Domestic Glance
No one ever listened funnier than Bob Newhart.
Any acting coach will tell you, of course, that an ability to really, fully listen to what another actor is saying is one of the trade’s essential tools. It’s one thing to do so when someone is actually speaking to you — but to appear to listen when nothing is being said? Newhart, who died Thursday at 94, turned that into an art.
The droll standup comedian and actor died at home in Los Angeles after a series of short illnesses, his longtime publicist Jerry Digney announced.
Obviously, we cherished his delivery of a line as well: the pauses, the stutters, the sudden bursts of exasperation as this gifted man — who always occupied the sane, quiet center — finally got pushed over the edge. But it was his mastery of a slow-burn silence that made him a TV star, one of the few to have his name in the title of two beloved, classic and critically acclaimed CBS sitcom hits: "The Bob Newhart Show" in the 1970s and, a few years later, "Newhart."
- A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled a Minnesota law requiring a person to be at least 21 years old before obtaining a permit to carry a handgun in public for self-defense is unconstitutional.
