Bob Newhart, the Accountant? The Beloved Comedian Tried His Hand at Many Gigs Before Finding Success

You know what would have been unfair? If someone as enormously talented as comedian Bob Newhart had been just as good at being an accountant as he was at being a comic.

But no, Bob would have been the first to tell you that he was not, in fact, very good at accounting.

And for that, we should all be grateful. Because while it would be nice to have a funny accountant around tax time (when you usually feel like crying), it's so much better that we got the Bob we all know and love.

Indeed, the groundbreaking comedian — who died at age 94 on July 18, 2024 — had a few career misses before he became a household name.

After graduating college in 1952 with a business management degree, Bob was drafted into the United States military. He served in the Korean War as a personnel manager (and remained in the U.S.) before being discharged in 1954. He then tried his hand at law school for a bit before deciding to work as an accountant at United States Gypsum (now called USG Corporation). But he was admittedly not very good at it.

He even wrote about it in his 2006 memoir, I Shouldn’t Even Be Doing This!: And Other Things That Strike Me as Funny. He said that during this time, he adopted the motto, "That's close enough." He also made a habit of using his own money to cover any petty cash imbalances.

Bob soon high-tailed it over to the world of copywriting, but he didn't really love that either. In fact, in order to alleviate his boredom with these accounting and advertising gigs, Bob and a friend developed a habit of making funny phone calls with each other.

They eventually started recording those calls and even submitted them to radio stations. Though their initial efforts failed, the recordings made their way to Warner Bros., and Bob soon had a record contract. His first comedy album went to No. 1 on the charts, and the rest — that is, his long, storied career — is comedic history.