Bob Elliott, 92; delivered droll, dead-pan gags for decades .
WASHINGTON - He portrayed the vapid man-on-the-street reporter Wally
Ballou, "winner of over seven international diction awards. He was the
pitchman for Einbinder Flypaper, "the brand you've gradually grown to
trust over the course of three generations. And he was Harlow . . . P.
. . . Whitcomb, who spoke with exasperatingly long pauses as "president
. . . and . . . recording . . . secretary . . . of the . . . Slow . . .
Talkers . . . of . . . America. In a career that was as ridiculous as
it was sublime, Bob Elliott, who died Tuesday at 92 in Cundys Harbor,
Maine, was half of the comedy team Bob and Ray. The Boston native and
the late Ray Goulding were among the drollest and most inventive
pop-culture satirists of their generation. Mr. Elliott also was the
patriarch of a comedy family that included his actor-writer son, Chris
Elliott, and a granddaughter, actress-comedian Abby Elliott, both
former cast members of "Saturday Night Live. Chris Elliott confirmed
the death, citing throat cancer as the cause. Bob Elliott's
show-business legacy rested on his partnership with Goulding, who died
in 1990. On the radio, the duo's primary medium, they broadcast "from
approximately coast to coast," as they liked to say, on outlets
including CBS and National Public Radio. They were a seminal influence
on entertainers including Woody Allen, David Letterman, Jonathan
Winters, and "Saturday Night Live" creator Lorne Michaels. A hallmark
of Bob and Ray comedy was bone-dry delivery of the absurd. With
masterly timing - Mr. Elliott with a nasal deadpan, Goulding with
booming authority - Bob and Ray mocked the banalities of newscasts,
politics, sports, and advertising. "The target of Bob's and Ray's
satire is everyday human foolishness. Their humor is pointed, but never
mean-spirited," The Boston Globe's Diane White wrote in 1983. "Their
two-man repertory company of fools, bores, curmudgeons, stumblers,
bumblers, braggarts, eccentrics, dupes, lunatics, deluded souls, and
shameless self-promoters has kept their fans enthralled since 1946, the
year they began working together on WHDH radio in Boston. One of their
favorite skits involved Ballou interviewing a paperclip tycoon who
tackles "waste and inefficiency" by running a sweatshop of indentured
servants. Employees, earning 14 cents a week, are bound by a "99-year
sweetheart contract" and imprisoned if they quit. "How can anybody
possibly live on 14 cents a week? Ballou asks. Goulding, as the
industrialist, replies defensively, "We don't pry into the personal
lives of our employees, Wally. Their playfully warped sensibilities
often involved sly commentaries of the conventions of radio and TV, and
the people who take those mediums seriously. New York Times critic
Clive Barnes wrote: "They work masterfully close to the very things
they are gently mocking, and this gives their sensible nonsense its
special flavor. For one thing it shows just how much arrant nonsense we
actually accept in television. Recurring characters included sports
reporter Biff Burns, who once interviewed the world-champion "low
jumper," and the women's show host Mary McGoon, who meandered from
everyday recipes (frozen ginger ale salad, pabulum popsicles) to
homespun medical advice (her cold remedy: goose fat in an Argyle sock,
hung around the neck). Bob and Ray voiced a panoply of overwrought
characters from faux soap operas such as "General Pharmacy," "Garish
Summit," and "Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife" (a parody of a long-running
radio saga, "Backstage Wife," about a woman named Mary Noble). Daring
for the time, they used sequences in "Mary Backstayge" to satirize
Senator Joseph R. McCarthy's anti-Communist crusade; the demagogic
Wisconsin Republican was reimagined as Zoning Commissioner Carstairs, a
ruthless opponent to building permits that would undermine the way of
life in bucolic Skunk Haven, Long Island. Decades later, Bob Elliott
told The New York Times he and Goulding often went to a bar near the
radio studio to watch the televised McCarthy hearings. "Then we'd use
the material in the next day's show," he said. "I consider that, from a
creative point of view, one of the top things we did. They always
closed their shows with the same signoff: "This is Ray Goulding,
reminding you to write if you get work. "And Bob Elliott, reminding you
to hang by your thumbs. Admirers extended far beyond show business
figures such as Allen and Letterman. One of their most devoted fans was
novelist Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who wrote in a foreword to the 1975
collection "Write If You Get Work: The Best of Bob & Ray": "They
feature Americans who are almost always fourth-rate or below, engaged
in enterprises which, if not contemptible, are at least insane. "And
while other comedians show us persons tormented by bad luck and enemies
and so on, Bob and Ray's characters threaten to wreck themselves and
their surroundings with their own stupidity. . . . Man is not evil,
they seem to say. He is simply too hilariously stupid to survive.
Robert Brackett Elliott was born in Boston on March 26, 1923, and he
grew up in nearby Winchester. His father, who sold insurance,
introduced him to the wry humor of author Robert Benchley. His mother
refinished antiques. While attending Winchester High School, Bob, an
only child, developed his radio skills over the school's public address
system. After his Army service in World War II - he was in the supply
corps in Europe - the comic partnership coalesced on Boston's radio
station WHDH. Mr. Elliott was a disc jockey and Goulding a news
announcer, and they began improvising during the dead air between
segments. "It wasn't always funny," he recalled, "but it was something.
Within a few months, WHDH gave them their own show. New Englanders
liked their patter so much that the station soon gave them another,
"Breakfast With Bob and Ray. After five years in Boston, they went to
New York, auditioned for NBC and were given a 13-week contract for both
radio and TV. "The Bob and Ray Show" often featured ad-libbed moments,
but also relied on writers to contribute sketches. The TV cast included
Cloris Leachman and Audrey Meadows. "The Bob and Ray Show" was heard on
CBS and Mutual Broadcasting System; its last incarnation aired on
National Public Radio, 1982 to 1987. In a sprawling career, they drew
enthusiastic reviews in the early 1970s for their Broadway show "Bob
and Ray: The Two and Only" and became favorite late-night guests of
Johnny Carson and Letterman. They introduced themselves to a younger
audience with their 1979 appearance on a "Saturday Night Live" special.
To Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy? ," featuring Jane Curtin,
Laraine Newman and Gilda Radner as disco backup singers, Bob and Ray
are seated in business attire and declaim the chorus, "If you want my
body, and you think I'm sexy, come on, sugar, let me know. After
Goulding's death, Mr. Elliott played the father - he called it
"typecasting" - to Chris Elliott on the 1990s Fox TV sitcom "Get a
Life. His first marriage, to Jane Underwood, ended in divorce. His
second wife, Lee Knight, died in 2012. In addition to his son, Mr.
Elliott leaves a daughter, Amy Andersen, and son, Bob, from his second
marriage; two stepdaughters he adopted, Colony Elliott Santangelo and
Shannon; 11 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Bob and Ray
often were asked why they were billed in that order. Mr. Elliott once
explained that their first show, in Boston, was called "Matinee with
Bob and Ray," because of the preference in those days for catchy
rhyming titles. He added, "It would have sounded kind of dumb to say
'Matinob with Ray and Bob. Material from The New York Times was used in
this obituary. .
