Original subtitles

Really heavy, Doc. Really heavy.

I can't ever remember feeling so alive, so wonderful.

I didn't think it was so hot.

Dealing with the crazies.

It worked in the first show and it worked in the second show. I would come

at night and I would hurt from laughing so hard. I would be exhausted.

Working with great actors, it's a gift from God or it's providential. He just

made everybody feel that they were important to the process.

And they were appreciated.

And it made you want to give more.

We spent most of our time entertaining each other. It was a bunch of silly

people rehearsing. And no one could ever think we were accomplishing anything if

they'd watched us rehearse. But we were in our way. We knew what we were

accomplishing.

We did six years of the Bob Newhart Show, from 72 to 78.

Now women all over the world are questioning their roles in life, the

of their jobs.

Not all women, Emily.

Some women haven't had lunch with you yet.

I wanted to go off while we were still on top, so I kind of pulled the plug on

the show in 78.

So I left weekly television, but in the back of my mind I was always thinking,

knowing I was going to come back to television and something.

So we're up in Seattle, staying at a...

Like a pocket Hilton. It wasn't one of those huge Hiltons. And I was thinking

about, okay, what made the first show work?

I mean, I had Patience, and then I had Home Life, which was Emily and Bill

So I thought, well, the guests at a hotel are like Patience.

This man's wife is about to have a baby.

Oh, great! Because no matter how...

absurd they are, you have to treat them as though they make sense. You know, as

I had to treat Mr. Carlin no matter what he said.

Well, I wish I could just walk in there and tell my boss off and quit. Yeah, but

you're self -employed, Mr. Carlin. I know.

We could spend the rest of our lives reminiscing, but it wouldn't do either

of us any good. That's why I'm going to go.

Go where?

I don't know.

West? South?

Somewhere. Maybe north. I decided on that.

a hotel, a small hotel, in Seattle. How about East?

That's possible. East is Vermont.

It was really Barry that set it in Vermont and allowed us all those

northeastern characters.

Bob liked surrounding himself with wacky characters, and they were always his

family. Like in the first Bob Newhart, he had all the wacky characters. They

seemed like family, and then it carried on to Newhart. The secret was we did the

show in front of a live audience. Both shows were always done in front of a

audience.

We're so different in real life in so many ways, and yet our rhythm...

our comic rhythm, the way we heard the joke, our approach to it, was absolutely

in sync.

We just had a great time.

Kay Poston, Tom's second wife, she came on the set one day. She said, if you

ever complain to me about going to work, don't bother. She said, all you people

did all day was laugh. And we were the sea of eccentrics, and he was the island

of normalcy or something. But I was just thrilled to be in a scene with him.

There's a certain satisfaction when something gets a laugh, a big laugh.

It doesn't matter whether you've set it up or you did the line. That's what

ensemble is all about. You're all pulling for that line, that joke to

So I took a lot of joy in just setting up the joke with these strange people

were surrounding me.

There was nothing.

That you could do that wasn't funnier if you were doing it with Dick in the

scene. What are you confused about?

Love and lust.

My favorite thing about him, always, was that it was so incredibly easy to make

him uncomfortable.

See if I have a dictionary.

And it never stopped being funny.

You could do almost anything to make him uncomfortable because he had that

everyman thing.

So what do you fellas interested in?

Well, I thought that she was trying very hard always to make his life

as normal as possible, even though it was an uphill battle all the way. And

kept trying to make everything normal.

but somehow he would stumble onto the most abnormal aspects of life.

Mary Pratt's character was like herself, very gracious and warm, like she was

personally. I think that's what I like best about her. She's pretty and

cheerful. You think you can get the stupid bucket to stay on the stupid

Mary was a very, very good serious actress, as well as having a very light

with comedy.

But she was always very real in everything she did.

I told Mary one time, I said, you know, you and I are the glue that holds this

thing together. And if we become cartoon characters, it isn't going to work. And

I thought Mary did a wonderful job of it. I mean, she came from the soap opera

world and then to come into the world of comedy, which is, that's quite a

departure. Great. I love a good surprise.

That's a thoughtful husband.

Well, I try.

She had a hard job because she followed Suzanne Flechette.

She was beautiful and talented, and I've heard Bob say she was there to get us

from point A to point B. You go with their strengths, you know, and Susie's

the wisecracking, rough -edged, apparently, softy.

And Mary was very attractive and demure, and that's what you go with.

And she did a great job. That's a tough act to follow.

I worked with Madeline Kahn. I worked with Julia. And the two reminded me of

each other. Madeline was, I'd be in a scene with her or off camera, and I

say, where is she going with this? I don't know.

How is she going to wind it? And then boom, and there it was. And it made

perfect sense.

talking about you she was beautiful like carol lombard but it's hard to be

beautiful and funny you want your character to be as flawed as possible

that's where you get your comedic scope from and i always thought stephanie had

a lot of scope if i came up with a funny idea i could figure out a way for

stephanie to do it because to me she was like everybody is at the age of about

three she heard the muse you know she just she knew where the laugh was and

knew how to go and get it

Now here it's hard to separate the character from the guy because they both

the most magical sweetness about them.

No one else could have possibly played that character.

George, I was just about to make a toast.

Tommy offstage was so far away from George, it was...

But he knew how to play him, and he played him perfectly.

He was the handyman.

He was always there for you, and you never really knew what he did

or what he worked on. You know that little doohickey inside a furnace by the

door under the screen?

I'm working on the thing next to that.

He's a very sympathetic character.

You know, I only do one thing. Tom could do it all.

But I love the fact that George actually had very strong feelings about things

underneath. He was really quite opinionated.

He wasn't quite as dithering as he seemed at first.

Do you know anything about furnaces? Well, I know they go in the basement.

They give off heat.

And if you want one installed right, it costs $80.

He always had this attitude that was underneath that.

The applause was wonderful.

I tried to hear it, enjoy it, never quite believe it.

That was a one -time shot, but given the reaction by the audience to

them. I'm Larry, this is my brother Daryl, and that's my other brother

I said, you know, we've got to come up with another show because the audience

loved Larry,

Daryl and Daryl. And the people went crazy. They just started applauding.

loved them. I mean, whenever they were going to enter, I put myself behind the

counter in the lobby because I knew there was going to be about three

applause whenever they walked in. So I had to busy myself with different things

to do.

And then when they leave, there'd be another two minutes of applause.

But we never would have found that out if it hadn't been for the live audience.

The mystery of Larry, who knew so much more than anyone would have guessed.

The character of Larry, he was always the leader of us. We never knew who was

the oldest.

My brother Daryl was Tony Patton Foose and John Bolstad, my other brother

They're the reasons I survived.

So I was OBD, the other brother Daryl. They had great theater background.

don't know that. One studied in England, the other did over 100 plays.

I tended to be a little more vocal with my looks or something, whereas Daryl was

more stoic, very Indian -like, because his face was just so, like very, very

Buster Keaton, you know. Sometimes people think it didn't have to do with

acting, but we always had to listen and react, and Tony would always say that we

had eloquent shrugs.

I know it would be more interesting to say that I carried the Daryls and one of

them was drunk and I had to prop him up at work, but they were...

The two easiest people I ever worked with in my life, and they had a tough

You're all like, you know, like the Marx Brothers, kind of. They became a

metaphor. Take a suit in to have it pressed or something.

They said, oh yeah, yeah, we'll give it to Larry Daryl and Daryl and they'll

take care of it, you know. A lot of people had named people like their co

-workers, Larry Daryl and Daryl, because they were like supposedly...

Inept, but not really inept. I mean, they were just guys who just, you know.

Did they mind not talking? Well, if they did, they never said anything to me

about it.

So we had a group of guys that didn't quite function. They immediately became

Larry, Daryl, and Daryl.

Although, I'll tell them if they're in this room, if you don't talk, they don't

know you're an idiot.

Or maybe you're just shy.

But I can't wait to hear what they say.

You'll just have to forgive me if I'm not the life of the party.

Yeah, you know that feeling, don't you, Dick?

It was ensemble, and if it was Georgia's show, it was Georgia's show. And

everybody did everything to make it Georgia's show. If it was a Mary show,

was a Mary show. If it was a Bob show, it was Peter.

Bob was great in just letting everybody do what they were good at doing.

Bob didn't like to over -rehearse anything.

because he was so aware of the audience, and he didn't want anything to get

stale. And stand -ups are like that. I've worked with other stand -ups.

very aware of the audience.

There go the dregs of humanity.

He had great timing, and I recall when I'd come out of a scene with him, it

always felt clean.

Bob was the person that set the tone for the whole show.

So nobody yelled on our set.

Nobody was allowed to yell. And everybody followed Bob in that, in that

were very laid back.

I remember Tom Poston saying one thing Bob would do when he warmed the audience

up. He could be a little more risque, but he said it's like the Queen of

scratching her rear end. The audience is not expecting it. Come on, make sense,

Dick.

Bob was like a father to me, and he came down on me when I made mistakes, but he

did it in a rational way, like a great leader. There's not much I wouldn't have

done for him, silly as it sounds, and that's the mark of a great leader.

Unfortunately, they didn't take advantage of her sense of humor because

wacky. But what I learned after Mary passed away, rest her soul, she did a

of charity that she didn't broadcast, and people didn't even know that.

a lot of people that do charity where they can get some publicity. Mary Friend

wasn't that way.

She really was generous, generous with her time.

She created an aerobics class that we had on the set. It was a lot of fun.

I seemed to be the only guy in the aerobics class, but it was still fun.

I just flashed back to the set for a minute because Tom and Peter and I used

go to lunch.

We'd be walking over to the commissary, and then they'd be doing all this

jumping around.

We were pals. We talked all the time.

We had a slumber party once with the girls on the show, and we shopped, which

loved to do.

And we had a joke that was a running gag between the two of us because we both

knew that this was the best time in our lives.

We didn't think we could possibly top this experience.

And we would talk about what would we do when we were past our prime and

we were nostalgic about the show. And we decided we would join a country club,

flirt with the caddies, have martinis at lunch, and we would say things like,

Hey, caddy, did you ever see the Newhart show?

And that was our little...

thing that we would say to each other all the time. That was what we were

to do.

And Mary just didn't reach that age.

She was never past her prime.

Yeah, it was Mary. Mary was a wonderful person.

Sweet.

I have a million Tom stories.

I think there may be one or two that can actually be shared with the public.

because he was really a bad boy.

At the end of my stand -up, I have a film and do a salute to Tom.

I ordered your furnace.

Oh, good, George. The installation will cost $80.

I thought you'd take care of that.

I don't have $80.

He was a very, very bright man, polar opposite of George.

but they both were so endearing.

He was the funniest man I've ever known and the sweetest. My first day on the

set, he stayed with me for the first 20 minutes while people were gathering so

that I wouldn't feel uncomfortable, showed me where the coffee was, asked me

about my life, where I lived, showed me around. He just stuck with me.

And that's what he did. He made everybody comfortable.

And I cannot imagine being with him and not having the time of your life.

Everybody always did. I always did.

There's just not enough time to say how much I loved working with him. He was

the best.

He always had a thumbs up for us and always had good advice.

We learned a lot from watching him. They got a definition of friend, somebody

you want on your side when your back is against the wall.

I miss him.

Tom was one of the, he's one of the kindest men I've ever

met.

The writing was incredible.

The creation of the characters.

I never liked getting a laugh because my character was witty. I really liked

getting a laugh.

because of something true and emotional about my character.

I'd always had a loose set. It was just, you know, I don't think you can do

comedy under tension.

That was the best job I ever had. Everybody was real familial, and it was

great set.

You know, we'd laugh a lot.

I would walk in and they'd hand me a script and I'd say, oh, it's funny.

My criteria was, is it funny?

The only problem I had was when they'd give me a great line, I didn't want to

wait until Friday to do it. I wanted to do it that night.

It was comedy heaven, it really was, because we were all comedy animals and

just wanted the next great joke.

Bob worked well with all the writers, producers and stuff, and he let them do

their thing.

We got to do our thing.

I was in love with working with those people.

I was taught that's what you're supposed to do, love and respect.

But it's easier when they're decent people.

It was just fun. It was just fun to be a part of.

It was fun to go to work.

It was fun to work with great people, to work with pros.

It was the most creative atmosphere I've ever been in.

That was MTM. They didn't take everything seriously.

They took the MGM lion and turned it into a kitty cat.

And that meow has a stammer in it. I don't know if you noticed it.

Meow.