Bob Newhart showed us the difference between ordinary and extraordinary

Bob Newhart, the legend of comedy, died on Thursday. What happened to his stand-up act in the first film special? The funny history of comedy

His pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some say is the first filmed special, did not count as a hit stand-up special. A great miracle in the history of comedy is the fact that he made a classic with so little preparation.

The legend of Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at 94 years old, holds that he once was just an ordinary Chicago accountant who became famous for his stand-up act. He became a sensation when he released his first album, a collection of sketches in which he played-acts one half of funny conversations.

That story is exaggerated. Newhart was an advertising man for longer than he ever was in accounting. It is clear that Newhart rocketed to the top because he understood a sort of Middle American type: the meek and anxious Everyman, overwhelmed by a world that sometimes seems weird.

By the 21st century, he had settled into emeritus status, reviving his old routines in concerts while doing his beloved shtick in supporting roles in movies and on TV. The six most memorable performances by Newhart are available to stream.

He did not curse, bust taboos, or show anger. His style was gentle and wry. As opposed to motormouth contemporaries like Lenny Bruce or Mort Sahl, his defining trait was a cheerful, sloth-paced delivery, stammering, pausing, gradually, meticulously working his way through a sentence. He belonged to neither of the great branches of American humor — the legacies of Jewish or Black comedy. A Roman Catholic from the west side of Chicago, Newhart came off as an entirely respectable example of Midwestern nice.

He was an accountant in Chicago in the 1950’s, where he used to insist that his motto was “that’s close enough!” To relieve the tedium of cubicles and calculators, he and a friend began to concoct routines of telephone calls between historical figures.

Like say, Abraham Lincoln’s PR man telling the president, “The next time they bug you about Grant’s drinking, tell ‘em you’re gonna find out what brand he drinks and send a case of it to all your other generals … Trust me, Abe,” the PR man reassures a skeptical Lincoln. It is funny. Do it!”

Papa Elf in Elf: Rolling up tobacco leaves, smoking it, and then rolling it up in the trash – remembering Walt Newhart when he was 16

“Toe-bacco?” he asks “… Let me get this straight, now, Walt, you bought 80 tons of leaves? … You can chew it? Do you want it to be in a pipe? Or … put it on a piece of paper, and roll it up … ”

The shipping exec has to stifle his laughter. And of course, we might now regret that there wasn’t more 16th century skepticism about rolling up tobacco leaves and smoking them.

Newhart went on to have two hit sitcoms, in which he portrayed mild-seeming men, the first a Chicago psychologist, the second a Vermont innkeeper, trying to maneuver in a world of colorful characters. And of course there’s the role that introduced him to a new generation: Papa Elf in Elf.

In 2002, Newhart won the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. The accounting department at the Glidden company is a long way from the stage at the Kennedy Center where he spoke that night.