Bob & Ray, the comic duo who came to personify Radio comedy in America from the 1950s to the 2000s began in the 1940s. To quote the USA Radio Museum: ” . . .when voices carried imagination into living rooms across the nation, few performers captured the spirit of wit and invention quite like Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding. Together, as Bob and Ray, they transformed the everyday rhythms of broadcasting into a playground of satire, where the absurd was treated with solemnity and the ordinary became extraordinary. Their partnership, born in Boston and perfected on NBC, was more than a comedy act — it was a cultural lens, reflecting the quirks of radio itself with a sly smile and impeccable timing. For the USA Radio Museum, their story is not simply one of laughter, but of legacy: a reminder that radio’s greatest gift has always been its ability to connect, to entertain, and to surprise.“
Bob Elliott was a disk jockey at Boston’s WHDH when he met newscaster Ray Goulding in 1946. The two men discovered an instant rapport, a gift for improvisation, and a keen understanding of the absurd. So began a radio partnership that would last for forty years.
Almost immediately, WHDH gave the new team a daily show, Matinee With Bob & Ray. In July 1951, Bob and Ray left Boston for New York. Over the next three decades, The Bob and Ray Show appeared on NBC, CBS, the Mutual Broadcasting System, and New York stations WINS, WOR and WHN. Their last series, a weekly program for National Public Radio, ran from 1982 to 1987.
Bob and Ray created and gave voice to a universe of wonderful, offbeat characters, including domestic advisor Mary McGoon, adenoidal reporter Wally Ballou and incompetent showman Barry Campbell. The duo also parodied radio and television with spoofs that often outlasted the original source material, including Mr. Trace, Keener Than Most Persons; Jack Headstrong, The All-American American and the soap operas One Fella’s Family and Mary Backstage, Noble Wife.
This post features the Christmas episode from their series “Bob And Ray Present The CBS Radio Network” broadcast on December 24, 1959.
