Tralfaz Sunday Theatre — Not See It Now

Bob and Ray made fun of radio. Soap operas, crime shows, commercials, even station IDs. It got them from Boston to NBC in 1951. From radio, they moved on to making fun of television. Along the way, they also hooked up with a copywriter named Ed Graham, Jr. and together formed a production company that also made fun of things.

Here’s a piece of their handiwork from 1960, making its public debut to Blair TV regional managers at a meeting in New York on February 12th.

“See It Hear It Learn It Now” begins as a parody of Ed Murrow’s “Person to Person” TV show where he sat in a chair, smoked, and lobbed innocuous questions to a celebrity on a TV set. It moves along to make fun of the Army-McCarthy Hearings, then makes a reference to something that’s obscure today—the Mr. Magoo cancer PSA film “Inside Magoo” (1960). Slyly, they do their Arthur Godfrey/Tony Marvin routine; cleverly, Marvin is shown with gold cufflinks as he was known at the time as extremely being well-dressed. Mary Magoon made an appearance, too, as do Bob and Ray’s most famous animated characters, beer moguls Harry and Bert Piel.

There’s more, too (including references to the 1959 World Series and the Edsel, and a number of characters heard on the Bob and Ray CBS radio show of the day) but we’ll let you fans watch and enjoy.

While Goulding-Elliott-Graham was known for animated spots (and Graham went on to produce the animated “Linus the Lionhearted”) but the drawings in this film are static.

Oh, yes, that is an inside gag at the end. The guy doing the Murrow impression is Mike Baker, a former newscaster on the Mutual network. He annoyed CBS in 1957 by doing some voiceovers in the Murrow style for the Hoffman Beverage Company via Grey Advertising.