Newhart gives Catholic insight on life, laughs

This week, Catholic New World staff writer Michelle Martin talks with Bob Newhart.

	The Interview, a regular feature of The Catholic New World, is an in-depth conversation with a person whose words, actions or ideas affect today’s Catholic. It may be affirming of faith or confrontational. But it will always be stimulating.

Comedian Bob Newhart, 71, gave the commencement address at Loyola University Chicago in May.

Newhart graduated from Loyola in 1949 with a degree in management and worked for a few years as an accountant before breaking into comedy, first as a standup comedian, then as a movie and television star.

“I had a kind of strange theory of accounting,” he said. “I felt that if you got within two or three bucks, that was close enough. That might account for the number of accounting jobs I had.”

Born George Robert Newhart in Oak Park, he grew up in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago. His Catholic education started at St. Catherine of Siena in Oak Park, and continued at St. Ignatius College Prep.

Newhart’s first comedy album, “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart” was named the Album of the Year in 1960 and is number 20 on Billboard’s all-time Hall of Fame.

Newhart now lives in California and serves as a trustee on Loyola’s board of directors. He is a recipient of the the prestigious Sword of Loyola award.

He and his wife, Virginia, have been married since 1963 and have four children and two grandchildren.

The Catholic New World: How did your Catholic education play into what you’ve done with your life?

Bob Newhart: It’s an integral part of it. It’s always there. I credit the Jesuits with, as I’m going to mention in the commencement address, I credit them with the somewhat distorted view of life that they have instilled in me, which has become very beneficial in my line of work. It’s always there. It’s part of you. It never goes away.



TCNW: Can you think of something you did differently because of your Catholic background than you might have done otherwise?

BN: Specifically, no. That’s probably the best answer. There was never one time when that became a question, or an option of not doing something. It was just my way of doing it. I work what they call clean. That’s not because I’m Catholic; I just choose to work clean. Jerry Seinfeld also—Jerry and I have talked about it, and he’s Jewish, and he works clean. It’s the gratification you get from doing a clean show.



TCNW: You’ve said before that you saw Jewish comedians using their religion in their comedy, so you decided to use being Catholic. What’s funny about being Catholic?

BN: You’re going to have to listen to the commencement address.

From the commencement address: “I was raised a Catholic … When I would tell people that I was Catholic, they would always ask about confession. They could never understand how we could go into this little dark room and confess to somebody all the things we’ve done during the week. As you all know, there are certain tricks. You sit in the back pew and watch the two lines move. Whichever line moves fastest, that’s the one you get in. That priest wants to get the hell out of there. The best time to go to confession was during the Notre Dame-SMU game. …

“The first commandment says thou shalt not worship false idols. Now, I’m from Chicago, and I don’t know about other cities, but you almost never see a false idol. And if you did see a false idol in Chicago, the last thing you’d do is fall down and worship it.”



TCNW: When you graduated from Loyola in 1949, did you have any idea you were going to be a comedian?

BN: No. That was the furthest thing—not only that I was going to be a comedian, but that I would deliver the commencement address to the class of 2001, that was the furthest thing from my mind. There’s a lot of déjà vu going on.



TCNW: Did the campus look like this?

BN: Oh, my gosh, no. The new buildings … I was in Lewis Towers, so we came up here for the retreat, to the chapel. There were wide open spaces. There are none anymore.



TCNW: Any advice for the graduates, or do I need to listen to the address for that too?

BN: Yes. Hopefully, I’ll give them a direction.

From the commencement address: “Laughter also sets us apart from the animals. No matter what hyenas sound like, they are not actually laughing. Humor also helps us define our sanity. The schizophrenic has no sense of humor. His world is a constantly daunting and unfriendly place. The rational man is able to find humor in his. …

“No society would be either pleasant or lasting without humor. Studies have shown that people with a sense of humor tend to be less egocentric, more realistic about the world, more humble in times of victory and less defeated in times of travail.

“I certainly would not say that what I do is one of the most important things in the world, but I can’t imagine doing anything that would bring me more joy. Retain your sense of humor. You’re going to need it.”