Every Saturday night at 9:30 on CBS, after The Mary Tyler Moore Show wrapped up, Bob Hartley drove home to Emily while Lorenzo Music’s theme “Home to Emily” played, and for the next half hour almost everyone who walked into his life greeted him the same way: “Hi, Bob.” It became such a habit that college students later turned it into a drinking game. The Bob Newhart Show premiered on September 16, 1972, and the cast made 142 episodes over six seasons before the final bow on April 1, 1978.
What made it work was a Chicago psychologist who mostly listened while his patients, his wife, his receptionist and the neighbor who never knocked did the talking. “I’m very proud of the show, the cast and the writing,” Newhart told Fox News in 2018. Nearly five decades after the last episode, only one member of that main ensemble is still with us, and the story of how The Bob Newhart Show cast spent their lives after the show leads straight to him.
Is Suzanne Pleshette still alive?
Suzanne Pleshette played Emily Hartley, the warm and wisecracking wife whose late night bedroom talks with Bob became the heart of the series. Newhart said those scenes “filled out our relationship and the audience loved it.” Looking back with Fox News in 2018, he added, “Suzie and I had a great relationship. Those things are hard to find.” He meant it, too. When he started Newhart a few years later, he warned his new TV wife Mary Frann, “You have a really tough job because they’re going to think of my wife as Suzie.”
He was right. In 1990, Pleshette slipped back into Emily’s nightgown for the final scene of Newhart, when Bob woke up beside her and the entire Vermont series turned out to be a dream. She also earned Emmy and Golden Globe nominations playing the title role in Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean (1990), voiced Yubaba in Spirited Away and turned up on Will & Grace. In 2001 she married Tom Poston, whom she had known since a 1959 Broadway comedy and who had played Cliff “The Peeper” Murdock on her old show. Poston died in April 2007.
Suzanne Pleshette died on January 19, 2008, at her Los Angeles home of respiratory failure, her attorney said. She was 70 and had undergone chemotherapy for lung cancer in 2006. “She was a pro’s pro,” Newhart told the Associated Press. “Although we knew she was quite sick, she was one of those people that you thought would go on forever.” Her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was dedicated twelve days later, on January 31, which would have been her 71st birthday. Back at the office, Bob had another woman keeping him in line.
Is Marcia Wallace still alive?
Marcia Wallace was Carol Kester, the receptionist with the quick comebacks who juggled Bob’s patients and his orthodontist officemate Jerry. Born November 1, 1942, in Creston, Iowa, she found a second career a decade after the show ended that reached a whole new generation. Starting in 1989, she was the voice of Edna Krabappel, Bart’s weary fourth grade teacher on The Simpsons, and she won a 1992 Emmy for the episode “Bart the Lover.”
Off camera, she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1985 and spent the rest of her life speaking out about the disease. She wrote about that fight, the death of her husband and her struggle with bulimia in her 2004 memoir, Don’t Look Back, We’re Not Going That Way.
Marcia Wallace died in Los Angeles on October 25, 2013, at age 70. Her son told the Los Angeles Times the cause was complications of pneumonia, and her death certificate also listed sepsis and breast cancer. The Simpsons retired Mrs. Krabappel in her honor, and Yeardley Smith, the voice of Lisa, wrote, “Heaven is now a much funnier place b/c of you, Marcia.” Carol’s waiting room, meanwhile, held the most unpleasant patient in Chicago.
Is Jack Riley still alive?
Jack Riley made Elliot Carlin, the sour and self-absorbed patient who never had a kind word for anyone, into one of the funniest characters on the show across 49 episodes. Carlin was so popular that Riley played him again on St. Elsewhere in 1985 and on ALF in 1987. He was a favorite of Mel Brooks, too, with parts in Silent Movie, High Anxiety, History of the World: Part I and Spaceballs.
Your grandchildren may know his voice better than you do. From 1991 to 2004, Riley voiced Stu Pickles, Tommy’s toy inventor dad, on Nickelodeon’s Rugrats and in its movies.
Jack Riley died of pneumonia in a Los Angeles hospital on August 19, 2016, according to his representative and The Hollywood Reporter. Born December 30, 1935, in Cleveland, he was 80 and was survived by his wife, Ginger Lawrence, and two children. Mr. Carlin rarely suffered alone in Bob’s group sessions, though.
Is Florida Friebus still alive?
Florida Friebus played Lillian Bakerman, one of the regulars in Bob’s group therapy, in 17 episodes. Longtime viewers already knew her face from The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, where she played Dobie’s mother, Winnie Gillis, in 87 episodes.
Her talent went well beyond acting. Back in 1932 she worked with Eva Le Gallienne on a stage adaptation of Alice in Wonderland that played on Broadway and was later broadcast on the Hallmark Hall of Fame.
Florida Friebus died on May 27, 1988, in Laguna Niguel, California, at age 78. She had been born October 10, 1909, although the Los Angeles Times obituary gave 1908 and Nantucket as her birth year and birthplace. Her cause of death was not widely reported. At home, Bob had a different kind of interruption.
Is Bill Daily still alive?
Bill Daily came to the show fresh from five seasons as Major Roger Healey on I Dream of Jeannie, and as Howard Borden, the airline navigator next door who wandered into the Hartleys’ apartment whenever he pleased, he gave Bob a perfect foil. Howard even fell for Bob’s sister, Ellen, a storyline that ran through the middle seasons.
After the show, Daily became a regular panelist on Match Game and played psychiatrist Larry Dykstra on ALF. In 1987 he was named director of the New Mexico Film Commission, and Albuquerque was his home for more than 30 years. He reunited with Newhart on a 1990 episode of Newhart and for the 1991 Bob Newhart Show anniversary special.
Bill Daily died of natural causes on September 4, 2018, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he had recently moved to live with his son. Born August 30, 1927, in Des Moines, he was 91. “He loved every sunset, he loved every meal,” his son Patrick told The Hollywood Reporter. “He just decided to be happy about everything.” One more familiar face was part of the family, both on the set and off it.
Is Bill Quinn still alive?
Bill Quinn never had a regular role on The Bob Newhart Show, but he popped up in guest parts over the years and was there at the very end, playing Dr. James Wyler in the series finale, “Happy Trails to You.” The casting was a family affair. Quinn’s daughter Virginia, known as Ginnie, had married Bob Newhart in 1963, which made Quinn the star’s father-in-law.
He had been performing since the age of 5 in a vaudeville act called The Quinn Brothers. Most viewers remember him as Mr. Van Ranseleer, the blind regular at the bar on All in the Family and Archie Bunker’s Place, and his last film role was Dr. McCoy’s father in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989).
Bill Quinn died of natural causes in Camarillo, California, on April 29, 1994, his publicist told UPI. Born May 6, 1912, in New York City, he was 81 and left behind his wife of 54 years, Mary Catherine, and three daughters. His son-in-law kept working for another three decades.
Is Bob Newhart still alive?
Bob Newhart was already a star before Dr. Hartley. His 1960 comedy album The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart won the Grammy for album of the year, and his one-sided phone call routines became the model for the soft-spoken listener the show was built around. After 1978 he played Vermont innkeeper Dick Loudon on Newhart from 1982 to 1990, then found new fans as Papa Elf in Elf (2003). In 2013 he won his first Emmy for playing Professor Proton on The Big Bang Theory.
Ginnie, his wife of 60 years, died in April 2023. Newhart always said his four children were his greatest achievement, and Jennifer, Courtney, Timothy and Robert survived him.
Bob Newhart died at his Los Angeles home on July 18, 2024, after a series of short illnesses, his publicist Jerry Digney told the Associated Press. Born September 5, 1929, in Oak Park, Illinois, he was 94. His death left just one name from the show’s opening credits.
Is Peter Bonerz still alive?
Yes. Peter Bonerz, who played Dr. Jerry Robinson, the swinging single orthodontist who shared Bob’s office and his receptionist, is alive and turned 88 on August 6, 2026, when Parade marked the day by calling him the last surviving star of the show’s main cast. He was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1938 and got his first TV part on The Addams Family, where he says John Astin taught him how television acting worked.
Jerry turned out to be only half of his career. Bonerz began directing episodes of the show in 1974 and ended up directing 29 of them. After that he became one of the busiest sitcom directors in Hollywood, with more than 350 episodes between 1974 and 2011. That count includes 93 episodes of Murphy Brown, 29 of Home Improvement and 12 of Friends, and he won a Directors Guild of America Award for the Murphy Brown episode “Uh Oh: Part II.” He also directed Police Academy 6: City Under Siege (1989) and still acted now and then, including a role in Man on the Moon (1999) and a 2014 episode of Parks and Recreation.
Today Bonerz is mostly retired, Remind Magazine reported in 2025, but he has never stopped explaining why the show still feels so good to watch. “The idea of Bob Newhart being a listener, I think was the genius of The Bob Newhart Show,” he told the Television Academy Foundation. “A psychologist is by definition a listener.” More than half a century after he first walked into that office, Jerry Robinson is the last one left who can still say “Hi, Bob.”
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