Bob & Ray- The Brilliant Minds Behind Radio's Greatest Comedy Parodies
(1940-1990)
This article is an excerpt
from RUSC Member's Area
Bob Elliot and Ray Goulding, better known as Bob & Ray, were a quinessential part of the golden age of radio comedy. The duo first captivated audiences in 1940 with their sharp wit and unique brand of humor, which combined deadpan delivery with absurdist sketches. They began their journey at Boston's WHGH radio station, where they honed their craft and developed a style that would become their signature.
Their ability to seamlessly play multiple characters in their sketches, often parodying popular radio programs of the time, showcased their comedic brilliance and versatility with a chemistry that allowed them to effortlessly finish each other's sentences, Bob & Ray became beloved figures in American entertainment, their legacy enduring through decades of broadcasting.
And so was born Matinee with Bob & Ray and all their wonderful spoof characters. Goulding later quipped if the word had been Matinob they would have been Ray and Bob! Gerald Nachman in his book Raised On Radio says, "By any rational measure, Bob and Ray should have been washed up along with the rest of radio in the 1950s, but they hung on until Ray's death in 1990, ending a partnership of almost half a century. In various formats, and rarely sponsored, the pair were at once anachronistic and contemporary, finding new ways to mock a medium whose satirical targets had long since surrendered or died and gone to radio heaven".
They began to satirize radio serials to great comedic effect in deadpan seriousness and often in the same format as the original show. For example:
- The Lives & Loves of Linda Lovely was a parody of Linda's First Love,
- Mary Backstage, Noble Wife was a parody of Mary Noble in Backstage Wife,
- Anxiety parodied Suspense
- Jack Headstrong, the All American American, Jack Armstrong, the All American Boy.
- One Feller's Family, by Carlton E. Love a spoof of the eternal Carlton E. Morse serial One Man's Family
- Just Fancy Bill a spoof on Just Plain Bill.
- Mr. Treat Chaser of Lost People and Mr. Trace, Keener Than Most Persons were a poke at the prime-time Hummert detective series Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons.
Bob and Ray played all the parts in their skits with Ray doing the gruff parts and the falsetto females usually all in the same voice as his character Mary McGoon (based on home economics expert Mary McBride) which in itself made the show funny. Bob would take the parts of the flat dullards such as sportscaster Biff Burns, drawling cowboy Tex Blaisdale famous for his rope tricks on radio and most famously Wally Ballou an inept news reporter.
I have been adding episodes to RUSC over the past week and will continue to do so in the hope that you get to hear as many of these wonderfully funny parodies and of course, the warm chatter as the two of them, are able to finish each others sentences ad-lib about anything and everything.
Gerald Nachman in his book Raised On Radio ends his chapter on Bob and Ray by saying, "The duo wore as well as any humorists can hope to, never turning angry, cruel, snide, bitter or self-satisfied. They didn't bludgeon their targets to death; they kidded human folly and bombast without feeling the need to destroy their objects. They attacked everything with a feather, tickling subjects into submission as if encouraging their hapless cast of characters and listeners to return for more fun another day. Their final series aired on National Public Radio in 1990, just before Ray's death - not a bad run for a pair of low-budget satirists. Fifty years after Bob and Ray began in Boston, they're still contemporary and funny. Little has aged except their listeners".
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