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George & Leo aired from September 1997 until June 1998 on CBS.
Picturesque Martha's Vineyard was the setting for this comedy about 2 mismatched in-laws. George ( Bob Newhart), was a quiet, introspective New Englander who ran a small bookstore on the island. On the eve of his son Ted's ( Jason Bateman's) wedding to an already pregnant Casey ( Bess Myer and later Robyn Lively), George's orderly life was changed forever. Ted had invited Casey's father Leo ( Judd Hirsch), to the wedding. Leo, who had not seen his daughter in 20 years ( her choice), was a small time hoodlum on the run from mobsters in Las Vegas, because he kept the last payoff he had collected. When he found out there was a spare room above George's bookstore, he moved right in-and George spent the season trying to get him to leave town. Leo was a piece of work, a loud, obnoxious. lusty con-man whose every word and action caused shivers to run down George's spine. Whenever George let Leo talk him into anything, he got in trouble-offering a bribe to the Edgartown building inspector to avoid a zoning infraction caused by Leo's living above the bookstore landing George in jail. Ted and Casey ran a small restaurant and Ambrose ( Darryl Theirse), worked for George in the bookstore. After Casey gave birth in February, they hired Alice ( Julia Sweeney), as the nanny for their baby.
A Review from Variety
George & Leo
(CBS, MON. SEPT. 15, 9:30 p.m.)
By TONY SCOTT
Filmed at Paramount Studios by Staley/Long Prods. and Paramount Pictures. Exec producers-creators-writers, Dan Staley, Rob Long; co-exec producer, Tom Anderson; director, James Burrows.
Cast: Bob Newhart, Judd Hirsch, Jason Bateman, Bess Meyer, Darryl Theirse, Jason Beghe.
George Stoody's (Newhart) son Ted (Jason Bateman) and Leo's (Hirsch) pregnant daughter Casey (Bess Meyer) are marrying in Ted's eatery across the way. Vegas bagman Leo, who abandoned his daughter and his wife 20 years ago, shows up for the wedding --- broke. Not only that: An armed hood (Jason Beghe) is after him. Seriously.
Not knowing about his bride's loathing for her father, Ted had invited Leo to the big event. Leo, showing up at George's store, buys a wedding gift with a rubber check. First test of Newhart and Hirsch comedy styles is satisfactory, if mild, but subsequent segs---- particularly when George lets it slip there's an empty bedroom over his bookshop.
When Casey first spots her dad, she turns thumbs down, but it's sitcom time, so that's not much of a hurdle. Throughout the pilot, the dialogue's at times funny, at other times so-so. Segs are often amusing or touching --- director James Burrows cunningly prods the sitcom to life --- as George and Leo get to know each other, as when hesitant George, referring to Leo, coughs up the words "carnival people"; or when Leo corrects George's pronunciation of "schmuck."
As in both the enormously successful "Taxi" and in the various high-class Bob Newhart incarnations, secondary characters enormously mattered; same should be kept in mind here.
Ted and Casey share a warming moment when she notes what will happen to them when the baby comes, but so far they're just an engaging couple who better get married toute de suite. Meyer's a charmer in her role, and Bateman does a terrific work as the bridegroom.
Darryl Theirse is around for a second as Ambrose, George's assistant, while Jason Beghe's mob's assassin is a standout.
Program's future rests in the hands of master pros Newhart, Hirsch and Burrows. And they need ammunition to garner guffaws or even gentle smiles (there's an intimidating laugh track that has to be trashed). It's to be hoped that amusingly conceived second bananas are on the schedule; if not, the war's over.
A Review From The New York Times
NEW TV SEASON IN REVIEW
By CARYN JAMES
Published: September 15, 1997
An Odd-Couple Concept,
This Time With In-Laws
'George & Leo'
CBS, Monday nights at 9:30
In stand-up and sitcoms, Bob Newhart long ago perfected the Bob character, with his droll comic delivery and buttoned-down persona. That appealing, commonsensical presence makes ''George & Leo,'' his new odd-couple comedy with Judd Hirsch as the chaotic one, funnier than it sounds.
This time, the deadpan Bob character is named George, and he owns a bookstore on Martha's Vineyard. His son, Ted (Jason Bateman), is about to marry and surprises his fiancee with an unwelcome wedding guest: her long-lost father, Leo, who invades George's bookstore wearing a mustard-yellow jacket, writing bad checks and claiming to be a professional magician. ''I didn't know my son was marrying into,'' Mr. Newhart says, taking a brilliantly timed pause, ''carnival people.''
Leo is, in fact, a bagman hiding out from Las Vegas business associates. ''Those Vegas boys,'' Leo says, ''they don't just kill you, they torture you.''
''Like how?'' asks a skeptical George. ''They make you go to the Liberace Museum?'' Of course, these two have no patience for each other; of course, Leo will stay on the island, the better to get on the nerves of his new-found family.
Mr. Hirsch plays Leo just this side of annoying, making him a solid foil for George. But the series relies on Mr. Newhart's enduring appeal. In reruns, ''The Bob Newhart Show'' (the psychiatrist series) and ''Newhart'' (the innkeeper series) hold up as classically funny comedies of manners. Then he changed to a crankier persona for ''Bob'' (the series nobody watched). Mr. Newhart has freely admitted that he didn't want to make that mistake again. He hasn't. Playing to his strengths, he turns the familiar feel of ''George & Leo'' into something welcome: a genuine Newhart sitcom. CARYN JAMES
Here's An Article From Entertainment Weekly
Pop Culture News
LOVE THAT BOB
HIS LATEST SITCOM, GEORGE & LEO, REMINDS US HOW MUCH WE ADORE NEWHART. IN FACT, LET US COUNT THE WAYS WE...
By Bruce Fretts
Casually dressed in a short-sleeved golf shirt, blue pants, white socks, and sneakers, the balding, rumpled man shuffles into the office he keeps above the garage of his gated Bel Air mansion and settles into an armchair. As he says hello, not quite making eye contact, he could be your best friend's dad -- or your dad. Yet Bob Newhart may be the coolest 68-year-old man alive.
Not that he's feeling cool on this sweltering August day. Newhart is about to head to the Paramount lot to reshoot scenes for the pilot of his new CBS sitcom, George & Leo. And, yes, even after 40 years of performing, he still gets nervous. ''It's like a friend that I would miss if it weren't there,'' he says of the butterflies in his stomach. ''It's like a high-wire act. There's got to be a risk.''
Newhart knows well the danger of doing another sitcom. After long runs on CBS as Chicago psychologist Dr. Bob Hartley on The Bob Newhart Show (1972-78) and Vermont innkeeper Dick Loudon on Newhart (1982-90), he stumbled badly with his last effort for the Eye, the comic-book-themed Bob (1992-93). But this time, Newhart has not only solid costars -- Judd Hirsch as Leo, the Las Vegas lounge lizard who lives in the pad above the Martha's Vineyard bookshop owned by mild-tempered George (guess who), and Jason Bateman as George's son, who marries Leo's daughter -- but a cozy spot in CBS' successful Monday-night comedy lineup. ''If we don't cut it,'' says Newhart, ''we've only got ourselves to blame.''
Failure doesn't seem terribly likely. Despite his smaller-than-life persona, Newhart is a comedy giant -- these days more popular than ever. As Nick at Nite's reruns of The Bob Newhart Show and Newhart win new legions of fans, his concerts sell out casinos and colleges alike. ''Hi Bob! has something to do with the generational crossover,'' says Newhart of the popular college drinking game (quaff when you hear the phrase!) that he says he's never played. ''But I don't want to go down in history for that.''
With such an all-ages appeal, Newhart has become the Tony Bennett of comedy: He's so technically proficient, so refreshingly sincere and unironic, so square to be hip, you can't help but love the guy. But just in case you need convincing, here are nine additional reasons to revere him:
1 BOB NEVER FAKES IT. Newhart is exactly the same on stage and off -- well, almost. ''There's a very slight voice change that I'm aware of,'' says Newhart, ''but probably no one else is.'' Probably not. Just ask his coworkers: ''He's not Arnold Schwarzenegger off stage. And he doesn't cross-dress,'' says Hirsch. Adds Bateman, ''He hasn't become this a -- hole star. He's just a real nice person, and he's able to translate that into the characters he plays.''
Such an honest personality has served Newhart well on the small screen. ''TV is very unforgiving of falsehoods,'' observes George & Leo executive producer Rob Long. ''It's a very close medium, and if you're faking it, [viewers] can tell instantly. '' Even his halting speech style is legit. ''I didn't survey the field of comedy and say, 'Hey, nobody has a stammer,''' says Newhart. ''So, uh, I mean, that's just my natural way of talking.''
2 BOB IS THE TOSCANINI OF TIMING. Nobody can pace a joke better than Newhart; he even makes silence funny. "Bob's the King," proclaims Bateman, no neophyte at turning punchlines as the veteran of seven sitcoms. "He put the t in timing." Like his stammer, Newhart's sense of comic rhythm came naturally. "I didn't develop it, I just always heard it," he says. "It has something to do with mathematics and music. Timing is like a thirty-second note--it's not a sixteenth note, and it's not an eighth note. You just hear it, and if you don't put it in there, it's jarring." 3 BOB WAS A LOUSY ACCOUNTANT. Before launching his stand-up career, Newhart kept books for a Chicago firm in the late '50s--and hated every minute of it. "I had to balance petty cash at the end of the day," he recalls. "And it'd be a dollar over or under, so after a while of trying to find it, I'd just put in a dollar or take one out. They said, 'You can't do that.' So I said, 'You're going to pay me $5 an hour to find one dollar?' That's when I realized this was not for me."
4 BOB ONCE SOLD MORE RECORDS THAN ELVIS. After a few years struggling in nightclubs, Newhart recorded a comedy album, 1960's The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart. It shot to No. 1 on the charts, ahead of Elvis discs and the Broadway cast album from The Sound of Music. "We were totally unprepared," says Newhart. "All of a sudden, I was on Ed Sullivan for six shots." With the subsequent release of The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back!, Newhart soon had a simultaneous hold on two of Billboard's top spots. That feat was matched a few years ago by Axl Rose's Guns N' Roses. Says Newhart, with characteristic dryness, "At least it happened to a friend. That kinda softened it."
5 BOB WAS A COMEDY REBEL. In 1960, TIME magazine lumped Newhart with so-called "sick comic" Lenny Bruce as well as avant-garde performers Jonathan Winters and Mike Nichols and Elaine May. "I never quite understood it," says Newhart. "I guess I did a thing on a dead president--Lincoln--and Mike and Elaine did a thing on a funeral home, and Lenny, of course, was all over the place." Mind you, Bob wasn't offended by the "sick" label: "At that time, I was happy to be called anything." In retrospect, a better name for these stand-ups might be pioneers. "It was a total departure from where comedy had been," says Newhart. "Anybody could do 'Take my wife, please.' But if you put your personal stamp on material, no one could steal it." Newhart's influence continues to this day. Cheers vets and George & Leo creators Rob Long and Dan Staley credit him as the reason they got into comedy: "You watch those stand-up shows and it's endlessly similar people in front of a brick wall," says Long. "Bob's not interchangeable."
6 BOB SPARED VIEWERS MANY YEARS OF CLOYING SITCOM TOTS. When Newhart was first offered the role of psychologist Bob Hartley on The Bob Newhart Show, one of his requirements was no children allowed. "I didn't want to play 'Oh, look at the pickle Dad has gotten himself into,'" explains Newhart. In the show's fifth season, the writers presented Newhart with a script in which wife Emily (Suzanne Pleshette) was expecting. Newhart phoned the producer: "I said, 'It's a very good script--who are you going to get to play Bob?'" Rewrites transformed it into a dream sequence in which Emily thinks she's pregnant. Only when Newhart was old enough to have grown kids did he play a TV dad.
7 BOB NEVER GAVE A DARN ABOUT MOVIE STARDOM. "I've certainly had an undistinguished movie career," concedes Newhart, whose spotty big-screen resume includes such blips as 1962's Hell Is for Heroes and 1980's First Family. "I never had the patience for it. I need the immediacy of a live audience." Newhart recently came close to dropping out of his first feature-film role in years, as a high school principal in the current Kevin Kline comedy In & Out, when the production was delayed and nearly overlapped with a long-planned family visit. "I talked to [director] Frank Oz and said, 'Look, I like you very much, but if I have a choice between staring at you or at my granddaughter, frankly I'd rather stare at her.' And he said, 'I promise I'll have you out in time,'" recalls Newhart, who, in addition to his one grandchild, has four kids with Ginnie, his wife of 34 years. "I have different priorities."
8 BOB IS ADMIRED BY ELLEN DEGENERES AND LISA KUDROW. In 1986, DeGeneres won over Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show with her "phone call to God" routine. That breakthrough monologue was influenced by Newhart's legendary phone bits, in which he would react to an unheard caller. (Ellen once approached him to play a therapist on the show, but Newhart--who almost never does guest shots--declined.) And Kudrow made a guest appearance in the last episode of Newhart (as one of Larry, Darryl, and Darryl's chatty fiancees) long before she became a Friend. "It's not based on shtick or one-liners," says Kudrow of Newhart's appeal. "It's just funny to watch a human being try to make everything okay."
9 BOB NEVER OVERSTAYS HIS WELCOME. Newhart voluntarily pulled the plug on The Bob Newhart Show and Newhart when he felt the shows had run their course. "I've always wanted to go off the air a year early rather than a year late," he says. So when does Newhart envision George & Leo ending its run? "Whenever that little man who's been on my shoulder says, 'Well, okay, close it down.'" In life, as in comedy, timing is everything.
(Additional reporting by Dan Snierson)
Posted Sep 26, 1997 | Published in issue #398 Sep 26, 1997
An Article from The New York Times
TELEVISION; Decent but Cranky the Fourth Time Around
By ANDY MEISLER
Published: November 23, 1997
DURING LUCILLE BALL'S final years as a television star, even her most devoted fans winced at her pratfalls and scatterbrained coquettishness. Some of Jack Benny's long-running shtick, particularly his relationship with his ''girlfriend,'' Mary Livingstone, wore thin by the 1960's. Even Michael Landon, in his last series or two, could have used a grown-up haircut.
So how are we to assess the comedic autumn of Bob Newhart? Does the oldest comedy star on television remain bankable in today's prime-time programming, at least among the bulging demographic cohort that fondly remembers his early career? More fundamentally, does the buttoned-down comic persona of the 68-year-old Mr. Newhart, formed during the Eisenhower Administration, remain as serviceable as ever?
So far, the answer seems to be yes, if one listens to what the critics are saying about his new sitcom, ''George and Leo,'' on Monday nights on CBS -- his fourth on the network since 1972. But the public's response, as measured by the ratings, is less conclusive; they've been respectable but not sensational (for Nov. 10, the show, on at 9:30, got an 8.6 rating, or roughly 8.4 million viewers, beaten only by ''Monday Night Football.'')
The show is most popular among adult viewers over 34, the demographically undesirable (at least to advertisers), and CBS has renewed the show through the rest of its first season.
''Bob's on-screen character is decent, easily embarrassed, just a tiny bit cranky -- and surrounded by people who bedevil him always,'' said Rob Long, the co-creator and executive producer of ''George and Leo.'' ''He's got a very strong moral sense. The problem is, people keep changing the margins of what's right and wrong. He keeps trying to adjust, but they're always moving just a little too fast for him.'' Mr. Long was 7 years old when the first of Mr. Newhart's sitcoms went on the air.
CBS, mired in third place among the networks, is counting on Mr. Newhart's appeal. Mondays are traditionally a strong comedy night for CBS, and the show also stars another proven comic actor, Judd Hirsch.
Mr. Newhart himself is unsure whether his brand of comedy is still sure-fire, or even mainstream, in 1997.
''Sure, I worry,'' he said in an interview in his small but spotless Paramount Studios dressing room recently. ''The show may not work. The audience has changed considerably. It includes a lot of people who are a lot younger than I am, and I don't know if they want to watch two guys in their 60's. Maybe they see us as their dads or their uncles. Maybe they don't see any relevance; maybe they do. The only thing I can do is do my best work with writing I believe in.''
This time around, the circles under Mr. Newhart's deep-set eyes are a little darker and the bulge at the bottom of his cardigan a bit more pronounced. But the character he plays in ''George and Leo'' is pure Newhart: different only in superficial detail from Bob Hartley, the young-fogy Chicago psychologist he played in ''The Bob Newhart Show'' from 1972 to 1980, and from Dick Loudon, the older-fogy Vermont innkeeper he played in ''Newhart'' from 1982 to 1990.
As effortlessly established in the new show's first few episodes, George Stoody is a mild-mannered widower, a retired mutual fund manager who buys a bookstore on Martha's Vineyard to be near his son, Ted (Jason Bateman), and his very pregnant daughter-in-law, Casey (Robyn Lively).
Ted and Casey were not married until the second episode, a fact that drives the uptight George into paroxysms of stammering indignation, which everybody treats as mere byproducts of his harmless and semi-endearing eccentricity. Indeed, almost everything in the modern world drives George to new heights of stoic powerlessness.
Those are minor irritants, however, compared with the sudden appearance in his life of Leo Wagonman (Mr. Hirsch), Casey's long-absent father. The polyester-friendly Leo, a one-time magician and full-time con artist and ladies' man, shows up on George's doorstep on the lam from a Las Vegas-based mob hit man. In the pilot, Leo bargains fiercely and obnoxiously on the price of a coffee-table book to give his daughter as a wedding present, then writes George a bad check for the amount.
''WHY, UH, WHY DID you bother bargaining with me?'' says George, when he eventually tumbles to Leo's scheme. ''Why didn't you write me a check for a -- for a thousand dollars?''
Naturally, Leo takes advantage of George's essential decency to finagle a spare bedroom atop the bookstore. Naturally, too, Leo embroils George in various other flaky scams.
''In this one, Judd plays everybody -- Mr. Carlin, Larry, Darryl and Darryl, and everybody else combined,'' said Mr. Newhart, mentioning a few of the many annoying characters who surrounded him in his first two sitcoms.
And he, some say, plays himself. A frequent observation about Mr. Newhart is that in the public's mind at least he and his persona are virtually indistinguishable.
Is that accurate?
''No, I'm acting,'' said Mr. Newhart. ''I'm really acting, and I've been doing it for a long time. When they aren't your own words and you have to hit marks and there are three cameras, that's acting.''
He concedes that much of his own personality has gone into the creation of George, Dick et. al. A slightly deeper secret is that the traits Mr. Newhart shares with his alter egos -- including a fearless acceptance of his dull side and a stubborn adherence to tradition and propriety -- have served him considerably better in real life than they serve his characters on the small screen.
Mr. Newhart and his wife, Ginnie, have been married for 36 years and have four grown children, all doing well outside show business. Mr. Newhart himself is a wealthy man; he recently sold one of his Southern California homes to Edgar Bronfman Jr., who in 1995 acquired MCA, including Universal Studios, for his company Seagram.
This success story began in the late 1950's. Mr. Newhart vaulted to fame when he lampooned the Organization Man under pressure in a series of comedy records, now classics, that still form the core of his stand-up act. He was the host of a short-lived variety show in the early 1960's, but only when he starred in his first sitcom did he find his real place in television.
Both that first sitcom, ''The Bob Newhart Show,'' and ''Newhart'' did so well that at the end of their long runs, Mr. Newhart, slightly tired of his characters, had to pull the plug himself. Then, in 1992, came ''Bob,'' which was considered a bit of a mess. Mr. Newhart played Bob McKay, a middle-aged comic-book artist who vented his innermost feelings from time to time. The series was pre-empted, retooled, rescheduled repeatedly and finally, after a season and a half, canceled. Even Mr. Newhart was relieved.
''As I've said before, the worse thing an actor can do is 'stretch,' '' he said. ''The public couldn't care less whether you are stretching or not, and if you feel a need to do it, then put on an exercise video. But don't do it in front of millions of people.''
He was not eager to risk failure again.
''I pleaded with him,'' says Leslie Moonves, president of CBS Television. ''I met with him several times, and listened to his concerns. He wanted good co-stars. He wanted a good time slot. And he wanted us to support him by sticking with the show and moving it around the schedule. Once he jumped in, though, he was a happy guy. In fact, he sat with us and read with 30 actors we were auditioning. He's not really one to throw his weight around.''
This is not to say, however, that Mr. Newhart has lacked the final say on his shows.
''In my estimation,'' said Mr. Newhart, carefully, ''power lies in how seldom you utilize it.''
To illustrate this point Mr. Newhart explained that he had a longstanding rule against acting with children, and that -- during the sixth season of ''The Bob Newhart Show'' -- he felt called upon to remind certain people of that fact.
''One Friday night after I did the show, they gave me the script for the next week,'' he said. ''On Saturday I read it and discovered that Emily -- my wife in the show -- was pregnant. So I called up the producer at that time and said, 'It's a funny script.'
''He said: 'Oh! You like it?'
''I said: 'Oh, God, yes. It's very funny.'
''He said: 'Oh, good. We were a little worried you wouldn't like it.'
''I said: 'No, no. It's very funny. Who are you going to get to play Bob?' ''
The script was rewritten. Emily's pregnancy turned out to have been a dream.
Correction: December 14, 1997, Sunday An article on Nov. 23 about Bob Newhart's television series ''George and Leo'' misstated the ratings ranking of CBS among broadcast networks when the series had its premiere in September. CBS was in second place, not third place.
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