George Robert Newhart (born September 5, 1929), better known as Bob Newhart, is an American stand-up comedian and actor. Noted for his deadpan and slightly stammering delivery, Newhart came to prominence in the 1960s when his album of comedic monologues The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart was a worldwide bestseller and reached number one on the Billboard pop album chart—it remains the 20th best-selling comedy album in history. The follow-up album, The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back! was also a massive success, and the two albums held the Billboard number one and number two spots simultaneously.
Newhart later went into acting, starring in two long-running and award-winning situation comedies, first as psychologist Dr. Robert "Bob" Hartley on the 1970s sitcom The Bob Newhart Show and then as innkeeper Dick Loudon on the 1980s sitcom Newhart. He also had two short-lived sitcoms in the nineties titled Bob and George and Leo. Newhart also appeared in film roles such as Major Major in Catch-22 and Papa Elf in Elf. He provided the voice of Bernard in the Walt Disney animated films The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under. In 2004 he played the library head Judson in The Librarian, a character which continued in 2014 to the TV series The Librarians. In 2013, Newhart made his first of four guest appearances on The Big Bang Theory, for which he received his first Primetime Emmy Award on September 15, 2013.
On February 20, 2015, Newhart was honored with the Publicists of the International Cinematographers Guild Lifetime Achievement Award.