Bob Newhart

I can't think of anyone else to have done the thing Newhart did in his old phone-call routines where ... it's just a solo straightman! Alone on a stage, reacting to implied dialogue. Totally agree with Nick in his thread start about how this made the sitcoms interesting: they have a straightman so good he doesn't even need comedy to react to, so they can just set up a mundane awkward conflict and it's more than funny enough to watch the guy just stand there in it. I can think of a few performers you could kind of do this with today, but I can't picture any television brave enough to actually try it.

nabisco otm!

Peter Sellers was brilliant when he did something similar in Dr. Strangelove. By then, Newhart's phone bits were already well-known and massively popular, so one wonders if it came to mind when they wrote that scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO7O7meqZlo

FWIW, a cursory search shows that Newhart's a big fan of the film, especially due to Sellers's performance (paywall prevents me from seeing whether he mentions the aforementioned scene).

Never thought of that before (or did I?) but it makes sense.