This year's USCAF honoree

HBO presents

March 1, 2001

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Dina: Which is your favorite "peeper" episode

Bob Newhart: Specifically, the one where we were arrested in a sting operation by ladies of the evening. They thought we were coming on to them and we weren't, but they arrested us. Tom and I are both in the cell, and I don't sit with him because he kind of precipitated the whole thing, and one of the female officers said "did we read you your Miranda rights?" and I said "No." Tom piped in that they did and I just kind of turned and glared at him. It was kind of a Laurel and Hardy moment.

Adam T: Hey where you really in the army just to make people laugh or did you do other stuff

Bob Newhart: I wasn't in the service to make people laugh. I was on a personnel team that traveled around and inspected personnel records. Basic, and learning to shoot a rifle and throw grenades. I was there two years. I was drafted. I wasn't going to volunteer. It was during the Korean War '52-'54.

Dan: No questions, just a thank you for the years of joy and laughter you have given my family and myself. Run for president you have my vote.

Bob Newhart: Dan, thank you very much. That really is nice. I hear that occasionally and my standard reply is "It was my pleasure" and that's true. It was my pleasure.

Penny Faith: Hi Bob. Just wanted to tell you that you are great, and I wanted to know how you got started?

Bob Newhart: It's a long story. I was an accountant with a degree in accounting. I was really bored, and so another guy and I, on the side, started a radio show, which wasn't successful, but it lead to my having to write material everyday. I came to the attention of a DJ in Chicago who thought I was funny, and the Warner Bros. record label executive came through Chicago and they called on him. He told them about me and had me put some routines on tape to listen to them. I think I had the Driving Instructor and Abe Lincoln, and they listened to them. They wanted to watch me at a nightclub, but I'd never played one, so they booked up into the Tidelands in Houston, Texas, and I had the album written and wrote the other half in the two weeks I was there, and they didn't think much of it. I called Warner Bros. in Hollywood and asked what happened, and they said it was going crazy in Minneapolis and ended up selling a million copies. They were too busy filling the orders to tell me. They were taken by surprise, like I was. A DJ, Howard Viken in Minneapolis, played it and people wanted it. It gradually spread around the country.

Howard: What was your favorite show that you worked on?

Bob Newhart: I know the one that we most often get requests for, or people mention to me when I'm on the road, seems to be Moo Goo Gai Pan where they all come to my apartment and pass around a jug. Another one is the Barracuda show, and a lady is very nice until we go on the air and she cuts me to shreds. Then I have to interview two nuns. They said they'd go 50/50 on a hitman for her. Those episodes were from "The Bob Newhart Show." One of my favorite "Newhart" episodes was doing a telethon at a local station in Vermont. Sort of a Jerry Lewis kind of thing. I was haggard and people were helping me out. Julia came on and sang "Old Man River" only it was in a very up-tempo mode, and it just was very funny to watch her, 'cause she was so good.

Howard: Were there ever any embarrassing bloopers on the set?

Bob Newhart: Oh yeah. At the end of every season, we would have a party on both shows and we'd put together a gag reel and it was people messing up their lines or doors not opening. I remember one where I called Mary Frann 'Emily'. The audience went crazy. They went absolutely insane.

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