... ly Ballou here in Times Square

Bob, left, and Ray, right.

I note, with great sadness, the passing Feb. 2 of Bob Elliott, one half of the great Bob and Ray, one of my two favorite comedy teams (the other being, of course, the Marx Brothers). I bought the soundtrack album to Bob and Ray: The Two and Only with paperboy money when I was 12, and a year later, I saw the touring company (which consisted of the same cast) at the now-defunct Locust Theater in Philadelphia. A few years later I followed Bob and Ray on WOR in New York (which I could pick up in Southeastern Pa.) and then on National Public Radio.

I never missed a chance to hear them, if I could help it.  They were clean, subtle to the vanishing point, and at their best, hilarious. I was such a fan that in the early 1990s, while I was active in community theater in the Washington, D.C., area, I strung together several of my favorite bits into a one-act play I called "The Bob and Ray Suite," which I directed and appeared in and which turned out to be a great hit.

Having no no idea how to get the performance rights to the  material, I wrote to the Museum of TV and Radio in New York, asking that my request be forwarded to Bob, wherever he might be. Weeks later, I was surprised delighted to find a typewritten response from Bob Elliott in my mailbox. (The return address on the envelope was Cundy's Harbor, Maine, where Bob was reported to have died.) Bob granted me permission to perform the skits without payment. He asked only that the program give proper credit. I still have the letter.