'Newhart' at 40: A visit to the 'Stratford Inn' in Vermont
The show premiered on Oct. 25, 1982, and ran for 8 memorable seasons. Today, you can still visit the inn where the exteriors were filmed.
On Oct. 25, 1982, at 9:30 p.m. EDT, 40 years ago tonight, the sitcom “Newhart” debuted on CBS. And for eight increasingly wacky seasons, we enjoyed the button-down-minded Dick Loudon (Bob Newhart) cope with the shenanigans all around him at the Vermont country inn he owned with his wife, Joanna, played by Mary Frann.
Needless to say, “Newhart” was my introduction, as it were, to Vermont, even if the bucolic opening-credit vistas that roll before us as Henry Mancini’s theme music plays are said to be from New Hampshire, left over from the film “On Golden Pond,” released the prior year.
The inn, however, is the real deal. Well, at least the exterior. Newhart’s location scouts settled on the Waybury Inn, located on the outskirts of Middlebury, Vermont, to serve as the setting for the Stratford Inn. It’s changed a bit over the years — taller trees, new paint job, accessible ramp out front — but it’s still recognizably the famous inn from the show.
Back in August, on a road trip through Vermont, my friends and I stopped here briefly to check in on the Loudons, and perhaps run into Larry, his brother Darryl and his other brother Darryl.
Well, no such luck, but as I sauntered to the front desk, I announced that I was a “Newhart” fan, and the innkeeper knew the drill. She tipped us off to a Stratford Inn sign that’s in the back of the hotel, and told us a little about the place’s past.
She also confirmed that Bob Newhart has never visited the inn, though he did send along an autographed picture, advising to “take care of my inn!”
I like to pick up keepsakes when I visit a meaningful place like this, and the best I could manage was a photo of some of the cast members, absent Larry, Darryl, and Darryl, though they are represented in a coffee mug that lives in a display case by the front door. The motel is also home to a sign for the Minuteman Cafe, also featured on the show.
The inside, of course, bears no resemblance to the inn on the MTM Productions set, but there’s certainly charm to spare, 222 years of it!
