Button Down Concert
1997 · 62 min
A live performance of his famous one-sided telephone routines.
Bob Newhart made a career out of playing the only sane man in the room, anchored by his signature one-sided phone conversations and polite, stammering delivery. Button Down Concert serves as a live retrospective of his foundational material. Instead of testing new premises, he spends the hour reviving the routines that launched his career in the early 1960s, performing them with the practiced timing of a guy who has been doing this for over thirty years.
Filmed at the Raymond Theater in Pasadena for a Showtime broadcast and released to home media in 1997, the 62-minute set captures Newhart right around the time he was launching the short-lived sitcom George & Leo. The material is familiar but durable. He steps into the shoes of a mid-level employee trying to reason with an unreasonable world, whether he is an Empire State Building security guard calling his boss to report a giant ape, or a driving instructor questioning a student about why her previous teacher jumped out of a moving car. He also updates his famous tobacco routine, playing a public relations man struggling to grasp Sir Walter Raleigh’s pitch for rolling leaves in paper and setting them on fire. The crowd knows the punchlines before he hits them, and Newhart delivers exactly what they bought a ticket to hear.
The set list
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Sir Walter Raleigh Explains Tobacco
A one-sided telephone conversation where a company executive in England listens in disbelief as Sir Walter Raleigh pitches importing and smoking dried leaves from the American colonies.
-
The Driving Instructor
An instructor attempts to remain calm while evaluating an extremely erratic and high-strung student driver who drove 75 miles per hour in her own driveway.
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Night Watchman at the Empire State Building
A guard on his very first shift calls his supervisor in panic after spotting King Kong climbing up the building.
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Marketing Abe Lincoln
Madison Avenue public relations consultants scrutinize and attempt to rebrand Abraham Lincoln and his Gettysburg Address.
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Bus Driver School
An instructor trains aspiring bus drivers on specialized techniques to purposefully aggravate and inconvenience commuters.
-
Mrs. Grace L. Ferguson Airline and Storm Door Company
A monologue examining the absurd compromises of cut-rate budget airlines that cut essential frills such as aircraft maintenance.
-
The Captain of the USS Codfish
A submarine captain addresses his crew over the PA system right as the vessel prepares to dock after two years at sea.
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All-Nude Police Lineup
Police officers set up an entirely nude lineup to assist witnesses in identifying a flasher.
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Abner Doubleday
Abner Doubleday attempts to pitch the complex rules of baseball to a skeptical board game manufacturer.
How it plays
- Tone
- Dry, deadpan, wry, and gently satirical.
- On stage
- Sedate, laid-back, deadpan straight man viewing mundane situations with a skewed Everyman perspective.
- Pace
- Low-key, deliberate cadence marked by impeccable timing, signature pauses, and a dry delivery style.
- About
- historical scenarios, workplace absurdities and past occupations, modern travel and public transit, bureaucracy and public relations
What the critics said
Critically praised for demonstrating Newhart's deadpan genius, sharp timing, and the enduring freshness of his 30-year-old material.
In the room: Warm and enthusiastic responses from a sold-out live theater audience.
Backstory
Filmed for Showtime as a retrospective special where Newhart revived and re-created his smash-hit monologues and telephone bits from the 1960s.
Details
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