Stand Up That Stands Up or Newhart New Art

In the 1950s a new type of stand-up comedian appeared.  One who didn't do one-liners or Borscht Belt shtick.  They'd do their own routines, giving their take on the world, routines following their own ideas to see where they'd go.  The pioneers included Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce, but by the early 60s they was a large group of new names who'd taken over comedy, such as Shelley Berman, Nichols and May, Jonathan Winters and Dick Gregory. But for a period (let's say until Bill Cosby hit the scene), the biggest of them all was Bob Newhart.

His first album, The Button-Down Mind Of Bob Newhart, was #1 for 14 weeks.  His second album, The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back!, released later that year, also went to #1 and suddenly this newcomer had the  top two albums on the charts. Just as amazing, when he recorded his first album in front of a live audience he had little stand-up experience--most of his routines he'd originally created on tape.

I just listened to the Newhart collection, Something Like This..., which has many of his biggest routines, and I think his work still stands up.  He was famous for bits where he did one-side of a conversation, sometimes with a famous figure, or sometimes dealing with an everyday situation.  The trick was he'd mix the sublime with the ridiculous--an ad man helping Abe Lincoln with the Gettsyburg Address, a night watchmen trying to deal with King Kong climbing his building, an Englishman dumbfounded by Sir Walter Raleigh sending over 80 tons of tobacco leaves, a barely competent bureaucrat trying to help an employee over the phone defuse a bomb.



Newhart was an interesting mixture himself.  Sort of square, sort of hip.  He mocked the conventions of the day, and how modern people talked, but he himself was a straight-looking ex-accountant.  He also knew how to work the one-sided conversation--half the fun was him reacting to the bizarre things the other person said--and allowing us to laugh at what we're missing. (To be fair, Shelley Berman was also famous for phone call routines, and his first couple of bestselling albums were put out in 1959).

If anything in the routine is dated, it's the pace.  The laughs come regularly, but Newhart is willing to take his time, particularly with set-ups--he'll take a minute to explain the premise of a bit.  Another thing that might weaken the routines are their familiarity--not only are they famous, but the type of thing he's doing has so seeped into the culture that we don't recognize how new it must have sounded when he first hit the scene.