Episode 8- Bob Newhart
In One Door and Out The Other
“THE BUTTON-DOWN MIND OF BOB NEWHART”, his debut album, was a comedy sensation, the first comedy album to reach Number 1 on the Billboard charts. It was such a huge hit that NBC gave the newcomer his own Variety series. This was long before his hit sitcoms- and long forgotten.
I had been writing material for an unknown comic for no money. Thanks to a chance meeting with a young talent agent, that material got me hired on the writing staff of “The Bob Newhart Show”. I was in The Business…at last! But not for long!
I quit my job, got rid of our apartment, sold my old Chevy and put our furniture and my advertising scrapbook in storage. The Swiss family Chambers (my father was Swiss) left New York headed for “The Coast”!
It was my first experience writing for television. I had had material in New York’s hottest cabaret show and in a Broadway revue, starring Carol Channing. Every Saturday night I watched #“YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS”, a weekly 90-minute program—LIVE!- starring #Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, arguably the most brilliant variety show in the history of television.
When I got to L.A., I quickly learned that New York City and America were two different countries. As TV spread from the big cities to the rest of the country, the audience changed dramatically. So did the ratings. “YOUR SHOW OF SHOWS” was cancelled after only 4 years and Sid Caesar’s next show, “CAESAR’S HOUR” ran for 3 years. On the other hand, “THE LAWRENCE WELK SHOW” featured a bland band leader and champagne bubbles and was on the network for 16 years plus another 11 years in syndication- 27 years!
Newhart’s debut album sold over 600,000 copies. He was most famous for his one-way telephone conversations. You never heard the person on the other end of the lines; you only heard Bob as whatever character he was playing. He could be a game company executive listening to Abner Doubleday pitch a game he had invented called baseball. The conversations frequently ended with the sense that the person on the other end of the line had lost patience and was cursing Bob, to which Bob always replied, “Same to you, Fella!”
I was the youngest writer on the Newhart staff, the only one with no prior TV experience. I went into my little cubicle and pounded out a sketch for the show on my typewriter. (Remembe those?) I submitted my sketch to the producer. The next day he called me into his office. He had rewritten my sketch. “I want you to read your version and mine,” he said. “You will see why mine is so much better than yours.” I went back to my office and read his version and reread mine. Overnight, I did it again.
The next day I went into his office. He wore a kindly, patronizing smile. He said, “Now you see why my version is so much better than yours.” To this day, I can’t believe what I said was, “I don’t think your version is better than mine. It’s just different.”
It will come as no surprise to you that I was canned. When the Producer fired me he said, “Some day I will probably be remembered as the guy who fired Ernie Chambers.” Well, he is- at least by me.
To make matters far worse, it turned out my contract was not for four shows, as I thought; it was only for four weeks. A slight oversight on the part of my agent. When I left the show, only one show had been taped. I never had any material on the show, never even got into the studio. Never even met Newhart.
The quirks of The Business are such that when the show’s writers were nominated for an Emmy, my name was among them because I was originally on staff. The show also received the very distinguished Peabody Award for excellence. It was also cancelled by NBC at the end of the first season.
There are two follow-ups. Every year the #Writers Guild Show was a hot ticket in which major stars such as Fred MacMurray, Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas performed in sketches lampooning The Business. Bob Newhart was set to be one of the performers, although Bob felt he did not have any material suitable for such an industry event.
A man named #Herbie Baker, whom you will learn more about later,
knew my sad story and felt I had been treated unfairly by the producer of The Bob Newhart Show. He suggested I be invited to write Bob’s monologue for The Writers Guild Show.
I wrote one of the one-sided telephone conversations for which Newhart was famous, He played a movie distributor on the phone with Walt Disney, telling Walt he should make his films more adult. Disney was resisting the idea. Bob was insistent, assuring Disney it wouldn’t be that hard to do. Bob pleaded, “Walt, why can’t a duck be a deviate?”
I can still hear the laughter echoing down the years. As you can imagine it was a real vindication for me.
I still had not met Newhart and would not for many, many years when he was interviewed at #THE GRAMMY MUSEUM in Los Angeles. Bob is one of the legends in the recording industry. His is the only comedy album ever to be named “Album of The Year”. My nephew arranged a ticket for me to attend the interview.
Afterward, to my surprise, he had also arranged for me to go back stage and meet Bob Newhart. Finally! Bob, as you may have heard, is just about the nicest human being you will ever meet. He, of course, had never heard of me and knew nothing of my travails on his first series so long ago.
He confided in me that he hated doing that variety show. He hated it so much that he fired the producer. The same producer who had fired me! We were both canned about the same time. If I had only known that way back then, I might have been spared decades of guilt.
But now, let’s go back to the day I was fired and found myself adrift in L.A. with my little family, no job, no contacts and nowhere to go but DOWN.
Next:Survival!
COMING SOON: THE FRANK SINATRA SPECIAL
Frank Sinatra starred in 15 network television specials. My partner and I produced the one when he locked himself in his dressing room and would not come out because Mia Farrow was divorcing him.
Watch for: “THE 2,000 POUND GORILLA”.