Bob Newhart was a timeless comedic genius whose quiet delivery made him a star

The nice thing would be to wake up and find oneself in bed in a Chicago apartment between Bob and Emily, or in a Vermont inn with Dick and Joanna, and find that this was all a dream. Newhart, who died Thursday at the age of 94, was a quiet comic giant whose sneaky genius ruled comedy across seven decades and whose name was attached to four fine sitcoms — “The Bob Newhart Show,” “Newhart,” “Bob” and “George and Leo,” his actual first name being George — and a drinking game, “Hi, Bob.” After a brief, unsuccessful stint selling taped comic routines to radio stations, his first album, “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart,” recorded in 1960 at his first ever public performance, was massively, historically successful: It reached No. And Newhart had two of them, both on CBS — there are 142 episodes of the impeccable “The Bob Newhart Show,” which ran from 1972 to 1978, where he played psychologist Robert Hartley opposite Suzanne Pleshette, and 184 of “Newhart,” airing from 1982 to 1990, in which he played innkeeper Dick Loudon opposite Mary Frann. His mastery of one-sided conversations notwithstanding, “The Bob Newhart Show” demonstrated that its star’s true artistry emerged when he had other actors to play off and react to. When “Newhart” suddenly morphed into “The Bob Newhart Show” in its famous final moments, suggesting the entire later series had been Bob Hartley’s dream, it was to that bed it magnetically returned.