Bob Newhart (Celebrity In Spotlight)

George Robert "Bob" Newhart is an American stand-up comedian and actor.Bob Newhart was born in Oak Park, Illinois to George David Newhart and Julia Pauline Burns. Newhart attended Loyola University of Chicago in Oak Park, graduating 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.

In 1958 he became an advertising copywriter for Fred A. Niles, a major independent film and television producer in Chicago. It was at the company that he and a coworker would entertain each other in long telephone calls which they would record then send to a radio station as audition tapes. The auditions led to his break-through recording contract. A disc jockey at the radio station -- 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 only a year after the label was formed, based solely on those recordings.

His 1960 comedy album, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, went straight to number one on the charts, beating Elvis Presley and the cast album of The Sound of Music. Button Down Mind received the 1961 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Newhart also won Best New Artist, and his quickly-released follow-on album, The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back, won Best Comedy Performance - Spoken Word that same year.Subsequent comedy albums include Behind the Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart (1961), The Button-Down Mind on TV (1962), Bob Newhart Faces Bob Newhart (1964), The Windmills Are Weakening (1965), This Is It (1967), Best of Bob Newhart (1971), and Very Funny Bob Newhart (1973).

Newhart's success in stand-up led to his own NBC variety show in 1961, The Bob Newhart Show. The show lasted a single season, yet earned Newhart an Emmy Award nomination and a Peabody Award.In 1992, Newhart returned to television with a series called Bob, about a cartoonist. An ensemble cast included a pre-Friends Lisa Kudrow, but the show did not develop a strong audience and was cancelled shortly after the start of its second season.In 2001, Bob made an appearance on MAD TV (Season 6), playing a psychiatrist who yells "Stop it!" in a very memorable skit.