I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This: And Other Things That Strike Me as Funny (21 page)

The pilot episode of
The Bob Newhart Show
centered on fear of flying. Titled “Fly the Friendly Skies,” the story line involved a group of my patients who are afraid to fly. I plan a trip to New York for them and decide that Emily should come along, too.

Next, I invite my pilot neighbor Howard Borden, played by Bill Daily, to speak to the group. I tell them that he has been a navigator for fifteen years and logged some twenty-five million miles on big jets without incident. Unfortunately, Howard’s nervousness compounds their anxiety.

Howard is not much of pilot, as we learn in a different episode.

“I’m taking the practical part of my copilot test, you know, where I actually fly the plane,” he tells Emily.

“Well, haven’t you been studying?” Emily asks.

“Yeah, I know about wind vectors and about stress analysis and transponder codes. There’s only one principle in aerodynamics that puzzles me,” he says.

“What’s that?

“What holds the plane up?”

What I don’t realize is that Emily is scared to fly. Finally, I figure this out and confront her about it.

“You’re afraid of flying?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Well, honey, that’s just stupid.”

“Do you tell those people in your workshop who are terrified of flying that they’re stupid?”

“Well, of course not, honey. But I don’t love them.”

I really have to get back in the cabin now. We have it on automatic pilot but the damn thing keeps kicking in and out all the time, and we never really know if it’s on or not. Oh, one of the reasons I came out here, I nearly forgot—have any of you ever been to Hawaii before? This gentleman right here. It’s kind of liver shaped isn’t it, sir? … Sir, as we’re coming in, would you mind very much stopping by the cabin and pointing it out to us?

The service on airplanes has gotten much worse since I started flying. The salary cutbacks and disappearing pensions due to the airlines’ perpetual state of bankruptcy has made flight attendants grumpy. Instead of being asked whether you’d like to have chicken or pasta for dinner, the dialogue is much less friendly.

“Do you want dinner?”

“What are the choices?”

“Yes or no.”

And that’s in first class. In coach, it’s worse.

“Coffee or tea?”

“Coffee, please.”

“Wrong, the answer is tea.”

Such a great number of airlines have gone out of business or fly in bankruptcy that they are all probably beginning to wish they were more like the Mrs. Grace L. Ferguson Airline (and Storm Door Co.). The principle there was that if the airline failed, they would always have the storm door company to fall back on.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Let’s Take a Break for Some Golf

Some people see golf as a religion. You play on Sunday. It’s frustrating. You often swear, but you are supposed to act gentlemanly. If you cheat, you can go to a confessional and ask for forgiveness. And oftentimes, the harder you try, the worse things turn out for you.

I once came home from shooting a lousy eighteen holes, and Ginnie asked me how I played.

“Terrible,” I said. “I couldn’t hit a ball out of my shadow. I’m so mad that I don’t even want to talk about it.”

“I thought you played golf to relax,” she said.

“Ginnie, you don’t know the first thing about golf. You don’t play it to relax. You play it to get mad and motivated.”

I know fine athletes who have taken up golf, only to find they’re no good at it. They become frustrated because it looks easy and they think it should come naturally to them. My friend Tom Harmon was a Heisman Trophy winner for Michigan State in the fifties and later played pro football. I always outhit him on the golf course because I have a loose, relaxed swing. It drove him crazy. To him, there was no logical way I should be able to hit the ball farther than him. The more I outdrove him, the harder he would swing at the ball, which is completely counterproductive.

Golf was a great occupier of time on the road. When I played Vegas for weeks at a clip, I used to joke that golf saved my marriage because it gave me something to do besides get in trouble.

In the past year and a half, I haven’t played any golf. My back bothers me when I play, and I don’t hit the ball as far as I used to. Some people accept the fact that their game is degrading, but I can tell you it’s about as much fun as miniature golf when your ball is constantly dropping short.

In my day, I was actually a pretty good golfer—a nine handicap. When I signed on to play the lead in the TV movie
The Sports Pages,
alongside four-time Emmy winner Kelsey Grammer, I had to do something that would make any weekend golfer shudder. I had to make my game worse.

My character was Doc Waddems, a guy who had never broken one hundred. As I mentioned, I have a textbook swing. Even the pro at my country club says I have a smooth swing. Anyone who knows anything about golf could see that if I used my normal swing, I’d break one hundred. The movie wouldn’t be believable unless I altered my swing.

So I went to the driving range and watched guys with bad swings. I made a composite out of all the bad swings. This was as close as I come to method acting. The funny thing is, it didn’t mess up my game.

I’m not denigrating religion by comparing it to golf. As I said earlier, I was raised Catholic and attended Catholic schools all my life. My parents met at a church social. And my sister Mary Joan is a nun.

No kidding, though she’s retired now.

There are odd things about being Catholic. In the Catholic religion, we have confession. Non-Catholics really don’t understand the process of going into this little dark room and telling someone else all the terrible things we’ve done during the week. But if you are raised Catholic, there are certain tricks you learn: You sit in the very last pew, you watch the two lines move, and whichever line moves the fastest, that’s the one you get into.

Enough religion. Back to golf.

The greater Los Angeles area has dozens of golf courses. Several of them are located on some of the most valuable ground in the United States. The Bel-Air Country Club, where I’ve been a member since 1961, is in one of the most expensive residential areas in the country, and so is Riviera. The L.A. Country Club occupies 200 acres on either side of Wilshire Boulevard in the Century City area, which is probably some of the most valuable commercial land in the universe. Nothing drives a developer crazier than a golf course located in areas like these. Nothing except the cemetery next door, that is.

There’s also the Lakeside Country Club in the San Fernando Valley, which developed a reputation as a drinkers’ club. I once played there with Gordon MacRae and George Gobel and saw why. We teed off at 8:30
A.M
. On the third hole, they hopped into the golf cart and drove two fairways over for a couple of pops. When we reached the fifth, they went for another drink. By 10:00
A.M
., they had hit three different refreshment stands.

The Bel-Air Country Club is very old Hollywood. Its legendary membership rolls have included Clark Gable, Howard Hughes, Dean Martin, and Jimmy Stewart, to name but a few. It’s the club where Robert Wagner was caddying for Gable and Gable told him that he should be in pictures and gave Wagner a phone number to call. Now the regulars include James Garner, James Woods, Jack Nicholson, and Mike Connors.

Bel-Air is open to all races, creeds, and genders. Even women can now become full members on their own, rather than spouses of members. However, the club does occasionally vote down misfits. My friend Pierre Cossette, the producer, was one. Unfortunately, when Pierre was playing as a guest, he relieved himself behind the No. 1 green in the presence of the club president.

Pierre was not known for being particularly neat. He always had food stains on his clothes. One Christmas, I went to the Beverlycrest Cleaners and asked to buy a $50 gift certificate for Pierre. The manager said that they had never had a request for a gift certificate, but he agreed to create one.

After the urinating incident and the ensuing rejection of his application for membership, I called Pierre and told him that his friends were all embarrassed by what had happened. I further told him that I had gathered twelve of his closest friends, influential members, such as Andy Williams, Jerry Perenchio, and Jim Mahoney, to discuss the reason that Pierre was turned down by the club. He could then work on the problem and reapply in a year.

“Newhart, I’m really touched. That’s one of the nicest things anyone has done for me,” Pierre said. “What did you come up with?”

“Well, we came up with twelve different reasons.”

The second time Pierre was nominated for membership, I wrote the club a letter on his behalf stating that the area where Pierre had relieved himself was now the site of a tree—and it was one of the prettiest trees on the entire course. Under these circumstances, I urged the membership committee to reconsider Pierre. They did, and he was accepted.

A certain private club in L.A. does not allow actors as members. Victor Mature was playing there, and he mused that he would like to join. When the member informed him that actors were not allowed, Mature quipped, “Have they seen any of my movies?”

I love playing at Bel-Air because you never know who you are going to run into. Once I was teeing up and George C. Scott asked if he could join me. On the third hole, he turned to me and said, “Explain to me how you do those telephone routines.”

“Well, George, what I do is ask a question and then I leave enough room to hear the answer in my head. Then I ask the next question.”

“That’s amazing,” he said.

I thought to myself, no, George, playing
Patton
is amazing.

I stopped using a caddy a long time ago. Unlike John D. Rockefeller, who used to tip his caddy a dime, I’m not trying to save money. I don’t mind spending $50 for someone to carry my clubs, but bad experiences have turned me off to their advice.

I was playing at Bel-Air one time and I had a caddy whose name was Dick. He was an out-of-work actor who acted very much like an actor-type. He spoke in a deep, basso profundo actorly voice.

A caddy is supposed to give you the line on a putt, how far out and how many cups to the left or right. Dick would give me these ridiculous lines. He’d say, “Mr. Newhart, I’d put that, oh, I’d say about an inch and three quarters on the right.” Then I saw him on the course the following Monday, the day caddies are permitted to play, and he couldn’t hit the ball worth a darn.

Another time I was playing in the L.A. Open Pro-Am at Riviera. I hadn’t played the course that much so I asked my caddy what the line was off the tee, meaning: What should I aim for? He pointed to a eucalyptus tree in the distance. I hit the ball pretty well. As it took flight, the caddy mused, “Oh, that’s good. That’s real good. You couldn’t have walked out there and placed the ball any better … great line … garden spot … sit down, ball! Sit down … whoa, stop! stop! … Oh, you better hit another one.” My ball had landed solidly out of bounds.

Sam Snead knew how to handle a chatty caddy. One year when he was playing the L.A. Open, Sam hit a drive. He and his caddy walked to his ball. The caddy took a look and told Sam it was a hard five-iron or an easy four. Sam cut the caddy off.

“I’ll club myself,” Sam said. “All you do is carry the bag. That’s your job. I don’t want to hear you say anything.”

They continued in silence until the eighteenth hole. Just as Sam was just about to hit his final approach shot of the day, the caddy spoke again.

“Mr. Snead—” he mumbled.

Sam cut him off. “I told you on the first hole, just carry the bag. I don’t want any advice from you.”

Sam parred the hole. As he was walking off the green, he turned to the caddy and asked, “What was so important that you had to tell me?”

“Mr. Snead, that wasn’t your ball.” A two-stroke penalty.

The greatest caddy stories I ever heard were about a caddy named Snake, who worked at Bel-Air. Snake was an alcoholic who stashed bottles of booze all over the course.

One day Snake was caddying for Dean Martin. At Bel-Air, the eleventh fairway parallels the fifteenth fairway. Dean putted out eleven and moved onto the twelfth tee. He turned to grab a club from Snake, but there was no Snake. Off in the distance, Dean saw Snake walking with his bag on the fifteenth fairway with another foursome.

Another time, Snake was out with Dean, and Dean hit one into the rough. Snake went looking for his ball. Five minutes passed and Dean called out to Snake, “Forget it, I’ll hit another one.” Snake yelled back, “The hell with your ball, I can’t find your bag.”

Golf can be a very social game. Some of the most interesting conversations I’ve had were at the golf club. I remember hitting balls on the driving range at the L.A. Country Club once with Fred MacMurray. He was a lovely man, but both he and Bob Hope had reputations for being notoriously tight with their money because they grew up during the Depression. Their feeling was, you’d better watch your money because you could lose it all through no fault of your own.