I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This: And Other Things That Strike Me as Funny (16 page)

The setting was really more a state of mind because we didn’t shoot on location in Chicago. The shows were filmed in Hollywood before a live television audience. Only the opening title sequence was filmed in Chicago— with an unintentional air of corruption, I might add.

Are you familiar with the signature image of Dr. Bob Hartley walking across the Chicago River in the opening titles?

Well, it’s not me.

On the particular day we shot that sequence, my daughter Jennifer came down with roseola, so Ginnie and I spent the day in the hospital with her. The show only had the location for one day, so the producers hired an actor to study my walk and stroll across the bridge. To this day, I have no idea who he is.

There’s another problem in the opening credits. Every day, I miss my stop. Bob Hartley takes the Ravenswood line of the “L” (as the elevated train is known) to Glencoe—and then walks back fifty-five blocks to Belmont and Sheridan, the station stop for his apartment. Now, would you trust a man who missed his stop by fifty-five blocks every day?

While we’re at it, Bob and Emily live on the fifth floor of the ten-story Meridian Beach apartment building on Lake Shore Drive. The apartment shown in the exterior shots is clearly on the seventh floor of a sixteen-story building, which, in reality, is Buckingham Plaza, located at the corner of East Randolph Street and Lake Shore Drive. That’s the magic of TV.

Every now and then there were inaccuracies that needed to be corrected by a Chicago native. One scene called for me to attend a Cubs game at night at a time when there were no lights at Wrigley Field.

Apparently,
The Bob Newhart Show
did have something of a positive impact on the city. At the entrance to the Navy Pier, now the most popular family destination in Chicago, sits a statue of me as Dr. Bob Hartley.

The statue has Dr. Hartley sitting in his chair, facing a two-seat couch, where passersby can sit and discuss their problems. It’s one in a series placed around the country by TV Land, along with Mary Tyler Moore in Minneapolis; Andy Griffith in Mt. Airy, North Carolina; and Jackie Gleason in a New York City bus terminal.

Seeing it for the first time was surreal. Originally it was located on Michigan Avenue near the Western Federal Bank building—a spot I used to walk past every day in college. If someone had told me then that there was going to be a statue of me in downtown Chicago, I would have asked for a hit of whatever he was smoking.

Nevertheless, I’ve always wondered why the statue is three-quarter size. That would never have happened had the show been set in New York.

I never really understood why
The Bob Newhart Show
never won any Emmys. The show was nominated fifteen times in various categories over eight years, and we didn’t win a single one.

In my mind, the strike against us was that our cast was a true ensemble—Suzanne, Bill Daily, Marcia Wallace, Tom Poston, Peter Bonerz. These actors were so damn good, and they made it look so easy, that they weren’t rec ognized. To this day, that frustrates me. If you have to hit marks and speak other people’s words, that’s not merely being yourself; it’s acting.

We also didn’t do shows on the heady material that Emmy voters seem to prefer. Our idea of a serious issue was when Emily and I were having a costume party at our apartment and Jerry arrives wearing an Uncle Sam costume. Then Marsha comes in wearing an Uncle Sam costume. Finally, Howard enters in the same Uncle Sam costume.

“That’s weird,” Jerry says. “We all rented the same costume.”

Howard replies, “What do you mean ‘rented’?”

That should’ve been worthy of at least a best teleplay Emmy right there.

After five seasons,
The Bob Newhart Show
was still at the top of its game, which is exactly where I wanted to end it. The problem was that CBS had me under contract for another year. I decided to personally ask Bob Daly and Robert Wussler, who were coheads of CBS entertainment, to let me out of my contract.

I met with Daly and Wussler in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Daly told me that they really wanted me to come back for a sixth season. I didn’t have much chance to plead my case because ringing phones constantly interrupted the meeting with an even bigger crisis.

That afternoon, in a heavily promoted CBS special presentation, Evel Knievel was scheduled to jump over several motorhomes on his bike. Telly Savalas was hosting the event. Unfortunately, Evel had taken a nasty spill during a practice run so there wasn’t going to be any death-defying jump. Daly instructed New York to have Telly keep talking until they figured out what to do.

A few days later, my attorney clarified CBS’s position. “Bob, if you don’t do a sixth year and they put another show in your time slot that doesn’t do as well, they would have a right to sue you for the difference between what your show would’ve generated in revenue and what the replacement show generates,” he explained.

“Downside, how much are we talking about here?” I asked.

“About fifty or sixty million dollars …”

So I returned for the sixth season.

CHAPTER NINE

The Lubitsch Touch:
My Days on the Big Screen

In September of 1960 my agents at MCA arranged a meeting with filmmaker Bob Pirosh about his World War II movie titled
Hell Is for Heroes
. Naturally, I assumed it was because the director had done his homework and learned about my military experience of serving as a personnel specialist who could not be sent overseas and was, in retrospect, the final line of defense for the homeland.

In any event, at the time of the meeting with Pirosh, my album
The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart
was No. 1 on the record album charts. Given Pirosh’s varied resume—director of
Valley of the Kings
, an action movie about the search for an ancient Egyptian tomb, and writer of several episodes of the TV shows
Bonanza
and
My Three Sons
—there was really no way to know where all of this was going. So it was under these circumstances that I met with Pirosh in New York at the Hampshire House, where I was staying.

Pirosh outlined his screenplay for
Hell Is for Heroes
. I suppose you would call it a lighthearted look at World War II, or at least that’s how it started out. Based on what I think was an actual event, the story is about a division that is pulled off the Siegfried Line in Montigny, France. All that’s left behind is a squad of men whose job it is to deceive the Germans into believing that they are the great Allied Task Force until reinforcements arrive.

They wanted me for the part of Pfc. James E. Driscoll, a clerk-typist with no combat experience. Driscoll winds up in this particular unit when he gets lost driving a shipment of typewriters to headquarters. The undermanned squad commandeers him and his jeep. Because Driscoll can’t handle a weapon and the Germans are monitoring the Americans’ phone lines, he is ordered to ad lib phony phone conversations to create the illusion that troop levels are high and morale is strong. My role would be to write one-sided telephone routines similar to those in my popular stand-up act and perform them in the movie.

In short, Pirosh believed that a war movie is hell without some humor in it, and that was where I came in.

The trick of these routines was to have the jokes quietly sneak up on the audience, while also making them credible enough to throw off the eavesdropping German soldiers. In the first bit I did in the movie, I began by promoting my character and then went into a ruse about our unit’s most serious problems.
“This is Lt. Driscoll, the entertainment officer. … About the morale, sir. It’s been rather low. The main complaint seems to be about the evening movie. … Yes, sir. … I’ve had to show
Road to Morocco
five evenings in a row, sir. Well, the men are beginning to get a little surly, sir. … Yes, sir, they know all the lines. … Oh, the amateur hours are going very well, sir. Sir, could you hold on just a minute … ? Yes, sir, I have a call on the other line. … Right, sir. I’ll be right back.
(I answer the fake call.)
This is Lt. Driscoll. … Don’t, don’t send ’em up here! Sir, I have five men in each foxhole now. I don’t have any room for any more, sir. Have you tried Charlie Company? … Oh, I see. Well, sir, there’s been a war going on in Japan. You might send them over there.”

I kicked off the second by letting the audience in on the joke and kept up with the “sirs.”
“Major Winston’s jeep— right, sir. We’ll certainly be on the lookout for it, sir. … A private, first class, you say … with a load of typewriters in the back. If we see him, we’ll contact you, sir. … Blanke the cook is working out rather well, sir. … Well, one problem is that his vichyssoise tastes a little too much like potato soup. … Oh, it’s supposed to taste like potato soup.”

Blanke was actually Henry Blanke, the film’s producer, and from what I had heard, a case study in persistence. Back in the 1930s, Warner Bros. had given Blanke a generous contract as a producer to duplicate what the studios called “The Lubitsch Touch,” which, by the way, is a great film school phrase.

Named for Ernst Lubitsch, director of such films as
Heaven Can Wait
and
The Shop Around the Corner,
this ethereal quality gives a film a feeling of sophistication and leaves the audience feeling worldly. Studios were so eager to recreate The Lubitsch Touch that they were hiring anyone who had any association with Lubitsch. Blanke’s connection was that he had come to the United States from Germany as part of Lubitsch’s original crew. Never mind that he was his assistant. That was close enough for the studios.

Blanke had a nice run as a producer. He worked as a production supervisor under the legendary producer Hal B. Wallis, and his films collected nine Oscar nominations for best picture, with one win for
The Life of Emile Zola.
But by the late 1950s, Blanke was losing his Lubitsch Touch, and Warner Bros. was looking for a way of getting out of his contract. The studio lawyers studied the contract and concluded it didn’t actually specify that Blanke be employed as a producer. As long as he was paid $2,500 a week, the obligation was fulfilled. So in an effort to embarrass Blanke into leaving, the brothers Warner informed him that henceforth he would be in charge of the shoeshine stand.

Blanke, however, was unfazed. The following morning, he dutifully showed up with a full regalia of shoeshine equipment—polish, brushes, and spit-shining cloths. Eventually he was loaned out to Paramount, where his first film was
Hell Is for Heroes.
It was also his last film ever.

Between my meeting with Bob Pirosh in the fall of 1960 and the start of filming in July 1961, the movie took on a different shape. Pirosh was replaced as director by Don Siegel, who later went on to do several Clint Eastwood films, including
Dirty Harry.
The two directors were opposites. Where Pirosh saw the more comedic aspects of war, Siegel was focused on its futility. Pirosh’s version was budgeted for ten explosions; Siegel ended up with 10,000. In Pirosh’s version, James Coburn had a pet duck. The only duck on Siegel’s set would be served at lunch, Peking style.

The cast was filled with a gallery of lovable rogues: Bobby Darin, Fess Parker, Harry Guardino, Nick Adams, and the relatively unknown Coburn. But to the chagrin of Darin, who was apparently under the impression that his name would be atop the marquee, a true rogue was added to the cast: Steve McQueen.

As the poster, which now hangs in my garage, declared: “The most exciting young stars of our time hit it big in the hit for all ages.”

The plot was rejiggered around McQueen’s rebel image, and it became a story about a solitary hero bucking the system and ordering an unauthorized attack on a Nazi pillbox. McQueen sharpened his method-acting skills to play the part. Before filming, he met with the cast and told us in his trademark lowkey fashion how things would go during filming. “Man, I like you guys,” he said. “But, man, I’m not supposed to like you in the movie, man, so I’ve got to live apart from you guys and not have anything to do with you guys during the shoot.” We all told McQueen that was fine with us, man.

Things did not go smoothly once filming began. For weeks on end, we climbed up hills and ran back down them. The temperature reached 117 degrees in the shade, only there was no shade. Day sequences were changed to night so the actors wouldn’t expire in the heat. In one scene where the stoic McQueen was supposed to cry, he couldn’t muster a single tear. Siegel tried everything. He slapped McQueen in the face before one take and ran away, but that only made McQueen mad. A fan was rigged to blow onions in McQueen’s face, but it was no use.

During the shoot, McQueen and Darin grew increasingly cranky over who the star really was, and stories began winding up in the Hollywood trade papers about them feuding on the set. The unit publicist was fingered for the leaks and was summarily dismissed. Unfortunately, they had the wrong man. It turned out that Nick Adams was trading with the gossipmongers: some dirt from the set in exchange for a splashy item on his next movie. But upon hearing the unit publicist had been fired, Adams felt terribly guilty. I’ll never forget the image of Adams chasing the guy’s plane down the runway, yelling out: “I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”

My career had taken on a different shape, too.
The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart
was well on its way to selling more than a million copies, and
The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back
was also climbing the record album charts. My money for performing in nightclubs had quadrupled, and I wanted to accept some of the offers that were coming my way. Problem was, I was locked in to performing in the movie for a fixed number of weeks.