Bob Newhart has died. The American comedian and actor has died at the age of 94

American comedian and actor Bob Newhart died at his home in Los Angeles after a series of short illnesses, his longtime publicist Jerry Digney said.

Newhart is best known for starring in two hit television series. He played a psychologist on The Bob Newhart Show from 1972 to 1978, and then a Vermont innkeeper on the series Newhart, which aired from 1982 to 1990.

In both shows, he plays an everyman in a sweater who is confused by the people around him.

Newhart was nominated for an Emmy nine times, first in 1962, but did not win the award until 2013 when he guest-starred on “The Big Bang Theory.”

Newhart’s career began in the late 1950s with a stand-up comedy act in which he played a man who spoke with an inaudible voice on the other end of the telephone. Tommy Smothers of the comedy duo Smothers Brothers described Newhart as a “one-man comedy band” because of his dialogues with his invisible partner.

“When I started doing stand-up comedy, all I remember was the laugh,” Newhart said in an interview. — It’s one of the greatest voices in the world — he added.

His 1960 recording of The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart was a huge hit and had a major impact on the comedy world. The album won him three Grammy Awards.

Newhart’s character had a characteristic stutter. As he later explained, this was his natural way of speaking. He mentioned in an interview that a television producer had asked him to reduce his stuttering because it made the show run too long.

“No,” I told him, the stutterer who bought me a house in Beverly Hills, he wrote in his memoir. “I shouldn’t even try to do that,” he said emphatically.

In 1990, he ended his “Newhart” show with what is considered one of the most unique performances in the history of American television. In the last scene of the series, after living the “dream” of the second series, he wakes up in bed with his wife from the first series.

Reuters wrote, “Newhart came of age in an era of angry, edgy stand-up comedians like Lenny Bruce, Shelley Berman and Mort Sahl, but his jokes were subtly subversive, free of profanity and not as shocking as those of other comedians.”