BOB NEWHART at Roy Thomson Hall (60 Simcoe), Friday (April 13) at 8 pm. $59.50-$79.50. 416-872-4255. See listing.
Betty White’s not just hot in Cleveland, William Shatner hosted the Junos, and Christopher Plummer recently became the oldest actor to win an Oscar. And now the 82-year-old Bob Newhart is bringing his stand-up act to town.
So is 80 the new 50?
“Well, maybe four is the new two,” deadpans Newhart, with the same understated charm that’s endeared him to comedy and TV fans for more than half a century.
“I don’t think too much about age,” he says from his California home. “Maybe if you’re hurting, aching and arthritic, then you think about it a lot. But I don’t.”
He’s too busy, he says, putting in full days of work and accomplishing nothing.
“I’m a master at it,” he says. “I get going from 10 am and by the end of the day have absolutely nothing to show for it. It’s an art form. It takes a lot of work.”
Newhart is joking, of course. Besides having two classic TV sitcoms on his resume – The Bob New- hart Show and Newhart – the Chicago native still does a couple of dozen dates a year. And he’s created several routines that comedy lovers know by heart, like his Abe Lincoln getting an image makeover joke.
“Look at focus groups and all the tools that are available for politicians,” he says about that classic bit. “That was written and performed 50 years ago, and it’s probably more true today than it was even then.”
As for new material, he’ll be drawing as usual on observational bits, including memories of growing up Catholic in Chicago. But he may be dusting off another classic routine – the one about the air traffic controller – because of the recent news story about a JetBlue pilot meltdown.
“We used to just have to worry about lost luggage when travelling, but now airline captains are going berserk,” he says. “Thank god there’s a locked door on the plane. I thought it was to keep us out, but actually it’s to keep them in.”
If a reality TV show were to follow Newhart around, it’d show him on the road, playing with his grandkids and getting together every Tuesday with his old comedy pals Don Rickles, Tim Conway and Mike Connors, from the TV show Mannix. (Oh, to be a fly on that wall.)
And what’s the secret to surviving in such a fickle industry?
“A certain way of looking at life,” he says, as if it’s just occurred to him. “The only way to survive is to have a sense of humour.”
Interview Clips
Bob Newhart on Larry Gelbart’s quote about comedy (“looking at life through a different lens”):
On finding his voice as a comic (with stories about Don Rickles and Peter Sellers):
On being relatively older (29) when entering comedy:
On how and why his comedy routines have withstood the test of time:
On the recent TV talk show wars (and how no one comes close to Johnny Carson):
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