Bob and Ray were an American comedy duo whose career spanned five decades, composed of comedians Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding. The duo's format was typically to satirize the medium in which they were performing, such as conducting radio or television interviews, with off-the-wall dialogue presented in a generally deadpan style as though it were a serious broadcast.
Radio Elliott and Goulding began as radio announcers (Elliott a disc jockey and Goulding a newscaster) in Boston with their own separate programs on station WHDH, and each would visit with the other while on the air. Their informal banter was so appealing that WHDH would call on them, as a team, to fill in when Red Sox baseball broadcasts were rained out. Elliott and Goulding (not yet known as Bob and Ray) would improvise comedy routines all afternoon, and joke around with studio musicians.
Elliott and Goulding's brand of humor caught on, and WHDH gave them their own weekday show in 1946. Matinee with Bob and Ray was originally a 15-minute show, soon expanding to half an hour. (When explaining why Bob was billed first, Goulding claimed that it was because Matinee with Bob and Ray sounded better than Matinob with Ray and Bob.) Their trademark sign-off was "This is Ray Goulding reminding you to write if you get work"; "Bob Elliott reminding you to hang by your thumbs."
Matinee with Bob and Ray Matinee with Bob and Ray was broadcast Monday through Saturday on WHDH. The weekday half-hours were broadcast live; the Saturday shows were usually 25 minutes long and were sometimes recorded in advance. Staff musicians Ken Wilson (organ) and Bill Green (piano) opened each show with a sprightly rendition of "Collegiate".
Fans who are familiar with Bob and Ray's later routines, which were carefully scripted and timed, might be surprised by surviving episodes of Matinee with Bob and Ray. These shows were completely impromptu and always irreverent, demonstrating how very alert and quick-witted Bob and Ray were. They would follow any comic thread for a few minutes, and then just as suddenly abandon it to move on to another topic. If Ray happened to mention a distant city, Bob would solemnly introduce a travelogue and the pair would narrate a mock documentary. A chance remark about a labor-saving device would bring home-economics expert Mary Margaret McGoon (Ray) to the microphone, offering an unlikely recipe or promoting a useless appliance. If an idea ran out of steam, Bob and Ray's cowboy entertainer Tex Blaisdell (voiced by Bob in a laconic drawl) came out of nowhere to plug his latest personal appearance in some tenth-rate theater. Almost all of the incidental characters passing through the studio were named Sturdley, which became a buzzword of the series.
A regular feature of Matinee with Bob and Ray was a soap opera parody, "The Life and Loves of Linda Lovely". Ray would portray Linda, using a soft, breathy falsetto, with Bob portraying her beloved David in a halting, deliberate baritone. Neither Bob nor Ray knew what each story would involve, so each would cue the other and bat the dialogue back and forth as each situation got out of hand. A 1948 broadcast had Linda suddenly interrupting the story to take an urgent phone call, only to have David counter this turn of events by taking his own call; then Linda announced someone at the door and took a third phone call, which David accepted while Linda greeted the guest at the door and took a fourth phone call.
When the show took time out for a recorded commercial, the team would continue in the same vein. A testimonial by actor Basil Rathbone would be followed by Bob and Ray adopting British accents and outlining a mystery. A commercial for a toy dealer would result in Bob immediately introducing a children's story as told by "Uncle Ray". Beginning in October 1948 they satirized a regularly scheduled singing commercial for Mission Bell Wines, which called for an announcer to read the ad copy live between the opening chorus and the closing jingle. Bob and Ray took any number of liberties, singing the copy drunkenly or punctuating the written copy with sarcastic remarks.
Musicians Wilson and Green performed two selections during each show. Bob and Ray often dragged them into the action, with comments about their clothes, their vacation plans, their musicianship, or their work ethic (Ray: "I don't care if you two have Petrillo behind you, you always come in here thinking you own the place."). One episode had Bob and Ray commenting on a Wilson-Green duet and then discussing the many success stories of the Wilson and Green School of Music. These were all voiced by Bob and Ray, all awful musicians, and all named Sturdley.
Although Matinee with Bob and Ray did not have a studio audience, local residents (often high-school and college students) dropped by the studio daily to watch Bob and Ray. The team's wilder flights of fancy would elicit laughter off-mike.
Other radio projects Matinee with Bob and Ray became a favorite with listeners in New England, which brought Elliott and Goulding to the attention of NBC in New York. They continued on the air for over four decades on the NBC, CBS, and Mutual networks, and on New York City stations WINS, WOR, and WHN. From 1973 to 1976, they were the afternoon drive hosts on WOR, doing a four-hour show. In their last incarnation, they were heard on National Public Radio, ending in 1987.
They were regulars on NBC's Monitor, often on standby to go on the air at short notice if the program's planned segments developed problems, and they were also heard in a surprising variety of formats and time slots, from a 15-minute series in mid-afternoon to their hourlong show aired weeknights just before midnight in 1954–55. During that same period, they did an audience-participation game show, Pick and Play with Bob and Ray, which was short-lived. It came at a time when network pages filled seats for radio-TV shows by giving tickets to anyone in the street, and on Pick and Play the two comics were occasionally booed by audience members unfamiliar with the Bob and Ray comedy style.
Some of their radio episodes were released on recordings, and others were adapted into graphic story form for publication in MAD magazine. Their earlier shows were mostly ad-libbed, but later programs relied more heavily on scripts. While Bob and Ray created and improvised much of their material, they did accept sketches from writers. The first was Boston broadcaster Jack Beauvais, who had performed as a singer for WEEI in Boston during the 1930s and also worked for some of the big bands in the 1940s and 1950s.WUML: Jack Beauvais The pioneering radio humorist Raymond Knight was a fan, and submitted ideas and sketches. (Bob Elliott later married Knight's widow.)
The most prolific freelance author was Tom Koch (pronounced "Cook"). In 1955 he was a staff writer for Monitor, and he sent Elliott and Goulding 10 bits. "They bought eight," recalled Koch, "so I sent them 10 more and they never did reject another one." Koch always submitted his work by interoffice or postal mail, and although Elliott and Goulding spoke with him in person occasionally, the working relationship was remote: "The check would come and that would be it."Tom Koch to David Pollock, Bob and Ray: Keener than Most Persons, Applause Books, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2013; p. 145. Koch captured the Bob and Ray style so well that the team would recite from his scripts verbatim. Koch remained with Elliott and Goulding, off and on, for three decades.
Characters and spoofs
Characters Elliott and Goulding lent their voices to a variety of recurring characters and countless one-shots, creating a multilayered world that parodied the real-life world of radio broadcasting. Elliott and Goulding played "Bob" and "Ray", the hosts of an ostensibly serious radio program. Their "staff" (all voiced by Elliott and Goulding) was a comic menagerie of reporters, book reviewers, actors, and all other manner of radio personalities, all of whom interacted with "Bob" and "Ray", as well as with one another. Almost all of these characters had picturesque names, as in one sketch where Bob introduced Ray as one Maitland Q. Montmorency. The guest replied, "My name is John W. Norvis. I have terrible handwriting."
Recurring characters played by Bob Elliott included: Wally Ballou, an inept news reporter, man-on-the-street interviewer, "and winner of 16 diction awards", whose opening transmission almost invariably begins with an "up-cut" with him starting early, before his microphone was live, as in "–ly Ballou here". In one of his broadcasts, he was discovered to have started early on purpose and was chewed out by the location engineer (Ray) for making it look as though the mistake was his. Snappy sportscaster Biff Burns ("So until next time, this is Biff Burns saying until next time, this is Biff Burns saying goodnight.") Johnny Braddock, another sportscaster, but with an obnoxious streak. Tex Blaisdell, a drawling cowboy singer who also did rope tricks on the radio (not to be confused with the real-life comic book artist and editor). Arthur Sturdley, an Arthur Godfrey take-off. Harry Backstayge, handsome stage actor and "idol to a million other women" (in the team's parody of radio's Backstage Wife). Pop Beloved, elderly stagehand in the Backstayge stories. Kent Lyle Birdley, a wheezing, stammering old-time radio announcer. Fred Falvy, "do-it-yourself" handyman, whose projects were usually absurdly expensive and/or utterly impractical – and occasionally illegal. One of the McBeeBee twins, either Claude or Clyde, were non-identical twins who spoke in unison, led by Goulding with Elliott a syllable or two behind him, and always interviewed by Elliott. Cyril Gore, a Boris Karloff sound-alike, he often appeared as a butler or doorman; his catchphrase was "Follow me down this cor-ree-dor." Peter Gorey, a character similar to Gore, but with a Peter Lorre-type voice, he would typically appear as a news reporter, reading the same gruesome stories ("Three men were run over by a steamroller today...") each time he appeared. Bob and Ray also occasionally played a record of "Music! Music! Music!", ostensibly sung by Gorey. Mr. Science, a gruff-voiced parody of Mr. Wizard, who dazzled Little Jimmy Schwab with his rather mundane scientific experiments (which usually ended in disaster). Todd, friend of Matt Neffer, Boy Spotwelder. The Matt Neffer episodes would involve Todd trying to have a conversation with Matt about something extremely mundane, but Matt kept moving from room to room mid-sentence ("I'm over here, Todd, in the arboretum") This could be stretched out for several minutes as Goulding tried to trip up Elliott and/or the sound-effects person, who had to improvise footsteps and other noises as Matt gave Todd increasingly strange directions: "No, you've gone past it, Todd -- try turning left at the sewing room, then straight ahead through the aviary."
Any script calling for a child's voice usually went to Elliott.
Ray Goulding's roster of characters included: Mary Backstayge, wife of Harry Backstayge. Webley Webster, mumble-mouthed book reviewer and organ player, whose reviews of historical novels and cookbooks were usually dramatized as seafaring melodramas. Calvin Hoogavin (using the same Webley voice), a character in the Mary Backstayge stories. Steve Bosco, sportscaster (who signed off with "This is Steve Bosco rounding third, and being thrown out at home", parodying Joe Nuxhall's signature sign-off of "the old lefthander rounding third and heading for home"). Jack Headstrong, the All-American American (satirizing the long-running Jack Armstrong radio series of juvenile adventures). The serious-voiced Jack was always entrusted with an impossible government mission, and had no patience with any of his friends and advisors ("Quiet, Four-Star General! There's no time for that now!").