Bob Newhart: The One-Sided Phone Call

Bob Newhart did not look or sound like a comedian. Born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1929, he worked as an accountant and then as an advertising copywriter before trying comedy. His delivery was quiet, polite and full of small hesitations. He seemed like the most reasonable person in any room.

That was exactly his advantage. In 1960 his first album, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, recorded at a Houston nightclub, went to number one on the Billboard chart and stayed there for 14 weeks. At the Grammy Awards the next year it became the first comedy album to win Album of the Year, and Newhart won Best New Artist, something no other comedian has done.

Newhart's signature device was the one-sided telephone call. He would play a man on the phone, and the audience would hear only his half: his pauses, his polite questions, his growing alarm. In "Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue," a publicity agent coaches Lincoln on how to improve the Gettysburg Address. In "Driving Instructor," a nervous instructor tries to stay calm with a student who is not good at driving. In another, a new night guard at the Empire State Building has to deal with a very large ape.

The genius of the format is that the funniest lines are never spoken. The audience invents the other person's outrageous replies from Newhart's reactions alone. Every listener imagines their own version, and the version you imagine is always perfectly tuned to make you laugh. Newhart handed the audience the pen.

In most comedy duos, one person is the comic and the other is the straight man, the sensible one who reacts. Newhart built his whole act out of the straight man's role. He was never the silly one. He was the ordinary professional trying to cope with something absurd, and his politeness under pressure was the joke.

Newhart described comedy in terms of tension and release: the laugh is the release of a tension the audience has been holding. His careful, stammering delivery built that tension slowly. Every hesitation made the audience lean in, and every polite understatement let a little of the pressure out.

Many beginners think comedy means big reactions: shouting, mugging, wild faces. Newhart proved the opposite. When something absurd happens and the character responds with mild, careful concern, the gap between the situation and the reaction is where the laugh lives. The calmer he stayed, the more ridiculous the situation seemed.

This carried into his television work. On The Bob Newhart Show, from 1972 to 1978, he played a psychologist surrounded by eccentric patients and friends. On Newhart, from 1982 to 1990, he ran a Vermont inn full of odd locals. In both, he was the sane center of a strange world, and his reactions carried the comedy.

The phone-call format works anywhere, because everyone has been on an awkward call. You can use it in a speech or a story: tell your side of a conversation and let the audience imagine what the other person said. It also works on the Doctor, Doctor and office joke pages, where a calm professional meets an absurd problem.

The deeper lesson is about trust. Newhart trusted his audience to fill in the blanks, and audiences love being trusted. A joke that leaves room for the listener's imagination often lands harder than one that spells everything out.

Pick a simple situation, such as calling a customer service line about a toaster that is now on fire. Write only your half of the call. Keep your character calm and polite, and let each line reveal a little more about what the other person must be saying.

Read it aloud with real pauses where the other person would be talking. If you feel the urge to explain what they said, resist it. The moment you trust the silence, you are working the way Bob Newhart did.