NPR's Scott Simon remembers understated comedian and actor Bob Newhart, who died this week at the age of 94.
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He was working as an accountant in Chicago in the mid-1950’s, where, he used to insist, 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’s funny. Do it!”Or the head of a 16th century British shipping company taking a call from Sir Walter Raleigh in the New World.
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.
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