The Heartbreak of Cake Pans

Bob and Ray brought several characters with them from WHDH Boston when they were hired at NBC New York in July 1951, mainly Mary Margaret McGoon and Tex Blaisdell. Then, at the network, they created more people.

One concept they came up with was a staff of announcers. There were ten. The problem was finding a personality for them; a character has to have characteristics. On the first shows, Shep Carruthers was the head announcer. One of the others was a guy who sounded like Elmer Fudd.

Carruthers was dropped, but Bob and Ray found something else for the other to do. They eliminated the “w” for “r” vocalistics and, instead, made him an incompetent roving reporter who talked before his mike was on. He was Wally Ballou.

However, Shep was not forgotten. He was revived in John Crosby’s Herald Tribune syndicate column of April 25, 1954. Crosby was away, so Bob and Ray filled the space with material that was much like you would find on their radio show. In fact, the whistling “s” routine was on an NBC radio show involving another of their phoney announcers, Artie Schermerhorn, who later was a partner or rival to Ballou on the CBS radio shows of around 1960. The fake bandleaders are based on, I think, a WHDH routine.

Nighttime Soap Opera
While John Crosby is on vacation, his column will be continued by a number of guest writers.
By BOB (ELLIOTT) and RAY (GOULDING)
SHEP CARRUTHERS, a former member of our announcing staff, dropped into our office the other day. His new teeth look just fine, and the sibilant trouble he once had is practically gone. (So much so, that he's back on the staff of WSSS, Sioux City.)
In addition to his on-the-air chores, Shep tells us he's also to be assistant program director, and that he's got a lot of new plans for shows. Radio listening habits have changed due to TV, says Shep, and it's now imperative for stations to revise their schedules.
* * *
Among his ideas for Sioux City, he may have stumbled upon a few that will bear watching. For instance, instead of the usual early morning "rise and shine" program (news, weather, farm news, etc.), Shep will sign the station on at 6 a. m. with an educational series, conducted by Dr. Harvey Hurtle, the author, lecturer, and former soap box derby winner. From 9 a. in. to noon, Shep plans three hours of dance band remote broadcasts from local ballrooms. Not that folks would be there dancing that early, but he feels it would be different anyway. Already slated for appearances are such well-known musical figures as Guyl Ombardo. Tom E. Dawsey, Vonman Rowe, and the one and only Fred E. Martin Orchestra, with vocals by Sink Rossbee.
Later in the day, the schedule will spotlight Happy Jack Forbush and his disk jockey program from the Peeping Tom Country Club, where the good folks from the surrounding fox-hunting country get together in their pink coats and battered top hats, after an afternoon of jumping.
* * *

FINALLY, in a daring departure, the new Carruthers lineup features soap operas for evening listening. Shep feels the men-folk miss too much of the daily pathos and drama so popular with their wives, so from now on, they'll be able to enjoy this truly American institution right along with them. He left with us a sample script from his new series, "Mother McGee, the Best Cook in the Neighborhood," and it sure looks good.
Roughly, the story line revolves around the baking of a layer cake for the country fair, under almost insurmountable difficulties. First, she misplaces her baking powder; then her almond extract turns up on the third shelf of the pantry, when it should have been on the second shelf. Discovering that it is impossible to bake a layer cake with one layer, Mother McGee is thwarted because she has only one 9-inch cake pan.
* * *
But let us quote directly from the script. Mother McGee has just welcomed Burford Leffingwell, the village half-wit, into her sunlit kitchen. She tells him to go over and lie down behind the stove, but instead he crawls under the rub and plays he is dust, as a knock sounds on the door:
SOUND: KNOCK ON DOOR.
MOTHER: Come in . . .
SOUND: DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES.
O'FAIL: How do you do, madam? I am Sean O'Fail, a traveling tinker. I also sell 9-inch cake pans. Could I sell you a 9-inch cake pan?
MOTHER: What did you say?
O'FAIL: I said . . .
MOTHER: Bless you, m'lad! How much is the cake pan?
O'FAIL: Tuppence ha'penny.
MOTHER: Here you are, and bless you, lad.
SOUND: COINS FALLING INTO TIN DISH.
O'FAIL: Good day to you kindly.
MOTHER: Good luck attend you, Sean O'Fail, the traveling tinker.
SOUND: DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES.
MOTHER: (musing) Now that I have another 9-inch pan, I can get on with my baking. (HUMS) I will bake a sugar cake . . . Oh! . . . Oh!!!! Where is my OLD 9-inch cake pan?
MUSIC: STING (AND UNDER).
ANNOUNCER: Well . . . it is incredible, but true. Now, kindly Mother McGee has lost her OLD cake pan. She has the new one, but where is the old one? Is there a curse on the tidy little McGee home? Is Sean O'Fail, the traveling tinker, really a tinker, or didn't he speak clearly? What is that letter from J. Edgar Hoover on the mantelpiece? Is there a hint of coming events in the rumor that Anthony Eden is going to switch to snap-brim hats? Listen tomorrow, when we'll hear Mother McGee say. . .
MOTHER: Where is my oregano?
MUSIC: THEME UP TO END.

Presenting the CBS Radio Network

Ed Murrow was of such towering stature in the news business, you’d think he couldn’t be replaced. But replaced he was when CBS boss Bill Paley decided he was too controversial. It’s all about attracting big corporate sponsors, you know.

When Murrow took time away from his CBS radio commentary slot in 1959, who do you think the network got as a replacement? Charles Collingwood? Walter Cronkite? Eric Severeid?

No. They got Bob.

We don’t mean veteran newsman Bob Trout. We mean Bob Elliott. And Ray Goulding.

Network radio was heading in the direction of news by the late 1950s, but CBS decided on one last shot at comedy in the evening hours Monday through Friday. Thus Bob and Ray were hired to take over Murrow’s 7:45 p.m. Eastern Time spot on June 29, 1959 to give listeners 15 minutes of their sly humour. (They were preceded by Amos ‘n’ Andy at 7:05, a newscast with Stuart Novins at 7:30, Andy Griffith at 7:35 and Burns and Allen at 7:40).

Radio critics loved Bob and Ray. In 1959, columnists were happy to announce the prospect of an hour and a quarter of Bob and Ray’s “irreverent whimsy” every week. At that point, the two had been showing up occasionally on NBC’s Monitor, and their recorded bits were heard on a five-minute show at 6:55 p.m. on Toronto radio station CJBC 860. The CBS gig was such a big deal, newspaper ads appeared on The Big Day. Cynthia Lowry promoted it in her daily column for the Associated Press.

In fact, the debut got reviewed the next day. Here’s what the Des Moines Register had to say. The history is a bit off; the two first left Boston for NBC in New York in July 1951. They were at Mutual later in the decade.

On Television
By Ogden Dwight
Bob and Ray—Elliott and Goulding, the maddest team in broadcasting were last on network television in a set of filmed commercials for an auto hour. It would have been astonishing if they helped sell a single car.
Because television is not their medium. Radio is, and their return to it with a nightly quarter-hour of wild wit is a kind of diminished-seventh heaven for their fanatical disciples.
New Network
The two maniacs from Massachusetts are on CBS Radio now—a network new to them after having captured wide renown (and an elite Peabody award) for a similar weekday series on Mutual in 1951, five years after first concocting their deadly satires over WHDH, Boston.
Then they did a few programs for NBC Radio and TV, and in '54 and '55 tried to cut on ABC-TV with "The Name's the Same." No go. Video's appetite for sight gags is too voracious.
Bob and Ray then landed on NBC's weekend "Monitor" in irregular three-minute spots (meantime earning a good living doing commercials), spots which kept their cult alive and hoping.
Now their weird little world and its lunatic population have moved over to 485 Madison ave., formerly precincts sacred to Ed Murrow, Arthur Godfrey and Jackie Gleason.
On wavelengths those mellifluous voices once ruled, may now expect to meet—if you follow the Bob and Ray party line as a fellow traveler—such Bob and Ray-voiced caricatures as:
The "incomparable" Wally Ballou, dough-voiced ace radio reporter; Uncle Eugene, soft as a grape; Mary McGoon, who once ran for the U. S. senate; Tex, the cowboy warbler; Steve Bosco, talent scout [for] has-been athletes; Webley Webster, ace forum foul-up, or Arthur Sturdley, a jerk.
Also you are likely to hear their hilarious lampoons of radio and TV: “One Feller's Family,” “The Life and Loves Linda Lovely,” or “The Gathering Dusk,” in which the heroine does nothing but rest.
A New Kit
Monday night in their CBS premiere they made one of their famous premium offers—the "Help Bob and Ray to Fame & Fortune & Worry-Free Old Age Kit," which included among other useless articles a sign to hang over your TV screen reading, "I'm Away Listening to Bob and Ray," plus a "handsome, rich-looking, simulated plastic lapel pin" for promptness.
They conduct crusades for hopeless causes and send out expeditions to nowhere. They recite straightforward, hard-sell commercials for products like ersatz garbage. They interview men in the street who have nothing to say. If you're a square about satire, don't bother to listen. You won't understand it.

One particularly audacious show at CBS was when Bob and Ray took aim at an announcement on October 16, 1959 by company president Frank Stanton in response to the quiz show scandals on TV that network programmes must have disclaimers that “everything is exactly as it purports to be.” Ed Murrow became livid when Stanton mentioned in a New York Times interview that Person to Person, a show Murrow had hosted before his sabbatical, was one that needed a disclaimer. Murrow lashed out at Stanton personally in a written statement later that month.

Bob and Ray responded on their transcribed show of October 22 not with Murrow-esque anger but with ridicule. They stopped the show and spent the quarter hour constantly telling listeners everything on it was fake—the music, the characters, the sound effects. Goulding’s Mary McGoon lent some sane commentary to the situation by remarking “Don’t you think that’s a violation of a theatrical promise, really?” “Well, yes, it is,” Ray replied.

Another target for their stinging was Jack Paar and what Bob and Ray perceived was his self-serving, phoney humility and persecution complex, abetted by announcer Hugh Downs. They did it twice that I recall and the dialogue struck Daily News columnist Kay Gardella as worthy of preservation, at least some of it, in her column of August 14, 1959. The routine was on CBS three days earlier.

Paar Taken Apart:
For a refreshing change from TV reruns, we recommend tuning an occasional ear to Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding, CBS-Radio's rapier-tongued satirists, who hold forth nightly at 7:45. This witty pair have an ear for the ridiculous, turning what they hear into hilarious comedy routines. The other P.M., for instance, they had some typical Bob and Ray fun with Jack Paar's nightly TVer; their version was the Hack Park Show, excerpts of which follow:
BOB: Well, Hack—people have asked me what Hack Park is really like, and . . . ah . . . you see, Hack, you're so many people . . .
RAY: I have to be. There's so much to do around here. And I have to be so many people to look after the details. And thus far, what I've done here has been incredible. (Sincerely) I mean that, Eustace.
BOB: I know you do, Hack. And . . . ah . . . that's part of it. But the thing that . . .
RAY: Excuse me, Eustace. Folks—about Eustace . . . most of you out there don't know this, but Eustace is seldom wrong.
BOB: (Embarassed) Hack . . .
RAY: No, I mean that, Eustace. Most people do not know how right you are. And I'll tell you something else about Eustace—who's part of our family here. He's been to my home and he's seen a lot.
BOB: Ah . . . Hack is right about that. And I might tell you that I was moved by what I saw. . . . and so was Hack.
RAY: Tell them why I was moved, Eustace.
BOB: Well, I don't know if you folks know this, but there's stream that runs adjacent to Hack's house. Anyhow, about six months ago there was this crab. Well it crawled into Hack's home.
RAY: Oh, that was a wild night! Wild!
BOB: And wouldn't you know. . . . that crab crawled into one of Hack's best suits! And the marvelous thing about it is Hack continued to wear the suit, crab and all! Now, very few people know that.
ETC.

Bob and Ray, and whoever helped write their sketches, even had Hack call people “Dear heart” just as Paar used to do.

Remarkably, Bob and Ray survived just under a year CBS. The radio show was cancelled on June 24, 1960, leaving the Amos ‘n’ Andy Music Hall as the only entertainment show on the CBS weeknight schedule, and it was gone five months later.

On January 28, 1961, President John Kennedy announced the name of the new head of the U.S. Information Agency. Edward R. Murrow was gone from CBS, too.

Think With Bob and Ray

1960 was a good year and a bad year for Bob and Ray.

It was bad because CBS dumped their 15-minute Monday through Friday radio show on June 24th, replacing it with reporter Ron Cochran conducting interviews with people in the news. And critics panned their April 7th TV special where the two hopped around New York City nightclubs, with interruptions by Mike Wallace.

It was good because they released an LP of comedy sketches to favourable reviews. And, even if network radio didn’t like their humour, critics did.

Here’s the New York Daily News TV and radio column of April 27th. “Dr. Stanton” refers to the president of the network. The gag is Frank Stanton was not a medical doctor so he wouldn’t make house calls anyway.

Radio Has Its Virtues If Only Bob & Ray
By KAY GARDELLA
People reckless enough to interview Bob and Ray—Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding soon feel like a pigeon caught in a phenn game. If this sounds confusing, we've already proved out point.
The two comedians, stars of CBS Radio's nightly "Bob and Ray Show," act and look like sober, successful businessmen, until you start asking questions. "You'll have to excuse me," said Ray, a tall, elegant gent with a resonant voice. "I may not be at my best today—a crisis at home, you know. Our pet peeve was eaten by a giant slalom last night, and the kids. . . . well, they’re all broken up."
There was a glint of a tear in Ray's eyes, while Bob, medium-sized, sandy-haired and tweedy, clucked sympathetically. "This just doesn't seem to be our day,” No said. “Did you hear about the crisis here at CBS just half an hour ago? They have an emergency case in Studio 25 when Young Dr. Malone (a daytime serial) dropped his pince-nez during a delicate operation. They tried to reach Dr. Stanton, but he was out on a house call.
Adult Humor
This type of whimsical, irreverent humor, delivered in a dry, matter-of-fact tone, has gained innumerable fans for Bob and Ray among that rapidly growing number of people who prefer an adult type of comedy—comedy with a point of view, comedy with purpose, yet without a hard-sell "message."
Their radio program has a cast of dozens of weird and wonderful people—all portrayed by Messrs. Elliott and Goulding. Thus, it was no wonder a few weeks ago when exactly half of the cast suddenly had colds—Bob’s cold, to be exact. Among the most popular characters is Wally Ballou, a peerless special events reporter whose pompous nasal intonation is being imitated by kids all over the nation and whose remote broadcasts usually end in near disaster. Or take Kent Lyle Birdley, a has-been radio announcer of the Thirties now on his third come-back attempt; Mary McGoon, an elderly admirer of the two; or Webley Webster, a gruff, yet amiable gent with marbles in his mouth.
Inspire Boys' Leagues
These fanciful folk help to present some of the most off-beat features ever heard on the air. Take the "Bob and Ray Gourmet Club,” for example, a regular offering which takes listeners to a glittering affair where the “Mystery Celebrity Sandwich of the Month” is being unveiled. After a tension-filled period of anxious waiting, described by two ever-awed special events reporters, the sandwich is unwrapped amid fanfares and usually turns out to be a prosaic ham-on-rye.
To come back to the aforementioned phenn game, the boys recently invented this “ancient sport” which they claim originated in far-off Beluchistan. To their listeners they solemnly explained that “the old controversial outfield-in-phenn rule has been suspended by the 12-second double-rush period.” But, in true Bob and Ray fashion, they never got around to describing the game itself. The result was that college and high school boys who are among Bob and Ray's most loyal fans are now starting to organize phenn leagues, making up their own rules as they go along.
This brand of humor is possible only in radio, Bob and Ray explained. “On our show we can slip in and out of character in a moment, without a costume change,” Ray said, “and the glittering grandeur of our Gourmet Club would cost a fortune if we had to build a set." Added Bob: "But that doesn't mean we are neglecting television. We had our own TV series and have made many guest appearances on various programs. Before long, we will have a new animated cartoon series titled 'Bob and Ray’s Hollywood Classics,’ and are now working on a pilot film for it.”
Meanwhile, they’re also on radio and TV in various parts of the country by means of commercials, which they themselves produce—all beating the unmistakeable brand of Bob and Ray humor. Also, they have just put some of their funniest routines on a record album. "Bob and Ray on a Platter," which they hope will become a hit.

The animated cartoon series with Ed Graham, who co-owned their agency that provided commercials, didn’t come off. Here’s what the Associated Press had to say about their record. The column showed up in newspapers starting in mid-March.

Bob & Ray: Funny Business, Their Game
By HUGH A. MULLIGAN
AP Newsfeatures Writer
Who is Wally Ballou and what is he really like?
For the answer to this question turn to RCA Victor's "Bob and Ray on a Platter," another hilarious album of dead pan satire on broadcasting foibles by two of the funniest men alive.
You'll find Wally Ballou, mythical man with a mike, interviewing a cranberry grower who didn't know cranberries can served as cranberry sauce with turkey or crushed into cranberry juice. In the background, sirens wail, shots ring out, people go screaming and rushing about, but Wally Ballou doggedly sticks to the business at hand, probing the cranberry bogs for pithy quotes.
You’ll also meet Bubby Burkhouse, describing the between halves color of a Saturday afternoon televised football game. "Gee, it's a thrill to be here," he begins, while down the field boys riding elephants and antique automobiles signal the start of the half-game festivities. Soon a dirigible, made by the science department, appears overhead and 1,100 ROTC students bail out in parachutes made by the sewing department in the old school colors.
Bob and Ray also bring you a radio sports and weather show, sponsored by Rudy and Irma's Dance Studio, that gets so bogged down in commercials time runs out before they can give the other half of the Ohio State score.
Expertly satirizing Ed Murrow's "Person to Person," Ted Malone's poetry reading sessions, TV Westerns and TV program awards, Bob and Ray are in the groove all the way, delivering 40 minutes of deftly executed mimicry and satire that beats anything else around today.

It appears Bob and Ray sent out gag mailers to newspapers to get publicity (Jay Ward Productions did the same thing around this time). We’ve transcribed a few of them before. Here’s one picked up by The Atlanta Journal on January 30, 1960. It looks like the two were anticipating the 1-900 phone numbers of the ‘90s.

Bob, Ray Plan Thought of the Month Club
Bob and Ray will shortly establish the Bob and Ray Thought of the Month Club (BARTOTMC).
This new service of the Bob and Ray Enterprises Co., Inc., will supply thoughts for all occasions on a subscription basis to people whose busy schedules prevent them from cerebral exercising.
Under the slogan, "Leave the Thinking to Us," BARTOTMC will ship five thoughts a month, plus a free bonus thought every three months, to its subscribers with the guarantee that unused thoughts may be returned after 10 days.
TWO GROUPS of thoughts, couched in attractive language and produced by a trained staff, will be available.
One, in a lower price range, will consist of easy-going conversational-type thoughts (Group A Plan); the other, at a slightly higher fee, will comprise high-level, provocative thoughts (Group B).
If desired, the two plans may be intermixed.
Following are some thoughts which will become available beginning next February:
Group A:
"I think it’s not the heat, but the humidity.”
“I think it’s impossible."
“I think I need a haircut.”
“I think it’s a shame.”
“I think I go home.”
GROUP B:
“I think that true reality, expressing itself through all things, is a blind impelling force which manifests itself in individuals as a will to live.”
“I think that instrumentalism holds that various modes and forms of human endeavor are instruments developed by man to solve his problems.”
“I think that objective reality is known only insofar as it conforms to the essential structure of the human mind.”
“I think that, in the mechanics of relativity, the mass of a particle is determined by assuming that the actions of a system of particles do not change the total momentum with respect to a given system.”
SUBSCRIBERS to the Combined Group A and B Plans have a choice of either any three (3) of Group A and any two (2) of Group B; or any four (4) of Group A and any one (1) of Group B, plus an extra bonus thought every two (2) months.
Members of the Group A plan have the privilege of purchasing individual Group B thoughts at nominal fees.
Eventually, Bob and Ray plan to establish the Bob and Ray Thought of the Month Club Emergency Telephone Service (BARTOTMCETS) which will supply instantaneous, personalized thoughts at all hours.

1960 became 1961, and Bob and Ray carried on, though not on CBS. They continued to make appearances on Monitor on NBC radio, and hosted a Thanksgiving TV special on ABC. And one station continued to repeat Bob and Ray routines twice every weekday—CJBC, the CBC station in Toronto.

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.

The Road to Linus' Jungle

Fortune didn’t smile on too many cartoon studios in the early 1960s that tried to break into television.

Hanna-Barbera had been the huge success story with The Huckleberry Hound Show winning an Emmy and The Flintstones winning hearts in prime time. Some commercial houses hoped they could duplicate H-B’s triumph. Format Films got The Alvin Show on the air in 1961. Creston Studios (spun off from TV Spots) put Calvin and the Colonel on the schedule the same year. Both shows struggled and neither went into a second season of new half-hours. Format sub-contracted some mediocre theatrical shorts while Creston seems to have faded away.

Another commercial studio overcame failure after failure to land a show on Saturday morning. But it couldn’t parlay that into bigger things and the series was eventually removed after being accused of being one, big cereal commercial.

In 1954, Ed Graham was a copywriter at Young & Rubicam in New York. He managed to convince his company’s sceptical higher-ups to try a funny ad campaign for Piel’s beer, featuring cartoon characters with the voices of radio satirists Bob and Ray. They were a smash hit. Graham then went into business with the pair to create ad campaigns for other advertisers.

The three soon tried to branch out into cartoon programming based on Bob and Ray’s radio characters. One was The Kertencalls, based on Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife (a spoof of the soap Mary Noble, Backstage Wife). Another featured an animated Lawrence Fechtenberger and his aliens from the planet Polaris (Bob and Ray’s takeoff on Tom Corbett, Space Cadet).

Graham’s six-year relationship with the comedians fell apart. He went solo. Graham was doing business with General Foods, producing animated commercials for Post featuring characters on the company’s cereal boxes. From this came a half-hour Saturday morning show that debuted in fall 1964. But this turned out to be Ed Graham Productions’ only TV show. By August 1967, Television Age magazine reported he was going to the McCann-Erickson agency as the creative director of its Los Angeles office.

Television Age profiled Graham’s journey in its March 2, 1964 edition, including the drawing below. You’ll notice the absence of Sugar Bear and the presence of the Jack E. Leonard version of the postman seen in commercials. Lovable Truly was re-designed for the series and voiced by Bob McFadden.

Graham talks about original music. While Hoyt Curtin got a screen credit on some of the shows, Johnny Mann is listed in the ASCAP database as the composer of incidental music. Stock music libraries were also used; the So-Hi theme was in a library used (probably not coincidentally) on the Bob and Ray radio show on CBS.

AN ANIMATED CHARACTER
Now you’d think that anyone who had a solid commitment from CBS-TV and a good budget from General Foods to make an animated series of half-hours for daytime airing starting this fall, already would be counting his money on the way to the bank.
Ed Graham, a mild-mannered writing son of a J. Walter Thompson executive, finds himself and his production company in that fortunate position. But instead of listening for the sound of manna from Heaven, he lets out a worried look occasionally cross his brow and he talks of going to Hollywood, to supervise production, as though he can’t quite believe it all.
But considering his 10 years of creations in animation for production of commercials, his concern would seem to be as meaningful as that of a manager of the New York Yankees. He spent much of the past decade in a partnership with Bob (Elliott) and Ray (Goulding) and put funny words into the mouths of characters like Bert & Harry Piels (beer).
Even on his own, he has pleased a company like General Foods with his talented and profitable creations of Linus, King of the Beasts, for Crispy Critters; So-Hi, the Chinese boy, for Rice Krinkles, and Rory Racoon, for Post Toasties. These cartoon creatures are the core of that fall series.
Yet Ed Graham persists in his vague feeling of uneasiness. “With my past history” to consider he says, “I’m concerned.” What is this deep dark secret that haunts this man?

Linus, King of the Beasts will be the first Ed Graham show to go on tv—if it does. It isn’t because he hasn’t tried to develop a pilot. He has—time and time again. That is Ed Graham’s awful but truthful secret.
Way back in 1955, Ed went to Sylvester L. (Pat) Weaver, then head of NBC-TV, and sold him on five-minute Curtain raisers that would lead into the 8 o’clock prime time period. NBC-TV gave Ed $20,000 and he finished the initial production around Thanksgiving. But suddenly Pat Weaver wasn’t at NBC-TV any more and the new NBC-TV president Bob Kintner “didn’t want anything to do” with the pilot. The network still had an option on the series and, by the time it lapsed, no one was interested.
Fortunately the commercials business was booming, “so we paid everybody a three months bonus and decided to make five-minute creations on our own” about a space cadet. They made two pilots and never showed them; “we didn’t like them.”
Then they wrote some more five minutes about the Madmen from Polaris, whose voice hysterically resembled that of a noted personality. But about the time they were to have been ready, the personality became seriously ill and therefore could no longer be considered a humorous subject.
Goulding, Elliott & Graham thereupon made an important decision—to hell with five-minute short subjects. “Somebody told us they wouldn’t work and we had plenty of experience to back them up,” Mr. Graham said. They tried a 15-minute production about Test Dive Buddies “but we cut so many corners that everybody in the cartoons wound up talking behind menus.” From there, they went on to Group Productions which agreed to do a pencil test of Racketeering Rascals for them. To finish the test, Group had to have some more money “but at the time, we didn’t have any.”
In came Pat Weaver again, with an idea for an hour special to include animation in a complete Bob and Ray Show. He couldn’t sell it, “because everybody who loved Bob and Ray said they didn’t have any popular appeal.” After that, “I got California National (the NBC west coast production arm at the time) to put up $40,000 for a half-hour pilot.” Perhaps this would have worked if The Flintstones hadn’t led a parade of cartoons into prime time; The Flintstones made it but nothing else did and, meanwhile, California National went out of existence.
Ed Graham is most sorry this pilot, Bob & Ray’s Hollywood Classics, didn’t make it. “It was unlike the others, because it didn’t resemble a situation comedy. If it had, things might have been different, at least for us,” says Ed Graham.
About that time, the relationship between Bob & Ray and Ed Graham turned sour as they accused one another of allowing $300,000 to go down the drain and hanging on to one another’s apron strings. Today Ed Graham says: “They really are terribly talented and now that the fire has died down and we’ve each done well in our own separate ways I really would like to work with them again sometime.”
On his own, Ed Graham associated himself with Dan Curtis, who had been California National sales manager and later an MCA man. Mr. Curtis took another pilot idea to General Foods and, when the company turned it down, he said, well, what do you want? They told him and, together with creator Gene Shinto, Ed Graham Productions at last was able to come into its own in show business.
“We’re pulling a Hanna-Barbera in reverse. Their characters started in show biz and eventually went into the commercial. Ours are coming from the advertising message into programming,” Ed Graham said.
Now everything would be just fine, if Ed Graham did not have a few admitted “bad” habits. He likes to work with the best—why take somebody less than a Mel Blanc, Carl Reiner, Sheldon Leonard or Jack E. Leonard for your characters’ voices, if you can get the best. Why mimic Chinese music, if you can get some original material? Ed Graham prefers the original, even for children’s cartoons. This can all add up to a lot of money, even more than General Foods if willing to spend. And that’s what really worries Ed Graham.
Can Ed Graham really overcome the “jinx” and his own very fine taste? Tune in at 11 a.m. Saturdays on CBS-TV in the fall and see.
ANIMATED FOOTNOTE
Animation has not been forgotten by the nation’s programmers. In addition to Ed Graham’s Linus, King of the Beasts, for General Foods and CBS-TV next season, Johnny Quest [sic] action adventure is committed to prime time on ABC-TV and Mr. Magoo from UPA has a similar arrangement on NBC-TV. Screen Gems, which has Hanna-Barbera turning out its work, practically can survive on animation alone. Besides Johnny Quest, and the Magilla Gorilla Show, which was placed on 150 stations this year by the Ideal Toy Company, Screen Gems has made a similar arrangement with the advertiser for a series of half-hours called The Peter Potamus Show.

There’s more on Linus in this 2018 post.

New! Mild! Bob and Ray!

Bob and Ray had seemingly countless time-slots and shows that it’s hard to keep up with them.

I really liked their 15-minute shows on NBC starting in 1951 and CBS in 1959. NBC had musical interludes like their half-hour show in Boston, CBS stuck pretty much with characters interacting and sketches.

In between they did a longer show on Mutual that is a little too cumbersome for my liking. They played pop songs that came out of nowhere and had an announcer doing intros and real commercials.

Apparently, one of NBC radio’s formats was a late-night, hour-long jock show. It was eagerly anticipated in Minneapolis by Star Tribune TV-radio writer Will Jones. First up, a note from his column of May 13, 1953:

AFTER LAST NIGHT
By Will Jones
Sometimes TV Is Worth While
Some choice items that have made TV watching worth while in the past few days:. . .
Bob and Bay's takeoff on a hobbyists' convention (5:30 p.m. Monday, Ch. 5). It was a gathering of people who collect things that disprove old clichés—a moss-covered rolling stone and microscopic particle over which Bob exclaimed: "Isn't that the ugliest bug's ear you ever saw?
An avid Bob and Ray fan called the other day to assure me that KSTP radio's failure to carry the new late-night Bob and Ray disk show is no loss. He said that by fiddling a little bit with his radio dial he has been able to hear the show three times in one night at 10 p.m., 11 p.m. and midnight, from stations in three different time zones.
I started out at 10 p.m. trying to duplicate his luck. I couldn't find Bob and Ray, but I did pick up Henry Morgan from WMGM in New York at 1050 on the dial. Reception got muddy around 11 p.m., and in fiddling with the set I suddenly found I had Bob and Ray, a fraction of an inch away on the dial. The reception, again, was a little muddy. But it all beat the stuff that comes in sharp-and clear from the local stations.

KSTP changed its mind. Here’s the column from May 25, 1953. There were even box ads in the paper for the show for the first few days.

AFTER LAST NIGHT
By Will Jones
We'll Write If We Get Work
It might be fun to sit down by a radio all day just to hear the advance announcements KSTP has planned for "Bob and Ray."
The local bow of their new night-time program is being heralded with announcements like this:
"KSTP more or less proudly announces the new Bob and Ray show will be heard over most of this same station every night. Monday through Friday—at 11:05 p.m. It's the program that was one of four which did not win the Ohio State university award in 1953."
For people who can't spend all of today by a radio waiting for the station breaks, however, here's a brief anthology of the announcements. They were created by Joe Cook of the KSTP promotion department, with some liberal help from Bob and Ray:
*There's real drama tonight at 11:05 when Bob and Ray present another thrilling episode of "Arthur Sturdley—Boy Jerk." Bob and Ray present NBC tonight at 11:05.
*Webley Webster wants you ... to dial Bob and Ray tonight at 11:05. There are many exciting new things to hear such as an interview with the inventer [sic] of the link sausage. Remember, the new milder Bob and Ray at 11:05.
*Kindly old Bob and Ray return to KSTP tonight with such interesting and instructive things as "Appendectomy, Self-Taught" . . . "How to Become a Successful Smuggler."
*Enter the new Bob and Ray contest . . . "I would like to own a state because . . ." First prize a real state with a real governor, police, land and waterways.
*There are bargains galore . . . on the Bob and Ray show tonight! Big sale on box hedges made from real boxes! Breeze-ways with real breezes! Un-tinted sun glasses for cloudy days! Hit phonograph records only slightly cracked. These records were dropped ONLY A FEW INCHES off the delivery truck! A heap of wonderful things at 11:05 on the Bob and Ray show. Miss it!

The midnight (Eastern time) jock show doesn’t appear to have lasted long. It vanished from the NBC schedule after September 18, 1953. replaced with Skitch Henderson. The two were already doing Pick and Play With Bob and Ray from 9:30 to 10 on radio in addition to a 15-minute early evening TV show. They stuck with the latter two. For a while. Bob and Ray were all over the radio dial, it’s like there was a change every year. Fans ignored the ad advice. They didn't "miss it."

Bob and Ray Offers

Were irreverent publicity handouts a big thing at one time?

Jay Ward used to have his writing staff send out phoney programming advisors and fake offers in the hope of getting some of it published or aired.

Bob and Ray did it, too. And got some nibbles.

Here are three short pieces published in the Boston Globe. The pair started their careers at independent station WHDH in the ‘40s, moved to NBC in New York in July 1951, then hopscotched around. By 1959, they had a 15-minute early evening show on CBS. Some say it was their best work on the air—it was strictly comedy, other than any advertising the network may have sold. I like the NBC show better; it had the two short musical interludes and some of the material was adapted from funny routines aired in Boston. Some of the characters they developed for CBS grate a bit for me, but I’ll concede some of the comedy may be sharper; there’s something to be said about giving a “Good Neighbor Award” to an old woman who calls the police on little kids trick-or-treating.

First up is a short “interview” from July 19, 1959 (no doubt cut down from a longer release), then programming notes published August 9th and Ocober 11th. Whether they came from the network or Bob and Ray’s agency with Ed Graham, Jr., I don’t know.

Vacation Tips From Bob and Ray
Ray—What it the cheapest way to travel?
Travel Expert—Well, deportation proceedings beat them all. But I guess the next cheapest way is to sneak aboard a ship and, whe you're caught, tell the purser you never carry more than $50 on your person at any time.
Ray—Is it possible for a person to walk across the United States on foot?
Travel Expert—Not with Hawaii in the picture.
Ray—And what is the most interesting sight to be seen in the British Isles?
Travel Expert—The Guarding of the Change, which takes place at the Bank of England!

Help-Bob-and-Ray Kit Hot Item at CBS Radio
At approximately 7:53 p.m., Monday, June 29, over the full CBS Radio Network, Bob and Ray made what they believed to be the most unusual and exciting once-in-a-lifetime offer ever made by the renowned Bob and Ray Laboratories—"The Help Bob and Ray to Fame and Fortune and a Worry-Free Old Age Kit."
This tempting offer included a common pin to lock the radio dial to CBS Radio; a piece of skin-colored adhesive tape to raise the corners of the mouth, giving the lucky recipient the appearance of having a permanent wry grin; a sign to attach to the front of automobiles, reading, "I'm on My way to Listen to the Bob and Ray Show;" another sign for the rear bumper, reading, "I've Just Been Listening to the Bob and Ray Show;" and a neatly printed poster to hang over the television screen while the Bob and Ray Show is on the air, with the legend, "I'm Listening to CBS Radio— and the Bob and Ray Show."
Sympathetic Bob and Ray fans responded magnificently. A staff sergeant at Fort Benning, Ga., sent a hard-earned Green Stamp as his "contribution to the Bob and Ray anti-senility fund." A New York resident thoughtfully enclosed a blank check which was unsigned because, he said, he wanted to remain anonymous. cut a woman listener in Seekonk, Mass., wrote to state, simply, "In a sad and terrible world, thank CBS, there is YOU."
Bob and Ray constantly present new and exciting program ideas, such as the memorable "Do You Rate a Date?" On its premiere a few days ago, and elderly spinster her life ambition—a date with everyone's heart with her eloquence and, as a result, Bob and Ray fulfilled her wish, authorizing her to ask the French premier for a date.
Other special and exclusive Bob and Ray features include "How to Breed Contempt for Fun and Profit" and their newest, the Bob and Ray Kash Klub, which, according to its prospectus, will eliminate the need for carrying cumbersome credit cards.

Gourmet Club Reopens; Guest Sandwich Big Hit
To the accompaniment of lutes, dulcimers and maracas, Bob and Ray recently reopened their fabulous Bob and Ray Gourmet Club—a glittering social event which was broadcast during their CBS Radio program.
This is the second straight month that this club has been reopened, making the affair a time-honored tradition in the annals of broadcasting.
Climax of last night's broadcast came when the coveted Guest Sandwich was presented to the lucky recipient on the huge, Klieg-lighted stage which was gaily decorated with the now famous Bob and Ray colors— blue and gold— and topped by the Bob and Ray Crest.
As the scaled Guest Sandwich was carried onto the stage by four Bob and Ray guards in full dress uniform, tension mounted and necks craned almost to the breaking point. And, as a hush and some ceiling plaster fell over the audience, the seal was broken by the bonded master of ceremonies.
There was deafening applause when it was announced that the featured Guest Sandwich for the month of September was Cream Cheese and Blackberry Jam on Rye with Seeds. And as the jewel bedecked audience slowly filed out, everyone agreed that this had been the most imaginative Guest Sandwich ever and wondered what the selection would be at next month's reopening of the Bob and Ray Gourmet Club.
Also during the broadcast, Bob and Ray announced the launching of still another promotion campaign the Bob and Ray Trophy Train, scheduled to start from San Diego, California, today. This will be a special train bearing Bob and Ray memorabilia, such as their high school diplomas (reproductions of which will be available at nominal fees). The Trophy Train will take the place of Smelly Dave, Bob and Ray's huge dead whale, which is being shelved because of the onset of cool weather.

CBS dumped its evening comedy block on June 24, 1960. Bob and Ray could be heard on NBC again, doing bits for Monitor. And a five-minute version of their show, presumably the CBS version, was still being heard in 1961 on CJBC, a CBC station in Toronto.

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.

We Switch You Now to Bob and Ray

Time for another Bob and Ray post. No introduction is needed other than this appeared in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, November 10, 1952.

AFTER LAST NIGHT
By Will Jones
Bob and Ray Wow Stag Party
If I had to arrange some entertainment for a stag party, NBC's Bob and Ray would be about the last act I'd think of getting. So there was a stag party last week, and somebody got Bob and Ray for the featured entertainment, and what happened? They were great.
They didn't bring along a single special stag party joke, either. They used the same gags they use for housewives at 10:30 a.m. daily on KSTP-NBC.
The two flew to Minneapolis from New York to appear at a dinner party of the Association of Manufacturing Representatives. They made the trip as a favor to their sponsor, Colgate-Palmolive-Peet.
Before they ever got to the party, the gags started. When they landed at Wold-Chamberlain, they had one of their famous kits for Gov. C. Elmer Anderson.
THIS ONE WAS a Governor's Kit. In it were peanuts ("goobers for the gubernatorial race"), some of those paper noisemakers that kids blow in each others' faces at parties ("party favors"), a small fence ("for sitting on or straddling") and a deck of cards, some poker chips and dice ("for the party").

They also brought along an impressive leather-bound book stamped "Important State Business." Inside was a comic book.
At the party, in the Radisson ballroom, they did things like "Dr. O.K., the Sentimental Banker," their takeoff on Dr. I.Q.
Sample question: "I reside in the Empire State building. I invented the peanut butter sandwich. I tried nine times to go over Niagara falls in a barrel. I am the father of infantry drill regulations. I was the 42nd president of the United States, Who am I?"
They speculated on what doctors' radio commercials would sound like if doctors were allowed to advertise: "With every examination one free probe!"
THEY REPEATED a hilarious post-election interview with a public opinion pollster that they had done earlier in the day on Dave Garroway's TV program.
In that one, Ray, as the pollster, concludes that his election predictions were wrong because he had his field men asking improperly phrased questions: "We were asking the people, 'Do you like to watch sports or would you rather participate in them?' We should have asked who they were going to vote for."
He also concluded that his sample hadn't been adequate. His staff had questioned 18 people, "mostly women and children."
Besides their daily program on NBC radio and their twice-weekly TV appearances with Garroway, Bob (Elliott), and Ray (Goulding) have a records-and-chatter program that runs for a couple of hours every morning. It's heard only in the New York area.
"WHEN WE GET an idea, we play around with it on the early-morning program. Then when we think it's right, we use it on the network," said Bob.
"Most of the time we don't use a script. That pollster bit, for instance. We tried it out on our morning show. Then we did it three times for Garroway, and each time it was different.
"It kept getting better and better. We'll do it again tonight at the dinner, and I suppose it'll be still better." Bob does the impersonations, such as Dr. O.K., and Arthur Stirdley [sic], their version of Arthur Godfrey. Ray does the voice of Mary McGoon, a regular in their cast of characters.
"Whenever we interview some jerk, though, I'm always the jerk," said Ray.
Since their success on NBC, Bob and Ray have hired three writers "who think pretty much the way we do" to write some of their sketches.
But whenever they're ribbing some well-known radio or TV program they said, they never use writers or, for that matter, a script. They work out the basic idea between them and then just let it happen.
Day Brightener: Bob and Ray gag about a cowboy named Tex who is from Louisiana. Why Tex? He didn't want to be called Louise.

Forbush Franks Are Frankier Franks

Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding had to make some adjustments when NBC signed them to do a 15-minute daily radio show in 1951. Their exploits on WHDH in Boston went for a half an hour. And much of it was ad-libbed so the show tended to go all over the place at times.

The NBC programme was tighter. Phoney commercials and sketches were scripted—the network’s censors would have demanded it—but reworked satiric concepts and even pieces of dialogue that Bob and Ray used in Boston. There were a couple of short, cheery musical breaks by an in-house combo, much like on WHDH.

But in 1951, the money was streaming away from radio. Television was taking ad dollars. Talent went from radio to TV. Bob and Ray did, too. They weren’t altogether successful. They were working incredibly long hours as they were still on radio, and continually shoved around to different time slots until the network gave up on them.

TV Guide profiled them after their departure from the Channel of Chimes. Its anonymous critic was like most others; (s)he appreciated Bob and Ray. The critic is right. Elliott’s Arthur Godfrey (Sturdley) was perfect; you’d almost swear it was Godfrey (Goulding’s Tony Marvin wasn’t as good. Marvin was a booming bass. Goulding couldn’t intone that low).

If you are not familiar with their radio work (though I think the writer is describing the NBC TV show), this gives you a great idea of their kind of humour. Like Jack Benny, I enjoy them better on radio than television. Unlike Benny, I don’t think they really mastered TV because their material strikes me as aural rather than visual.

This was published September 25, 1953. The fuzzy pictures accompanied the article.

No Pizza Pies
Bob and Ray’s Humor is Milder, Much Milder
ONE THING can be said about the satirical team of Bob and Ray: they are hardly a household word. Possessed with a sly, tongue-in-cheek impudence and a healthy disregard for some of the more sacred items of our times, the spoofers have about the same general appeal that might be accorded a Bach fugue or a T.S. Eliot couple. As one network official explained it, “What Arthur Godfrey’s got, Bob and Ray ain’t.”
Even the hoards of star-struck bobby-soxers who can leaf through their smudged autograph books and show you signatures of the entire Aldrich family, every panelist on Juvenile Jury (including its alumni) and a few page boys to boot, will admit that two fellows named Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding have somehow escaped their attention.
Unless tipped off in advance, an uninitiated viewer watching the Bob and Ray brand of straight-face humor for the first time might just furrow his brow in bewilderment and switch channels. Other folks, who realize Bob and Ray are making exquisite fun of some of their favorite television performers, are apt to turn the dial in protest. Still others, who prefer their humor broader, don’t care for Bob and Ray for the same reason they don’t care for rutabagas.
The boys themselves realize that rating-wise they’ll probably never crash the upper atmosphere populated by the Lucys, the Berles and the other chosen ones.

Says Ray, perhaps a little too pessimistically, “I’d guess that only one person out of 80 likes us.”
The guess seems to be a bad one. Bob and Ray don’t have a tremendous following, but it is a decidedly loyal one and certainly not as sparse as Ray indicates. Most of the critics praise the boys. The trade itself considers them far more clever than most of the comics working on the TV circuit. Their fans can quote them endlessly. At first NBC was thoroughly sold on the pair, despite the fact that prospective sponsors stayed away in droves. Relations between the boys and the network “steadily worsened,” as they say in the trade, and recently they signed a contract with ABC.
Bob (he’s the shorter one) and Ray seem to derive most relish from kidding radio and television, their bread and butter. Cigaret commercials are among their pet targets. One memorable spoof was the “Forbush Frankfurter Test” in which four franks were disrobed of their castings to prove which was rounder, firmer, etc. Not only was “Forbush” a clear winner, but the makers of “Forbush Franks” debunked other frankfurter claims:
Bob (holding up a frankfurter): Frankfurter A claims to relieve gout, embolism, near-sightedness, itchiness and fleebus.
Ray: The makers of Frankfurter B claim it is kinder to the F zone—F for frank, F for further. Yet 339 out of 340 physicians testified there is no such zone. Bob: “Forbush Frankfurters” claim nothing. Proof positive that “Forbush Frankfurters” are the best made.
For over a year Bob and Ray pounded away at cigarette comparison tests. Sample:
Interviewer (Bob): I see, sir, you are knocking a chip off the old block.
Ray (in carpenter’s garb): That is correct.
Bob: Tell me, sir, have you ever seen me before or have you receive remuneration for this interview.
Ray: I have never seen you before nor have I received any remuneration for this interview.
Bob: Which chip off the old block would you like to knock off first—ours or yours?
Ray: I’ll try yours first. (He proceeds to knock a chip off the block.)
Bob: Now, will you try our block, sir. (Ray complies.) Now, sir, you have knocked an old chip off your block and off our block. Which do you prefer?
Ray (enthusiastically): Oh, yours. Your chip flew more gracefully. And its [sic] milder—much milder.
The boys have run the gamut of soap operas, so that practically no soap is safe from their ribbing. Some of the Elliott-Goulding epics have unmistakeable counterparts—Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife; Hartford Harry, Linda Lovely, Helen Harkness, Sob Sister, and Mr. Trace, Keener Than Most Persons. Although the sponsors of the show were none too happy, the cast of “Mary Noble, Backstage Wife,” never failed to tune in the Bob and Ray parody of their show. The boys saw to it that even the plot lines were strikingly alike.

Bob and Ray’s take-offs on overstocked sales, special offers and kits for all purposes have drawn a shocking number of serious replies. Listeners have written to “I Want to Keep Up With the Joneses,” NBC, New York, to obtain a phony TV set equipped with antenna “to show off to your neighbors.” They have taken the boys up on offers of cracked phonograph records (“they were dropped just a few inches off the delivery truck.”), sweaters with the letter “O’ on them (“if your name doesn’t begin with “O” we can have it legally changed for you; sweaters come in two styles, turtle-neck or V-neck. State what kind of neck you have.”), deep freeze lockers, “deep enough to accommodate a family of four.” The Kind Hunter’s Kit was offered for “softhearted people who love to hunt but hate to kill.” It contained bullets that drop to the ground and are packed with vitamins for the animals.
In an effort to find the right spot for Bob and Ray, NBC shunted the boys around, spotting them here and there. Some of the program switches were unfortunate. The team’s initial dip into TV was stormy. When the popular Kukla, Fran and Ollie were cut to 15 minutes, Bob and Ray were given the vacated spot. Which, of course, outraged K.F.O. fans to brand the two radio comics as puppet-haters. They departed this early evening show a few months afterward. When the boys finally landed a sponsor on a late-evening program, they ran into agency trouble or sponsoritis. It seems the men who sign the paychecks didn’t dig their comedy stars and asked them to dish up a more obvious form of humor. “Throw pizza pies at each other,” was one of the suggestions. After 13 weeks, when option time rolled around, Bob and Ray left the show by mutual consent.
The team is probably best remembered for its regular guest stints on Dave Garroway’s morning show, Today. Garroway, a B. & R. fan, would solemnly introduce the two and the boys conducted interviews, with Bob generally handling the straight lines and Ray providing the answers.
Although their own ratings are modest, Bob and Ray have no qualms about spoofing some of the TV performers who boast tremendous audiences. Their favorite target is Arthur Godfrey—or, as portrayed by Bob—“Arthur Strudley [sic] and His No Talent Scouts.” Dressed in a sailor suit, a First World War aviator’s hat and strumming a ukulele, Bob gives a devastating impersonation—complete with “by gollys” and informal Godfrey-type commercials for “Metchnikoff’s Caviar Teabags.”
Their take-offs on Ed Sullivan (“We’ve flown in from the Middle East for their first American performance the only two-man Arabian drill team in the world. Let’s give the boys a warm New York welcome.”); Ed Murrow (“See It Now and Then”); Dragnet (“Fishnet”) and the Stork Club (Ray in a one-sided conversation with two store dummies), rank as unequaled television.
Like caviar and rutabagas, Bob and Ray don’t appeal to all tastes. But lots of people consider TV’s top satirists as pretty wonderful fare. Now if the Elliott-Goulding fandom can only convince the right people that ratings don’t mean a thing . . .

What Would You Call Sour Cream?

Network radio wanted new talent, and they got it in Bob and Ray.

The two first appeared on NBC on July 2, 1951 from 5:45 to 6 p.m. Pretty soon, they were all over the schedule and then put on television as well. To me, radio was their forte; it’s more fun picturing what they’re doing on the air than seeing a picture of it.

The NBC show was a nice little affair. It included brief musical interludes (as did their half-hour local show in Boston before they were pulled to New York) and they added to their cast of characters (in Boston, it was mainly Mary McGoon and Tex Blaisdell).

Here’s a short piece from Kay Gardella’s radio/TV column in the New York Daily News of September 4, 1951. They were still only on radio at this point.

Team On The Beam. ... Radio's newest disc jockey team, Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding (NBC), are usually embroiled in some campaign or other. One is Mary Goon's [sic] (played by Ray) effort to change the name of "sour cream."
Mary says the appellation alone keeps people from eating the nutritious food, so listeners are asked to submit substitute names.
Bob and Ray have developed 20 character interpretations (all voiced by them) for their satirical routines. Another one is Dr. Hugo Sitlo, eminent psychiatrist. Sitlo comes home from a hard day's work and meets his son, Oedipus, at the door. . . . Oedipus: "Hello, daddy." Hugo: "What did you say?" Oedipus: "I just said hello, daddy." Hugo: "Hmmmm, now what did he mean by that?" . . . And on and on it goes.
This zany pair, like so many famous partners in the entertainment world, were separately making a living in radio until they discovered each other in 1946. In five years. Bob and Ray have cataputed to an enviable post on the nation's largest network--NBC. They are currently heard Mondays i through Fridays from 5:45 to 6 P. M., on Saturday evenings from 9:30 to 10:30 and, as of last Monday, the boys replaced Skitch Henderson on WNBC from 6 A. M. to 8:30 A. M., six days a week.
One would think such a schedule would be too much for two young fellows (Bob is 28 and Ray 29). But speaking to them last week after their morning show, we learned this isn't so. "It's just like going home again," explained Ray. "We did a 2 1/2-hour show in Boston every morning." "A morning show," Bob chimed in, "is less strenuous. It's loose and one doesn't have to worry about time. "Also," he continued, the routines are shorter.
Although the boys seem quite confident that they can keep up this fast pace, we are keeping our fingers crossed. We hope their many radio stints will not affect the high quality of their material.

Radio's Tart Aftertaste

Bob and Ray spent a great deal of their career wandering in the towered canyons of the New York City radio wilderness, going from network to network, and station to station, as the industry evolved.

One of their stops was at CBS, where they broadcast for 15 minutes each weeknight starting June 30, 1959 until the following June 24th when the network fiddled with its evening programming and they looking for work again. That means they were no longer on the air when the Christian Science Monitor praised their CBS show in a story published June 28, 1960, an amusing twist in itself.

Despite what the column states, there were good portions of their CBS show which were not ad-libbed. A fellow named Phil Green was helping them with sketches. And the animated “Bob and Ray’s Hollywood Classics” never made it to air, despite Variety stating on March 30, 1960 a deal had been struck with California National Productions—an NBC company—to distribute it. Bob and Ray were in business with Ed Graham, who later produced the Linus the Lionhearted cartoon series.

The article mentions the WHDH shows in Boston which ended in July 1950 when the duo went to NBC. I enjoy parts of them but they’re quite different in tone than the 15-minuters in New York. With the shorter time slot, they couldn’t meander like they did on the Boston shows. On the other hand, I miss the musical interludes that CBS decided not use (perhaps for cost-savings) and you’d hear on the NBC 15-minute broadcasts. The CBS shows ridiculed Jack Paar, treating his humility as less than genuine, and the network’s own policy in the wake of the quiz show scandals to put disclaimers on shows in an attempt at transparency.

The Mild Acid of Bob and Ray
By Melvin Maddocks
New York
Slumped on their kitchen stools, the so-called “sick” comedians sit, half-contemptuously throwing darts at their audiences. At the other extreme, hopping like pogo sticks, the gagsters peddle their patter—fast-talking, slick, and a little too eager to please.
In between, range a mere handful of comics, neither barbed nor bland. Among these belong CBS Radio’s Bob and Ray.
Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding may best be described as kind-hearted satirists who would, one feels, honestly hate to see harm to come to the things they make fun of. Like most radio and television comedians, their humor is parochial. The prime target, in other words, is radio and television, not life.
They have spent a combined 41 years in the media. Down to the last pear-toned caress, they know the way of unctuous announcers. Not a cliché of soap operas, Boris Karloff-type mysteries, or space-fiction dramas has escaped them. They command equally the absurdities of the woman’s program hostess and the pretensions of the on-the-scene interviewer.
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In a well-equipped scale of voices, extending from deep nasal to crackling falsetto, they take off these and other airwave stereotypes. Characteristically, their fictional personalities are self-important and solemnly obsessed by March-hare ambitions. But, on balance, the laughter they provoke is affectionate. As their brief sketches—three or four per 15-minute program—genially wander to improvised conclusions, Bob and Ray almost seem to deserve the fatal label, whimsy. But a tart aftertaste nearly always rescues them.
The two, after 14 years of togetherness, works without a script. The effect is a bit like jazz improvisation, with one following the other’s lead, then trying to top it. Transcribe the routines to paper and—again like a jazz solo—the whole flavor evaporates. Everything depends upon hesitation, inflection, and nuance.
The scene where Bob and Ray tape their broadcasts, two or three at a session, is as informal as the entertainment it produces. In a small parlor-sized studio the comedians sit at plain rectangular table. While Ray, the more ebullient one, rocks back and forth in his dangerously tipped chair, Bob quietly doodles as they record a broadcast. A sound man and a turntable man share the studio with them. Behind glass a producer-director, assistant director, and technical director watch. Ray works hard—and successfully—to make them all “break up.” He clowns just as eagerly for the messenger boy who drops into swap repartee during commercials or between “takes.”
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Behind their convincing air of casualness, Bob and Ray are craftsmen with a solid respect for comic tradition. Among their admirations: Stoopnagle and Bud, Laurel and Hardy, and Robert Benchley, traces of whose deceptively guileless style may be found in their own work.
As multiple-voice impersonators, Bob and Ray have never done as well in television as on radio. There is something dampening about the soprano of Mary Magoon, for example, emerging a little sheepishly from the burly person of Mr. Goulding. Now they think they have this handicap licked. The answer: animated cartoons. The comedians, who have also made a reputation in the industry for their commercials, own their private animation studio. At present, they are writing, producing, and acting in a cartoon series dealing in parodies of overworked movie plots, which they hope to sell next season.
Old Bob and Ray fans, who knew them back in Boston a dozen years ago and before they went “network,” natural swear they were at their sharpest in the early days. But in this latest project it may be taken for granted that Mr. Elliott and Mr. Goulding will still be operating on the theory upon which their reasonably literate, reasonable subtle humor is based: “There are no hicks anymore. They’re as hip in Sioux City as they are in New York.”

At Home With Bob and Ray

Timing can be crucial if you’re a publisher of puffery.

A fan magazine can invent a lovey-dovey story about your favourite couple, only to see it evaporate when they split up before the presses can get it into newsstands. We’ve posted a story about Jack Benny’s great relationship with writer Harry Conn which not only didn’t exist, the two engaged in a I-quit-no-you’re-fired routine soon after it was published. We’ve also put up a piece about Bill Cullen and his wife who would soon divorce.

And then there’s this story about the home lives of Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding. It has a cover date of March 1953. That’s the same year Elliott divorced the wife you see in the photos below. He’s quoted in Dave Pollock’s book Bob and Ray, Keener Than Most Persons that his marriage “was grinding to an end” even as Radio-TV Mirror printed this feature article. The photos below accompanied the story.

BOB and RAY — SPICE OF OUR LIFE
By CHRIS KANE

ONE IS slight and blonde. (That's Bob Elliott.) The other's larger, darker, with an upper lip where his moustache used to be. (That's Ray Goulding.)
Instead of two minds with a single thought, they have half a mind between them. At least that's the impression they try to give.
"Bob's good on the ukulele," Ray says.
"Ray's good on the elevator," Bob says.
They came from Boston—full of beans, naturally—to take over NBC, which still hasn't recovered from the shock. The boys often introduce their show by announcing simply: "Bob and Ray take great pleasure in presenting the National Broadcasting Company."
Before they presented the National Broadcasting Company, with its glorious network facilities, they labored on a local show where they depicted the activities of Mary Backstage, Noble Wife. Mary was a girl from a deserted mining town out west who came to the big city to find happiness as the wife of Handsome Harry Backstage, idol of a million other women. Something like that, anyhow. All the characters were played by Bob and Ray—the scripts completely ad-libbed as they went along.
The boys are still satirizing anything and everything—but that ain't all. They'll even make fun of themselves. Ray claims he has a Shetland pony, Bob claims he designs his own socks.
"I own the Empire State Building," Ray goes on. "When my friends see me coming, they say, 'Here's old Money-Bags!'" "I get horse-hives," Bob mutters. "I look at a horse, and my nose runs."
"Bob was voted Most Likely To Succeed," Ray cries.
"Ray was voted Most Likely To," Bob parries.



Ask them to tell you a few simple facts about themselves, never mind the clowning, and they look pained. "Nothing to tell," they say. Then Ray's phone rings. "Joe's on the phone," says somebody. "My brother Joe?" says Ray. Then he turns to the interviewer with a simple fact. "I have a brother Joe."
Besides a brother Joe, he's got a wife and three children. He met his wife Liz (née Mary Elizabeth Leader, of Springfield, Ohio) in the Army. It sounds like a joke, but isn't. She was a dietitian, he was an instructor at the Officers Candidate School in Fort Knox, Kentucky.
"We got married on a three-day pass," Ray says. "At a little spa in Indiana. A sweet little church around the corner —around the corner from an arsenal."
As he warms to his story, he embroiders, "General Patton was riding down the street outside crying, 'Blood and Guts!'" "Their song," butts in Bob, "is 'Stars and Stripes Forever.'"

Ray hangs his head. "Every time we hear 'Reveille,' we look at each other tenderly—"
Ray and Liz were married in '45, came to Boston in 1946, after Ray's discharge from the Army. He'd been a radio announcer in Lowell, Massachusetts (where he was born and raised), after he got out of high school, so it was logical that he'd go back to being a radio announcer. He ended up at Station WHDH in Boston, where, by a laughable coincidence, one Bob Elliott was also announcing. More properly, Bob Elliott was disc-jockeying.
Bob was a Boston boy who'd had a fling at New York. Went to acting school there, and got a job at NBC. He was a genuine NBC page boy. Escorted studio visitors to their seats. As a lifework, this left something to be desired, so 1941 found the pride of Boston back home at WHDH.
In 1943, Bob married Jane Underwood, who was on the air for WHDH, too. Ask Bob what Jane did on the air, and he says vaguely, "Oh, women's stuff—"
From 1943 to 1946, Bob spent in the Infantry.
In 1946, he met his other half—professionally speaking. As we said, Bob was disc-jockeying over WHDH. This Ray Goulding used to come in and read the newscasts. After the news they'd kid around a little, and soon proper Bostonians were howling improperly at the wit and jollity and fun and games.
New York was their next stop.

Bob and Jane now live in a three-room-and-terrace apartment in the East Sixties. They have two cats—live—and one sailfish—stuffed—over the mantel. That is, the fish is over the mantel, the, cats are not. Speaking of cats—to which Ray, by the way, is allergic—Bob and these animals are on positively intimate terms. Bob once broke his leg, went to bed with the cast on it, and woke up the next morning to find that a lady cat had had kittens all over his splints.
His sailfish, while not as imaginative as his cats, has an interesting history, too. Bob was in Miami last summer, had never been sailfishing before, engaged in mortal combat with this monster fish, brought it all the way home to New York to gape over the fireplace, and now decries the whole affair. "That?" he says. "Oh, I just happened to go fishing—"
The Elliotts, though comfortably settled in New York, still hang on to their house and Ray—Spice of Our Life in Boston—or, rather, Cohasset. Bob literally hangs on, weekends. He goes up and shingles the place, though it looks as though he's going to be much too busy ever to spend much time in it any more.
Ray and Liz and their kids live in a rented house in Harbor Acres, which is out on Long Island, near Port Washington. Raymond, Jr., is seven, Tommy's going on four, and the baby, Barbara, is a year-and-a-half old.

All are healthy, good-natured types and, besides health, Raymond's got ingenuity. Father Ray's been buying handsome tools for a long time—a good shovel, a stout hammer—and one by one they disappear.
He suspects Raymond of swapping them for Buck Rogers guns and atomic chemistry sets.
"Where are my pick and shovel?"—or words to that effect—he'll say to his son and heir.
Raymond will favor him with a pleasant smile. "I don't know."
"I bet the next-door neighbors' kids have a fine set of tools," Ray says bitterly.
"They go to bed at seven," he tells you about his sons. And adds, "They're still running around the bedroom at eleven."
Tommy, who's exhausted from staying up so late, has developed a new trick. He gets up in the morning, has his breakfast, goes back to bed around nine, and sleeps till noon. Then he rises, prepared for the night's festivities. Barbara's too young to know what's going on, but both boys get upset if anything happens to Ray on TV. The night Bob "shoved Ray out of a fifteen-story window," Raymond and Tommy tore out of the room screaming. "It was," says Ray, "a pretty hectic night at my house."
Ray's hobby is photography (he doesn't develop his own stuff, doesn't have the time); Bob's is painting.

Bob is, in fact, a frustrated artist. He never studied the craft particularly, but, if he hadn't had a radio job when he got out of the Army, he might have turned into another Winslow Homer. He likes to do seascapes, and he once exhibited. Well, that is, not exactly exhibited ... it seems there was an ad club show in Boston. ...
Anyhow, if that fish wasn't over the mantel, a seascape would be.
Bob also plays the ukulele, bringing to this effort the same lack of training, and the same gusto, with which he paints.
Ray can get a few notes out of a small toy trumpet, but they all sound like "Taps," even when he's doing "White Christmas." And, besides, the only time he really gets any pleasure out of trumpeting is when Bob's talking to somebody, and he, Ray, sees an opportunity to confuse an issue or two.
Which is one reason why venturing into their NBC office is an act of recklessness. They sit behind their desks looking more or less normal, but don't let that fool you. Ray's nameplate is upside down. "For people who come in upset," he says. Bob's feet are waving in the breeze. "I was wearing these shoes when I got into show business," he says. "Three weeks ago."
"We're getting a new sponsor," Ray says gravely. "His products are right out of this world."
"Available only on Mars," adds Bob, "and perhaps Neptune. Our show will be out of this world, too."
That's the way it goes—and so do you. As you reel out, the tinny music of a toy trumpet follows you. It's playing "Taps."