A Visit by Ray (No Bob)

Some fans of Bob and Ray like to engage in an exercise where they pick their favourite version of the twosome’s radio show.

They’re all a little different, and there’s something to like in almost all of them.

The half-hours from Boston have funny elements; it’s shame the versions of the broadcasts you can listen to on-line are not the best quality (it’s almost like they had been dubbed onto a cassette or a reel running at the wrong speed and then posted). Bob’s Mary McGoon is generally funny (and she sang the ‘cow in Switzerland’ song) and I love Bob’s send-up of Arthur Godfrey.

They arrive in New York in July 1951, and “present” the NBC radio network, scrunched down to 15 minutes, and far more structured. I enjoy Paul Tauman’s musical breaks, there are a lot of funny offers, a few running gags (Woodlo) and clever re-workings of things they ad-libbed in Boston. This is where Wally Ballou was developed as a character (he started out sounding like Elmer Fudd).

Mutual? Eh. The show stops for pop music records and it’s jarring hearing an actual announcer instead of a phoney Bob or Ray one.

The 15-minute-shows from CBS sound like Bob and Ray went into a studio and cut a week’s worth of shows. The satire takes aim at deserving targets, including network president Frank Stanton’s “programme honesty” directive in the wake of the game show scandal. There are a lot of very fun one-time sketches, and I love “Mr. Science.”

The two were about to arrive at CBS when this article appeared in the May 28, 1959 edition of the Springfield (Ohio) Daily News. Ray stops for an interview during a trip, and runs down some of the funny free offers from previous versions of the show, and their work making quirky animated spots in New York (like Stan Freberg, they first made fun of advertising, then went into it).

Ray Goulding, Deep-Voiced Member Of ‘Bob And Ray’ Comedy Team, Visits Here
By JIM DUFFY
He sat in the office of the placement director of Wittenberg College Wednesday looking not unlike a professor who had an hour to kill.
His legs were crossed as he leaned on the window sill and looked at the students walking between the buildings of the campus. He had black wavy hair with a touch of gray. His accent could be traced to the east coast as he chatted with Col, William H. Miles, college placement bureau director.
But the man in the expensive-looking plaid sport coat was not a member of the faculty. In fact, his reputation places him far from the staid atmosphere of a midwestern college.
The man was Ray Goulding, the deep-voiced half of the zany radio team of “Bob and Ray."
Ray, as he likes to be called, and his wife are in Springfield until Friday visiting with Col. and Mrs. Miles. Mrs. Goulding and Mrs. Miles are sisters.
Ray’s answer to my first question (What are you doing in town?) gave me some idea of what I was in for.
“I’m trying to get into this college, if they'll let me," was the reply. This answer set the pace for the interview.
In case some people happened to have just arrived from the moon and don't know about the comic pair, “Bob and Ray," they have a unique, weird type of humor based on incongruity and a talent in finding something funny in even the most mundane and ordinary situations. The team has been a regular feature of NBC-Radio's “Monitor” program heard on weekends, but in June will begin a regular nighttime 15-minute show on CBS five nights each week.
The team of Bob Elliot and Ray Goulding had its first fateful fusion on a Boston radio station in 1946.
“Bob and I were both staff announcers on WHDH there,” he recalled. “I was doing early morning news and Bob was doing early morning music.”
“Well, the news was bad and the music worse,so we just began ad libbing The routines got silent approval from the boss, so we kept it up. At least we weren't fired.”
“Our early stuff was mostly parodies and satires on soap opera and other radio material,” Ray explained. “We just tried to be funny.”
In 1951 the pair went on television. Their “Gal Friday" was Audrey Meadows, one of the brightest lights in show business today.
“Audrey was a fine, sharp gal," Goulding said. “She could ad lib like mad.”
“They just draw pictures to our old scripts and put it in the magazine,” was Ray’s explanation.
Speaking of “Mad,” Bob and Ray are regular contributors to that off-beat humor magazine.
Some of the pair’s routines have made headlines. A few years ago they offered one of their numerous, but mythical, kits to the public. This particular “kit" included material to make your new house look old. For the listener to receive the material all they had to do was send a postcard to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
“Well," said Ray, “those two little men with green eyeshades and sleeve garters who run that place were deluged with mail. They never saw anything like it.”
But the Smithsonian episode didn't stop them.
Later they invited the audience to procure their handy “Burglar’s Kit” from the Chief of Police in Jefferson City, Mo. The Smithsonian mail barrage repeated itself there.
Once the looney twosome had to return hundreds of dollars in dimes and nickels to listeners who sent 15 cents for torn bed-sheets “guaranteed to be in shreds.”
“We made the price too low,” Ray said. “If we would have asked $500 and still gotten money, we both would have quit radio and gone into the torn sheet business.”
Goulding has been in radio since he was 17. He now lives with his wife and four children in Manhasset, Long Island, outside of New York City. Elliot also has four youngsters but he and his wife live right in the city.
Most of Bob and Ray's present time is spent in their latest endeavour, the animated commercial business. Among their creations are the Piel's Beer boys, “Bert and Harry,” who won many advertising awards.
Tip Top Bread’s “Emily Tipp, the Tip Top Lady” seen in this area is the imaginative result of the productive minds of Elliot and Goulding.
They’ve also video-taped a new television show that is for sale.
Ray expresses the hope that something has to be done about radio. “All we have now is juke box which won't take coins. All day long just disc jockeys and the top 10, top 40, or top 2000,” he says.
There are two kinds of people in this country. Those who rate Bob and Ray tops in humor, and those who just don't understand and therefore cannot laugh at them.
Fortunately for comedy, the former far outnumber the latter. In fact, when I hear one of their routines and the person with me doesn't burst out laughing, I feel rather sorry for him.
If he only knew what he's missing.