Comedians Getting Old

[Ignatius_S]

The problem with that sketch is that it was from their 40's radio show, when they did it just the same way. It's a classic and from the brief glimpse of the audience it looked like they all remembered it from the original (or from repeated hearings since). They do play it well and it is as great as it was originally, but it doesn't say much about their abilities late in life. The Pythons could do performances of their classic sketches on stage and it would be much the same - they could hardly fail with such great material, despite some of them having lost it.

The performance from that show Wally Ballou interviewing a paper clip manufacturer is arguably the best one they did of that sketch. Similarly, for me, I prefer this version of the slow talkers of America sketch to any others - your mileage may vary, but I think this live performance beats the sketch as it was first performed, which I don't think many would say about when the Pythons performed material live.

[NoSleep]

"Get A Life" is one of my favourite sitcoms. I like how Chris Elliott's parents both appear in their pyjamas in nearly every scene they're in, and the robot paper deliverer and "Handsome Boy Modelling School" episodes...good times indeed.

Have you watched the 2nd series yet; when Chris moves in with Brian Doyle-Murray (the coach in Handsome Boy Modelling - not as that character). Doyle-Murray (as Chris' landlord) is a better foil than his Dad in the first series (although Bob is still featured).

[Famous Mortimer]

I got hold of the full series, but only watched the first...I don't know, 10 episodes or so. It is brilliant though.

[ApexJazz]

Nice to see such an astute discussion of Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding on CookdandBombd.
They worked exclusively together for almost 45 years, one of the longest lasting teams in comedy, yet their achievements are hardly ever discussed in depth. They found each other in 1946 Boston. Both veterans of the military, both radio announcers, both amused by the mechanics of professional broadcasting. They started messing around on the air when network feeds went down and time needed to be killed. They were given an afternoon half hour slot and started to develop their comic rapport. Their formative years in WHDH Boston is tediously well-preserved (more from this period survives than from any other era). If anyone wants to torture themselves, they could follow the progress of their partnership and how they perfected working off each other.  The "Matinee With Bob and Ray" shows sound like they're cut from the same cloth as amateur podcasts of today. They were discovering what was funny about themselves, many bits they would continue thru the decades originated from their kitchen sink improvisations in Boston.
In 1951, they broke onto the national NBC airwaves, more polished but not much. They were immediately heralded by comedians and writers, yet always flying slightly under the radar of public consciousness. They never achieved massive fame, which probably assured their longevity.
They had to be fertile because of the sheer creative output demanded on them. For a period in 1953 they had a daily two hour morning WINS radio show (during commercials they would run down Rockefeller Center to improvise man-on-the-street bits for The Today Show), an afternoon NBC tv show, and a late night Mutual radio program. Understandably with that schedule they occasionally sound punch-drunk.
Their late evening Mutual show gives a flavour of both beatnik New York and the Broadway scene in the 1950s. With changing theme music by Moondog aka Louis Thomas Hardin (recorded from the streets) , constant plugs for the records of Leona Anderson and Florence Foster Jenkins, prank calling Stan Freberg, and cod-poetry readings, the show was an island of acceptance for the off-beat. Around this time they also introduced element of thf theatrical scene with the creation of Barry Campbell, the notorious Broadway failure, who would be interviewed about his latest futile venture (could be a newly opened-closed on the same night play, an all-girl orchestra, movies, insurance, or an ice cream truck).

In 1954, they broadcast their heroic full scale satire of the House Un American Activities Committee witch hunts. It is the work I revere them most for. In the context of their soap opera Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife [nb] "Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife" is their picaresque epic of a show business family going from failure to failure. They kept this unending story sprawling for decades, all of it completely improvised. Taken as a totality it could be considered their magnum opus. Tracing the Backstayges from theater (Westchester Furioso) to the restaurant business (The House Of Toast), the soap opera started to mirror Bob & Ray's professional life and became an outlet for their bemused observations of show biz. [/nb](lampoon of the long forgotten soap Mary Noble, Backstage Wife) they created the character of Commissioner Carstairs of Skunk Haven, a deadly impersonation by Goulding of Senator Joseph McCarthy, Bob and Ray rose to the historical moment in a way that none of their contemporaries dared. Using brilliant microphone technique they recreated the sound of the hearings, using their malleable voices they recreated the ego-driven evil of senseless persecution.
For me, it is the highpoint of their career and a major turning point in American comedy. It was probably the bravest work they ever did, and hearing it today, the satire still crackles with heat and nerve. Long before Edward R. Murrow's expose, Goulding captured the absolute essence of the demagogue McCarthy's bullying and megalomania. The man who wanted most to be feared was being laughed at.

This foray into the political was not typical Bob & Ray fare. With their co writers Raymond Knight in the early years and later Tom Koch,[nb]Raymond Knight is one of those figures that history has dealt the cruelest hand. Today, Knight  is completely forgotten, yet he was the humourist whom Groucho Marx admired most, even over Perleman (!). His radio work was not preserved and his plays are never revived. Tom Koch was a frequent contributor to Mad Magazine, writing many classic features over the decades. He was Bob & Ray's most reliable and longest serving collaborator.[/nb] they created a madhouse alternative universe that sounded completely dull. The substitute reality of news bulletins, soap operas, droning continuity announcers, commercials for complexly useless stuff (from the Bob & Ray Overstock Warehouse), documentaries, travelogues, self-help, etc. Not everybody gets it, including the network executives of the time. B&R constantly bounced around the networks and program schedules, long after the bottom fell out of the radio medium.
Their voices Ray's voice was a large-lunged dark hued baritone, Bob's was adenoidal tenor, yet they could switch around timbres depending on the character. All the females were performed by Ray, invariably in the same voice of a spirited New England elder puritan-hypocrite. Their personal association had few hints of the usual mutually abusive relationship that comedy partnerships are prone to.  Cordial but not overly chummy an observer said, though Bob was devastated by Ray's death. During the writing process, Goulding would pace the floor and spin ideas while Elliott would be at the typewriter structuring and adding key ingredients. They never wrote jokes, they relied on characterization.
Before broadcast or recording, they would quietly cough and reposition themselves nervously. When the microphone was hot they would spin a multi-layered sketch, seemingly through telepathy. After years of working together, they knew each other's patterns and developed an instinct for enabling inspiration to strike. Their pace could be slow as Laurel and Hardy's, while keeping subtle running gags spinning, they encouraged their producers to throw in sound effects to keep them on their toes, beating jokes into the ground and further through the earth's core, relying on and playing with audience familiarity.
They developed their style of improvisation far away from Spolin and the theatrical ideologues of The Compass that would later steer Second City and the Groundlings. Indeed it is too little acknowledged that it was the pioneering work of Bob & Ray and Jonathan Winters that left a huge impact on this school of comedy (the Stanislavski character exercises do little to inform comedy performance, apart from making actors even more pretentious than they are).[nb]American comedy is actually very poorly chronicled and meagerly understood from a historical perceptive. While there's no shortage of idiot theories about what makes comedy work, histories are few and usually written in characterless publicity-speak, uncritical cliché recycling, or worse, nostalgist fan fawning. The crosscurrents, influences, innovations and social breakthroughs are rarely written about or comprehended. In America, the financial success of a contemporary comedian or comedy (instead of artistic merit) determines the amount of ink given, creating a self-sustaining cycle that continues into the overviews. [/nb] I'm also convinced this whole movement of american improv was inspired by searching for a performing equivalent to music, namely jazz. Earlier Jazz had inspired american comedy with its energy, wildness, loudness, zaniness (the frenetic pace of screwball comedies or cartoons is unthinkable without this music), but the improvisation as composition aesthetic hadn't taken hold until after the Bebop era. Within this jazz model, Bob & Ray could match the collective polyphonic lines, the musical dialogues where listening and flexibility are of key importance, distilling or expanding ideas.  Winters, on the other hand, was the virtuoso soloist. The charisma for both forms is the same: the joy of discovery, unfiltered speed of thought, the sound of surprise.
I don't wish to overstate the improvisational aspect of their work. [nb]Winters tells of when he invited Bob and Ray onto his TV show "excited like a little boy getting to play with his heroes". He was disappointed to find them stiff and reluctant to improvise in a free and structureless manner. Winters' frisky old grandmas owe more than a little to Goulding's Mary McGoon.[/nb]Yes they could fly without a launching idea and hit a target, but they were never far from a script or pre-planned concept. Even though there wasn't a clear set straight guy-funny guy dynamic to their partnership, Goulding was the comic genius of the two. He populated the world with blowhards, know-it-all hobbyists, inept experts, polite psychotics and domineering dingbats. Elliott would be their diligent interviewer, as himself or Wally Ballou (his microphone forever upcut so his name came out "—ly Ballou"), comfortable in discovering the world is more surreal than expected. Elliott could also inhabit innocents and mushy brained professionals. They mocked american brodcasting's celebration of the soulless businessman or inhumane capitalist, or its attempts at giving the undeserving 5 minutes of fame. A particular favourite is the Clyde L. Hap Watney, the confused Kafkaesque bureaucrat who regularly appears "in studio", he doesn't know who he works for or what his function is but continuously appears on radio to publicly assure whoever his superiors may be that he's doing his job.
The Bob and Ray Staff were a Dickensian repertoire company. A babel of characters, helpless in their jobs and lost in their individual worlds. Artie Schermerhorn (Ballou's co-broadcaster and rival); Webley Webster (a midwestern Eccles); domestic goddess Mary McGoon, the new england self appointed matriarch of the show; Wallace the Bob & Ray Midget, the show's runner;  Kent Lyle Birdie, washed-up radio announcer in an alcoholic haze. They unleashed promotional gimmicks like the national tour of Smelly Dave, a massive dead whale traveling on an open flatcar, stopping at major cities to spread the word about Bob and Ray. There was also the Bob and Ray Satellite that orbited the planet, but only 12 feet off the ground, continuously getting caught in trees and telephone wires.
They were mostly heard on the east coast until 1955 when they became a fixture on Monitor. NBC's flagship radio program, the creation of Pat Weaver, it ran for a marathon 32 hours every weekend. It was a remarkable audio magazine of arts, news, sports, regional, and entertainment. From 1955 to 1959 you could tune in and catch the vanguard of comedy improv with the social satire of Nichols and May, followed by the media reimaginings of Bob and Ray (both created timeless comedy, improv that never lowered to being parlour tricks). After an overly serious human interest story by Hugh Downs or Dave Garroway, Bob & Ray would follow directly with a satire that popped the pompous balloon of what was heard before. It was this work that became a comedy template in the 50s and 60s, there were many little Bob & Rays and Nichols & Mays running around the comedy scene afterwards and it was directly due to the national exposure on Monitor.
As performers, they were never suited to the visual medium. In their youth, they could pass as mild mannered corporate types with a hint of mischief. They were best behind news desks, in an era of Murrows and  Kuralts, their broadcast-ready voices made their news parodies alarmingly plausible. As they grew older they started to look like harmless old men, which gave a certain added charm. Their early 1950s tv show was a shambles. They still make for odd viewing, like fragments of a long forgotten media symbolist movement.  Ernie Kovacs could ride a live televised mess with triumph, Bob And Ray would wallow in the awkwardness. Reportedly their 1961 tv shows, utilizing video editing, were pioneering works of surrealism and TV deconstruction, not a trace of them survives. There's a fascinating bit of info from wikipedia of when "Bob and Ray created an historic television program in 1973 that was broadcast on two channels: one half of the studio was broadcast on the New York PBS affiliate WNET, and the other half of the studio was broadcast on independent station WNEW. Four sketches were performed, including a tug of war that served as an allegory about nuclear war." In personal appearances, they would trot out their party-pieces Slow Talkers Of America [nb]In the Slow Talkers Of America, Goulding would vary his performance. In the youtube video, he is exasperated, others he is falling asleep, my favourite is when he's impatiently enthusiastic about the Slow Talkers, eager to get all the information out for the viewers. Originally in the sketch, it was followed by an interview with The Fast Talkers Of America president about their competing convention.[/nb]and the Komodo Dragon expert. These two reliable sketches are most remembered because so much of Bob & Ray is purposely indistinctive.
But their most suited medium was radio, frolicking in the predictability and corporate humourlessness of producing, as Lewis-Smith calls it, "aural wallpaper". Their vintage years were from 1954-1963, for the simple reason that they sounded like Eisenhower america. They could never be confused for outsiders. It isn't churlish to suggest that the tone and ease of Bob and Ray's humour could only have come from establishment WASPs, men who grew up in a well-defined secure world. True to their New England middle class upbringing, the carnal and sensual rarely emerge in their chaste world. But they could correctly be considered subversives in straight-laced conformist 50's America, and among their fans were Kurt Vonnegut (who briefly wrote for them), Bob Newhart, Woody Allen, Jonathan Winters, Lenny Bruce, and George Carlin. Later confessed fans include Norman Lear, Carson, [nb]Carson , for all his faults, was an avid student of comedy and had an open door policy to B&R. After they performed sketches Carson would always try to find out about their personal lives or get them to dissect their work. By the measure of today's talk show milieu they were painfully reserved, unwilling to divulge any morsel of their private lives. They gave the melancholic impression of many business men who have no existence outside of their work. [/nb] Letterman,[nb]Bob Elliott's son Chris Elliott was one of the sparkplugs of the golden years of Late Night With David Letterman in the mid-1980s. It was unmissable television, a shabby little show that creatively scaled the heights of stupidity. Chris Elliott supplied impenetrable recurring characters, taunting Letterman and alienating audiences. Like his father, he was a page boy at Rockefeller, eventually graduating to staff writer and performer. Chris continued his father's legacy of pushing meager ideas beyond their merit. It has a similar atmosphere to Vic Reeves' Big Night Out, happening concurrently in the UK. Letterman's show is now predictable as cancer. A shriveled monument to Letterman's talent and longevity, drained of risk, surprise or disorientation. Canned interviews, comedy bits where nobody breaks a sweat, atrophied formula television of the worst sort.[/nb] SNL, Bob Odenkirk and Jerry Seinfeld (though I can't detect the influence). Recent outspoken advocates include Keith Olbermann [nb]In his youth, Olbermann had his mother record Bob and Ray's 3-hour WOR show while he was at school. He would edit the tapes at night for just the comedy bits. Because of his childhood efforts, a huge amount of their 1970s work is preserved, thus assuring his place in heaven. Olbermann's trivializing "worst person in the world" segment is an unfortunate tribute to Bob and Ray.[/nb]and Al Franken, not coincidently types who feel the need to entrench themselves into the Establishment.
They continued broadcasting until Ray Goulding's death in 1990. They had long passed into being a glorious anachronism, performing as if radio hadn't died decades previously. They ended their days on public radio, still producing miles of new material along with reworking old favourites (I'm fond of their satire on "Dallas", consumption and narcissism called "Garish Summit"). [nb]Kurt Vonnegut said "the best of Bob & Ray is virtually indistinguishable from the worst." Elliott is convinced he meant that as a compliment.[/nb]As CloudOfUnknowing nicely put it, their delivery became drier with age. The added joke of two old time radio hacks trying to keep hold of their dignity in a world that, unbeknownst to them, had moved on the television added a poignant dynamic. Almost like soldiers still guarding the trenches long after armistice, holding onto the outdated cornball trappings of radio like it was religion.
An impressive amount of their massive comic output will endure the ages. A Bob and Ray sketch could veer widely towards whimsy, surrealism, and deconstruction. Most perceive it to be gentle humour, but it was incisive. Even at its most sophisticated and knowing, it never sounded cynical. The more genteel Bob & Ray fan is slow to acknowledge the strain of darkness in their humour (there was a period where Wally Ballou would perish at the end of every "location report", only to be back for the next day's broadcast given another lethal assignment). The humour explored in depth the meaninglessness of existence. Mankind's fools are mostly harmless because there's so many of them. It is always important to see the stupidity of others but more important to see the stupidity in ourselves. They blew up the trivial and unimportant to gigantic amplification so that the important seems trivial (this pretentious dribble would be good fodder for their kidding).
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I wrote that rather messy overview because there is a notable connection to the name sake of this website. In 1963, there was collaboration between Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, John Bird, members of Second City, and Bob & Ray on a show called What's Going On Here? Cook, still on the US tour of Beyond The Fringe, was eager to answer This Was The Week That Was with a television program of his own, probably thinking David Frost shouldn't be the only one capitalizing on the satire boom . From all accounts, it was an ambitious straight-faced satire of television news. Directed by Miller, with the material written by the cast from improvisations before broadcast, much of the material sounds shockingly contemporary (The Anti-Medicare Association- fees are $500 for immediate cure, $200 long convalescence, for people of limited means, a lingering death for $3.98). Broadcast simultaneously to Associated Rediffusion in London (where it was praised) and New York (where it was panned). It sufficiently impressed Ed Sullivan, of all people, that he endeavored to absorb parts of it into his own program (if the bits were taken directly from the pilot or re-performed is hard to determine).
Thanks to our Squidy,[nb]Writer of the definitive history of Renwick & Marshall's Whoops Apocalypse, available with the Network DVD release. Worth the purchase just for his spectacular piece of scholarship, should be on any self-respecting comedy fan's video shelf. He also supplied invaluable research into What's Going On Here?[/nb] I was able to impose on Mr.Dr.Sir Jonathan Miller about the program. When questioned if it was successful, Miller answered "It was too smart." What's Going On Here? is an amiable obsession of mine, efforts to locate a copy are underway.

[The Cloud of Unknowing]

AJ, thanks for your brilliant post, which I've now poofily preserved for future reference.  I have to sheepishly admit to being in the comparatively early stages of appreciating Bob and Ray, but what you've written has whetted my appetite more than ever, as well as making me feel slightly melancholic that I wasn't able to appreciate them sooner.  At times their comic universe reminds me (politics aside) of the world of Peter Simple that Michael Wharton created.  (You probably don't need reminding, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Peter_Simple%27s_characters .)
Merely reading this...

They unleashed promotional gimmicks like the national tour of Smelly Dave, a massive dead whale traveling on an open flatcar, stopping at major cities to spread the word about the Bob and Ray. There was also the Bob and Ray Satellite that orbited the planet, but only 12 feet off the ground, continuously getting caught in trees and telephone wires.

... had me laughing with delight.

Thanks for the info on the Peter Cook connection - completely new to me.

I love this quote from Bob Elliot talking about the formative years of their partnership and how they didn't quite fit the usual double-act template:

"By the time we discovered we were introverts, it was too late to do anything about it."

Sorry I can't be more coherent in responding right now, but thanks so much for what you wrote.

[sirhenry]

That was wonderful, Apex. Reviews that make you laugh out loud are far too rare, and on a site dedicated to satire there's too little on its history and development in broadcasting. It is a very different medium from stand-up satire in that the audience aren't there to react to and are far less self-selecting (at least in the early days with fewer alternatives and the dominance of radio), so the shows seem to be written more for the pleasure of the writers and the improvisations are freer and more open ended. I suspect that having a much more rigid framework (in terms of what else was broadcast and allowed) helped by giving more visible boundaries to push against. And being innovators, Bob and Ray could play with the audience's expectations and the stilted stereotypes of the times in a way that's much harder these days.[nb]As television becomes increasingly formulaic and unchallenging again there is more scope for parody, though what broadcaster would want to promote a show that tears into its other output is open to question.[/nb]

I hadn't heard of their parody of the McCarthy trials, but now need to hear them. I'll see what I can find and if I'm successful I'll do a CaB radio show. There was an excellent documentary on the trials on Radio 4 in the summer - hopefully they'll work well played back to back, as well as being a timely reminder of the perils of a slow drift into repression and government by fear.

Thanks again.

eta: Just came across a wonderful quote - In an appreciation, Kurt Vonnegut wrote: "Their jokes turn out to be universal, although deeply rooted in old-time radio, because so much of life presents itself as the same dilemma: how to seem lusty and purposeful when less than nothing is going on."

And again: Anyone wanting to hear Bob and Ray could do worse than heading over to archive.org, the Aladdin's cave of audio.

[Jemble Fred]

Thanks for the info on the Peter Cook connection - completely new to me.

Yep, new facts and angles are gold dust, thanks Mr Jazz.

[Famous Mortimer]

I hadn't heard of their parody of the McCarthy trials, but now need to hear them. I'll see what I can find and if I'm successful I'll do a CaB radio show. There was an excellent documentary on the trials on Radio 4 in the summer - hopefully they'll work well played back to back, as well as being a timely reminder of the perils of a slow drift into repression and government by fear.

There's a fairly famous documentary on the McCarthy shenanigans called "Point of Order", which had an LP of the complete audio from the doc released. I have it somewhere, and if I can't find the place I originally got it from I'll upload it somewhere for you.

[Ignatius_S]

Also on archive.org are recordings of Backstage Wife (as mentioned above) as well as One Man's Family and Mister Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons. They're well worth a listen as they show the Bob & Ray parodies to be spot on - and I suspect that the two disliked the programmer, especially One Man's Family (which is nauseatingly moralising) - also I find these shows unintentionally funny in their own way.

One thing in common with all these shows is that they were all long-running (having started in the 1930s) and really didn't change in style so especially ripe for parodying.

[Neil]

Felt compelled to reread that wonderful post about Bob and Ray by ApexJazz.  As entertaining as it is informative, thank you to going to so much time and effort.  Love that post.

[Tiny Poster]

Graeme Garden's blossomed with age. He's almost Groucho-like to me now.

[Oops! Wrong Planet]

Nice to see such an astute discussion of Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding on CookdandBombd.[...]

Bumped to say Apex Jazz's post is well worth re-reading in the light of Bob Elliott's death a few days ago.

Haven't seen anything mentioned in the UK press (or forums come to that), but here are the Rolling Stone and Washington Post write-ups:
http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/bob-elliott-bob-and-ray-comedian-dead-at-92-20160203
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/pop-culture-satirist-bob-elliott-dies-at-92/2016/02/03/9ec0f682-ca98-11e5-ae11-57b6aeab993f_story.html

Hope Louis Barfe doesn't mind me linking to his upload of Bob & Ray on Bob Monkhouse's show too: http://youtu.be/oQzrG5eRILU

RIP 'ly Balou.

[NoSleep]

Damn. Sorry to hear that. RIP Bob.

[Glebe]

Graeme Garden's blossomed with age. He's almost Groucho-like to me now.

He's going to start visiting Dick Cavett every other week to insult everyone and sing a few numbers.

[greenman]

I recently had a look at some of the new Shooting Stars eps and really know what you mean. I can't remember when I first noticed it, must have been post Bang-Bang, but I'm sure there were flashes of this during it.

There's something 'gone' from them, is it down to youth? Or are they simply too comfortable now and just keep pumping out the same sort of stuff because their fans demand it? They seem so stuck in their ways and I can't imagine they're not sick of selling the same old rope by now, but they're not helping matters by not developing further which I'm sure they're capable of.

Something went wrong during the whole Monkey Trousers/Comedy All Stars era.

I think with Bang Bang you can start to see the material pulling in different directions. The desk/fighting/stotts stuff is perhaps not quite as consistently sharp as before with the latter showing more signs of working to a formula whilst a lot of the rest is pushing in more of a surreal melancholic direction, Tom Fun is I'd say the old material that translates best to that although I spose the character was quite limited previously.

The Self era shooting stars seems to mark the point where you start to see more of a spilt between coming up with what they think people want and doing stuff like Catterick more for themselves.

I'v not watched much of monkey trousers but generally I don't think the more standard stuff has ever become embarrising. The Jack Dee era shooting stars for example whilst more formulaic was never badly half assed.