I imagined a telephone call: celebrating Bob Newhart and his hilarious phone call bits

Bob Newhart was a legendary comedian. Starting in stand-up comedy and eventually transitioning to television, he garnered three Grammy Awards, an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe. He recently passed, on July 18, 2024, at age 94.

One of Newhart’s best long-term bits was one-sided telephone calls. He would imagine these calls, often taking place at times when the telephone didn’t exist, to hilarious effect. These phone calls contained subtle, smart humor that always felt real—like someone was on the other side.

To celebrate his life and career, and to show our appreciation as a phone company, we’re taking a look at some of his best versions of the bit. Enjoy, and thanks for the laughs, Bob!

Bomb Guard

Inspired by seeing a story of a bomb squad dismantling a bomb in England, Newhart assumes the role of a chief of police who is speaking on a blue princess phone to the very scared and inexperienced patrolman who found a bomb on the beach. From his signature stammering to his ability to pretend someone is interrupting him, Newhart is in prime form in this iteration on “The Dean Martin Show.”

Dial-an-Atheist

Inspired by the rise of “Dial-a-“ call centers, Newhart reenacts a one-man call center in the Midwest, where he has to staff various call centers all by his lonesome. The genius in this skit is the gradual build-up, the small setups that later turn into something more. Complex and funny, this one will tickle your funny bone far more than calling into customer service.

Noah and the Bible

Newhart always found the humor in people explaining things to others, including in imagining a phone call between Noah and a hardware shop in old times. Noah tries explaining his ark and 40 days and nights of coming rain to Newhart, aka the shop owner, and hilarity ensues.

Air Traffic Controller

A fun spin on his Dial-an-Atheist skit, Newhart imagines the workday of a traffic control officer. Once you hear this one, you’ll find it difficult to sit in a plane on the runway and not think of Newhart hilariously directing plane traffic.

Gettysburg PR

Modern politicians have large staffs of PR and marketing folks who help them look and sound their best no matter where they are. What would happen if presidents of the past, like Lincoln, had similar staffs? That’s what Newhart imagines as he portrays a PR advisor talking over some fine points with Abe as he prepares for his Gettysburg Address.

Sir Walter Raleigh

Newhart saw that new inventions are often viewed as expensive gimmicks when they’re first conceived, with their true purpose and usefulness only becoming mainstream many decades later. Newhart took this idea and spun it to the beginning of the tobacco trade. Newhart, acting as the head of the West Indies Company in London, is more than a little dubious when he gets a call from Sir Walter Raleigh telling him to expect of shipment of 80 tons of leaves from the American colonies.

Guard’s First Night (King Kong)

Perhaps one of his most famous bits, Newhart honors his favorite film, “King Kong,” imagining a phone call where he’s a night guard at his first day on the job speaking to the building’s owner. Yes, as King Kong himself is scaling the Empire State Building. Once you see this one, you’ll never forget it. You’ll definitely not think of King Kong the same way again.

Hell is for Heroes

While not a comedy bit or a sketch, there is a famous phone call featuring Bob Newhart in his 1962 movie debut. “Hell is for Heroes” takes place during World War II, and the Germans have bugged a microphone in a U.S. bunker. To feed them false information, Newhart, as Private James Driscoll, has a fake conversation with “headquarters” in one memorable scene. Paramount Pictures requested this one-sided conversation scene to take advantage of Newhart’s escalating popularity. Director Don Siegel was opposed to the scene, believing it had no place in the story, but he was overruled and Newhart wrote his own lines for this one.

Celebrating the phone call

Whether you’ve used a phone for 90 years or 10, you can relate to Bob Newhart’s comedy because it does what the best humorists often do: they hit on a universal human experience. Everyone knows what it’s like to be on the phone, to have humorous phone conversations where you’re trying to explain something or juggling multiple people at once. He found the humor in that and was able to make us all laugh.

Thanks, Bob!