Bob Newhart
George Robert “Bob” Newhart (born September 5, 1929) is an American stand-up comedian and actor who is best known for playing psychologist Dr. Robert “Bob” Hartley on the 1970s sitcom The Bob Newhart Show and as innkeeper Dick Loudon on the 1980s sitcom Newhart.
Newhart also appeared in film roles such as Major Major in Catch-22, and Papa Elf in Elf. He provided the voice of Bernard in the Walt Disney animated films The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under. One of his most recent roles is the library head Judson in The Librarian franchise.
Newhart was born in Oak Park, Illinois and raised on the west side of Chicago. His parents were Julia Pauline (née Burns), a housewife of Irish descent, and George David Newhart, a part-owner of a plumbing and heating-supply business, who was Irish and German. Newhart has three sisters, Virginia, Mary Joan (a nun, who taught at a Chicago high school), and Pauline.
He was educated at Roman Catholic schools in the area, including St. Catherine of Sienna grammar school in Oak Park, and attended St. Ignatius College Prep, where he graduated in 1947. He then enrolled at Loyola University of Chicago where he graduated in 1952 with a bachelor’s degree in business management.
He was drafted in the U.S. Army and served stateside during the Korean War until discharged in 1954. Newhart briefly attended Loyola Law School but did not complete a degree.
After the war he got a job as an accountant for United States Gypsum. He later claimed that his motto, “That’s close enough,” shows he didn’t have the temperament to be an accountant. He also claimed to have been a clerk in the unemployment office who made $55 a week but who quit upon learning weekly unemployment benefits were $45 a week and “they only had to come in to the office one day a week to collect it.”
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