Comedy legend and famous West Sider Bob Newhart, who rose to fame in 1960 after releasing his first comedy album, has died at 94.
According to the Associated Press, Newhart’s publicist, Jerry Digney, said the actor died Thursday in Los Angeles following a series of short illnesses.
Newhart was born Sept. 5, 1929, at West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park and grew up on North Mason Street in Austin, just a few blocks from Oak Park, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. He attended St. Catherine of Siena grade school, now St. Catherine – St. Lucy School, in Oak Park before attending St. Ignatius College Prep in Chicago for high school and Loyola University Chicago for college, graduating with a business management degree in 1952.
Newhart briefly attended Loyola’s law school before he was drafted to fight in the Korean War, though he did not face combat on the front lines, according to the Sun-Times.
After releasing “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart,” a 1960 album recording of his standup routine, Newhart won two Grammy awards for the record, including best new artist and album of the year.
Newhart is best known for starring in two hit television shows bearing his name in the 1970s and ‘80s. After “The Bob Newhart Show,” which premiered in 1961, was canceled after one season, the comedian went on to star in another “Bob Newhart Show” that ran from 1972 through 1978, where he played a psychologist living in Chicago. He later launched another show, “Newhart,” in 1982 that ran through 1990.
Newhart was born George Robert Newhart to a German-Irish family and called Bob to avoid confusion with his father, George David Newhart, who co-owned a plumbing and heating-supply business, the Sun-Times reported. Newhart’s mother, Julia Pauline Newhart, was a housewife and homemaker.