The 2019 Emmys opened with Bryan Cranston bragging about how TV “has never been better.” And yet the show’s early stretch was stolen by one of the kings of classic television. When Ben Stiller came out to present the Emmy for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy (which went to Alex Borstein for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), he offered a jokingly somber ode to TV greats, strolling past the wax likenesses of George Burns and Lucille Ball. Then he got to Bob Newhart. But it wasn’t a fake Bob Newhart. It was the real Bob Newhart.
The pioneering comic and star of two programs that bore his name — The Bob Newhart Show, from the ’70s, and the ’80s great Newhart — kept still at first, frozen in place as Stiller spoke of him as though he were dead, pondering aloud about what Newhart would think of television today were he still with us. Finally Newhart could take it no more. “Ben, Ben, Ben, Ben. I’m still alive,” he said, his beloved deadpan still sharp as it ever was.
Stiller tried to save it, claiming he definitely didn’t think Newhart, who just celebrated his 90th, had passed on, that he was honoring legends both dead and alive. But Newhart — a king at keeping his cool around eccentrics and weirdos — wasn’t having it.
“This legend is gonna kick your a*s,” Newhart told the sometime Zoolander. “That way you’ll know I’m alive.”
Do the kids watch The Bob Newhart Show or Newhart? Possibly, possibly not. (Heads up: The former lives on Hulu.) But him telling off Ben Stiller should hip the young to his stellar and classic work. Many on Twitter were definitely impressed.
https://twitter.com/kateyrich/status/1175924879968919554
Bob Newhart: "This legend is gonna kick your ass. That way you'll know I'm alive."
Ben Stiller: "I thought you didn't curse."
Newhart: "You thought I was dead."#Emmys2019
— Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦 (@cmclymer) September 23, 2019
Longtime Newhart fans came out to praise the man.
https://twitter.com/saladinahmed/status/1175924812805525504
https://twitter.com/JohnRS1980/status/1175924824704782338
Bravo to Bradley Whitford for standing for Bob Newhart. #Emmys pic.twitter.com/oE9MtW8tYz
— Mandi Bierly (@MandiBierly) September 23, 2019
You guys, Bob Newhart is still one of the funniest people alive. #Emmys2019 pic.twitter.com/rADRRdQ50V
— Marcy aka CondimentGrrl (@Condimentgrrl) September 23, 2019
https://twitter.com/JohnRS1980/status/1175932995800371200
https://twitter.com/ira/status/1175925658142171136
Some shared stories.
It took @BobNewhart two and a half minutes to record his first take for his first appearance in "Bart the Fink", and, as no one was allowed to laugh during that time, there was an "explosion" of laughter in the room when he finished. pic.twitter.com/xgS3KVDOez
— On This Day in Simpsons History 🇺🇦 (@dailysimpsons) February 11, 2019
I love @BobNewhart. My story about meeting Bob Newhart is the same as just about every story ever told by anyone who has met Bob Newhart: he was funny and kind and gracious and genuine, and hours after talking to him, you were still smiling about it.#Emmys
— Richard Roeper (@RichardERoeper) September 23, 2019
And some took Cranston to task for alleging that modern television holds a candle to the stuff Newhart, among other gods, created.
Bryan Cranston just said on the #Emmys that "television has never been better."
I present for his consideration the CBS Saturday line up in 1975 of All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Mary Tyler Moore, The Bob Newhart Show and The Carol Burnett Show.
Study your history, Bryan.
— Jim Stewart (@JBStewart) September 23, 2019
