he does just that! Enjoy and share! .<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/189359747768249\/photos\/a.197108410326716.39183.189359747768249\/687168021320750\/?type=3\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp_automatic_fb_img\" title=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Classic-Bob-Newhart...How-He-Became-His-Own-Straight-Man-In-the-clip-youl\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/189359747768249\/posts\/687179641319588\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Classic! Bob Newhart&#8230;How He Became His Own Straight Man In the clip, you&#8217;ll see Bob doing what made him famous&#8230;being his own straight man in one of his famous one sided telephone calls. In the photo we see Bob at Chicago&#8217;s WGN in 1959. Chicago native, Bob Newhart was drafted into the Army and served [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":25853,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pgc_sgb_lightbox_settings":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"_vp_custom_popup_image":0,"_vp_format_audio_url":"","_vp_album_images":[],"_vp_custom_thumbnail":0,"_vp_custom_thumbnail_focal_point":[],"_vp_custom_thumbnail_cover":0,"_vp_hover_thumbnail":0,"_vp_hover_thumbnail_focal_point":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[721,724,711,782,704],"class_list":["post-25852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-announcer","tag-cast","tag-copywriter","tag-nbc","tag-producer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60068,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25852\/revisions\/60068"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}