Name: Bob and Ray on Letterman, June 2, 1982, Upgrade
Uploaded: 2016-11-28T19:42:11.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Bob and Ray on Letterman, June 2, 1982, Upgrade' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-11-28. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Bob and Ray on Letterman, June 2, 1982, Upgrade' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-11-28. Transcript available.

thank you paul shaker ladies and gentlemen we have a fine show for you folks
tonight
if you're thinking of going to sleep forget it you can sleep on the job what
the hell
i know i do uh my first guests are among the very few performers who are
immediately
identified by their first names alone uh like elvis sammy or larry besides this
for the last 35 years they have been two of the most imaginative and
influential
comedians in show business we're proud to welcome bob and ray
i understand uh you gentlemen are being honored with a uh you have a retrospective
at a at a major
museum yeah the museum of broadcasting here in new york is going to have what
is called a
retrospective from uh june 15th to july 10th how does that make you guys feel
old
when you looked on in retrospective ways it makes you feel like it's uh time
has passed by a little
bit we used to do a thing called the trophy train i don't know if you remember
that we sent it all
around the country it had ray's first pair of ice skates on it and uh my first
communion suit right
and people could pay 75 cents to go in and look at all this stuff oh boy so
there's going to be a
lot of that at the uh that's the retrospective yeah so if people are wondering
now what to do with
their summer this sounds like the perfect thing to me oh real highlight yeah it's
a good reason to come
to new york yeah and that opens uh when june 15 15th yeah uh you gentlemen
started in local radio uh boston
and when these the things that we see you do on various shows now all look so
uh well polished and
rehearsed and so forth and tightly scripted but they started out as improv
right yeah for the most part
everything we we did uh like our broadway show was all uh improvisational but
when we decided to do that
show we went through a lot of our old material and we had to uh transcribe it
onto onto paper from tape
so that eventually we had to memorize what we had originally ad-libbed which
was a funny turnabout
actually when when you uh when you when you go through all of that do you uh do
you look at
something a couple of days later and say i don't know it's not too strong and
eliminate it or always yeah
now as you mentioned memory i know that you've uh you have something prepared
for us this evening in
the way of uh this memory i forget no memory we have a very distinguished uh
gentleman he's one of the
world's famous memory experts he's uh the great uh the great uh what was that
my name is hubert r gruber
i know but uh weren't you bill is the great something or other yes i was known
as the great blotto
but i'm off the stuff now oh well let's see uh i know that uh we all remember
you from the early
television days and your great vaudeville act but could you bring us up to date
tell us what you're
doing currently yes currently i'm offering my services to business and industry
i help to teach young
executives to have better memories oh that sounds like uh fascinating work well
you run across a lot
of meatheads but uh generally it is interesting and i find i'm able to improve
uh make them remember
people they're introduced to well could you tell us uh how it works how your
system works certainly well
suppose you're introduced to a man named four dice you form a mental picture of
four dice
thereafter whenever you're introduced to that man you think of four dice you
remember his name
well how would that work with a name like mine goulding for instance what goulding
well suppose your name was ram shot you'd think of uh you'd think of a hunter
shooting a ram and you'd
never forget the name uh-huh well now how would that work with my partner's
name mr elliot
suppose his name was richmond oh you'd think of a man surrounded by wealth a
rich man
well in other words what you're telling us here is that your system doesn't
work for names like elliot
and goulding yes it does but that's in the more advanced case and i don't want
to go into that
right right here on the air so then you're goulding what goulding yes so the
whole thing now is that you
teach young executives how to remember names that's that's about it and we give
them a course which
includes remembering long lists of numbers that seems to help their memory a
great deal for instance
we give them number like 351 and after a few weeks of study they're able to
read that right back to you
three five one oh you've taken like
well i i think our time is about up all right it's been nice talking to you mr
gruber and uh
anytime you're in new york please come by and all right chat with us how do i
get out which door was
so thank you paul welcome back bob and ray are with us and uh in addition to
the big uh of course
the uh retrospective at the museum of broadcasting you you were preparing a
project now for national
public radio back on the radio again yeah we're going to do a series beginning
in october uh uh what's
called the sunday sunday show sunday show national public radio yeah and i'm
just taking a guess here but
beyond sunday yeah yeah uh and it's what kind of things will we hear here
well you hear a lot of old bob and rayianna we'll have like a half hour segment
in that show for the
first eight weeks and uh we'll bring back a we have a new soap opera we're
bringing back
or uh starting i should say called the uh what is it called garish summit garish
summit
it's our answer to dallas and all those other shows it sounds like a blockbuster
it is i think so
we uh we have also some video tape uh i guess this will go along with the what
the folks will see at
the uh museum of broadcasting uh this is from a early tv show or maybe yeah
this goes back to
51 it's two other guys when we look at this yeah 1951 right 1951 for a series
done get my glasses out to
look at this you folks at home may want to do the same thing uh do we need to
say any more about this
this is no it was one of the features that we did from time to time very short
my name is bud sternly
have you ever seen me before no i never have and have you received any remuneration
for the impartial
survey which we're about to conduct which i understand you've agreed to take is
that right that's right
sir i have you have received no remuneration no sir i have not now sir i
thought you're about
to put your finger in the pie there that's right sir i am uh do you put your
finger in many pies no sir
i do not well i have a pie over here sir i would ask you to take your choice
which one you'll try
first on this experiment you're going to try your own pie first all right sir
all right now you've stuck
your finger in your pie right now you just put that down and try the pie that
we have here i'll help you
now sir you have tried both pies both ours and your own i wonder if you would
give us the results
of your text well i like your pie infinitely better you like our pie but the
crust is more crunchier
more crunchy and the apples i believe was slightly better slightly better has a
finer aroma better
and uh it's milder much milder thank you very much
that uh you can't beat a mild pie and i think i saw the hat you were wearing on
the trophy train
that you mentioned earlier when i came to my hometown a few years ago wally
blue's microphone is on there
yeah and uh a bunch of was this a weekly a daily show daily yeah right out of nbc
right here this
well was it this floor could have been i think it was coast to coast 15 minutes
coast to coast yeah
and uh you guys were responsible for quite a lot of programming weren't you
several hours a week
oh yeah we when we first were here at nbc we had a network we had an early
warning a local radio show
from like 6 to 8 30 and then we had a network radio show from 11 15 to 11 30 in
the morning
and at night we had a a coast to coast television show at 7 or 7 15 for 15
minutes and then on saturday
night we had a one hour radio program good i don't know how we were on that
treadmill for so long
actually but we did that for you guys were pretty much the franchise then for
the network for a while
we were presenting nbc every other time we turned around
does it interest you or uh that your appeal has not grown through the years it's
it's always well
actually it has grown through the years
what i'm trying to say is they're pretty much washed up at this point um what i
meant to say as as the
as the years have gone by uh the the age group to which you appeal has always
broadened
does that make any sense we should have said that the first time
we have yeah no no well i think we all do we all understand what i meant
uh i'll tell you what we're going to do we're going to pause here and collect
ourselves and
not to mention our thoughts we'll be back after station identification with
more of bob and ray
hello i'm larry bud melman president of melman bus lines with another of my
five good reasons
why you should ride melman buses number two clambering over row after row of
seats is dangerous
especially in a moving vehicle that's why we've built an island each and every
melman bus enabling the
passenger to reach his selected seat with ease and comfort the bus of the
future is here today at melman
thank you bob and ray uh with us tonight also coming up later in the show
friend lebowitz will be joining us
and uh before we go any farther as they say before they go any farther i want
to mention
that uh your son uh works on our staff chris elliot right over there mr elliot
in fact he's been on
the program several times
funny man and uh now he's he's your son he's not actually bob and ray's son is
he oh that's the one
one case where that doesn't work we gotta we get that hang up your hat bob and
ray a lot of times yeah
um does does uh does he ever listen to things you do and help you write them or
uh well he listens to
everything we do i guess yeah yeah that's what i was trying to say earlier that
uh you are one of the
few acts in show business who has uh been very successful for a very long
period of time and still
uh seems to appeal all the time to a younger and younger audience well i hope
so
uh now you have a little yes sir i'm sorry no i was going to say anything i was
just listening
uh you have a little something else you were going to do for us well another
guest if we
if you're sure i would love to have another he's a he's a world traveler and uh
certainly has a prominent
place in in the broadcasting field because he's written books he's uh best of
all he's a raconteur
we know him by his dapper little trademark a pencil thin mustache
he is martin lasur ladies and gentlemen oh maybe uh you could tell us how that
happened first of all
martin you mean my dapper little trademark yeah well uh i wasn't thinking while
i was shaving this
morning and uh my dapper trademark went on the floor sorry to hear about that
well the doctor i called
the doctor he said it'll go in in about two weeks and uh martin has canceled
all other engagements until
that happens and we're very appreciative what we want to get to is some of
those stories that that you
tell that only you can tell that go over so well the stories that uh adventures
you have well sure you
know i when i first started in this business i was a cub reporter on the old
saint paul ledger dispatch
eagle tribune courier citizen daily item and morning sun that was a famous
merger wasn't it yes it was
well i was in the city room there one day and i heard the phone ring and uh
the editor picked up the phone and he was talking it seems that there was a man
hanging
from the uh 15th floor of the vaseline building over at uh 15th and chestnut
street so i i said to the
editor i said uh could i go over and cover that story this would be a big break
for you in the newspaper
game oh i don't know so uh he said to me go on over he said take public
transportation what was that
trolley car so i get over there about 15 minutes later and still hanging up
there yeah and there's a
crowd of people policemen firemen fire trucks and i said well look has anybody
tried to uh humor this
man you know tell him a few stories maybe uh get his mind off his troubles and
you know talk him back
well they do that at times like that i've noticed they said no i said would
would you mind if i tried let
me ask you this were you known for having a sense of humor then not
particularly so i go in the
building they have the uh the power turned off so i have to climb up all these
flights i get up there
and there's a policeman standing outside the door of the room where he's
hanging and i said i've been
authorized to go in and talk to this gentleman and he said well go ahead and he
opened the door for me
so i go in and i grew up to the window and i said i said to him i said uh what'd
you say to him
i said to him
well maybe that'll come back to you mark we gotta move along remember a story
uh you told us about
fishing off the north atlantic off the grand banks you remember that one the
fishing story oh oh yeah
i was doing a uh 1500 word piece for a magazine on fishing in the north atlantic
that's a rough
rigorous tough kind of life isn't it well it's not for me we're out there it
was in uh november
and there was cold and the high seas and all i'm sitting there and they're
dragging in all this mackerel
and haddock and halibut and everything and i look over here to the starboard
and i see this uh
submarine surface with a foreign insignia on it oh is this wartime
no i don't know but i see this thing happen so i i said the captain i said
captain i said
captain i said
martin i i i i don't i hate to interrupt it do you have one story you do
remember the ending to
wrap it all up i wrote one down so i wouldn't forget it goes like this well
that's all right for you
that's not true sir but this is tuesday
that's what's going to happen right now and then we're going to pause we'll be
back to take a look
at new york city's vacation paradise staten island

Bob and Ray on Letterman, June 2, 1982, Upgrade

thank you paul shaker ladies and gentlemen we have a fine show for you folks
tonight
if you're thinking of going to sleep forget it you can sleep on the job what
the hell
i know i do uh my first guests are among the very few performers who are
immediately
identified by their first names alone uh like elvis sammy or larry besides this
for the last 35 years they have been two of the most imaginative and
influential
comedians in show business we're proud to welcome bob and ray
i understand uh you gentlemen are being honored with a uh you have a retrospective
at a at a major
museum yeah the museum of broadcasting here in new york is going to have what
is called a
retrospective from uh june 15th to july 10th how does that make you guys feel
old
when you looked on in retrospective ways it makes you feel like it's uh time
has passed by a little
bit we used to do a thing called the trophy train i don't know if you remember
that we sent it all
around the country it had ray's first pair of ice skates on it and uh my first
communion suit right
and people could pay 75 cents to go in and look at all this stuff oh boy so
there's going to be a
lot of that at the uh that's the retrospective yeah so if people are wondering
now what to do with
their summer this sounds like the perfect thing to me oh real highlight yeah it's
a good reason to come
to new york yeah and that opens uh when june 15 15th yeah uh you gentlemen
started in local radio uh boston
and when these the things that we see you do on various shows now all look so
uh well polished and
rehearsed and so forth and tightly scripted but they started out as improv
right yeah for the most part
everything we we did uh like our broadway show was all uh improvisational but
when we decided to do that
show we went through a lot of our old material and we had to uh transcribe it
onto onto paper from tape
so that eventually we had to memorize what we had originally ad-libbed which
was a funny turnabout
actually when when you uh when you when you go through all of that do you uh do
you look at
something a couple of days later and say i don't know it's not too strong and
eliminate it or always yeah
now as you mentioned memory i know that you've uh you have something prepared
for us this evening in
the way of uh this memory i forget no memory we have a very distinguished uh
gentleman he's one of the
world's famous memory experts he's uh the great uh the great uh what was that
my name is hubert r gruber
i know but uh weren't you bill is the great something or other yes i was known
as the great blotto
but i'm off the stuff now oh well let's see uh i know that uh we all remember
you from the early
television days and your great vaudeville act but could you bring us up to date
tell us what you're
doing currently yes currently i'm offering my services to business and industry
i help to teach young
executives to have better memories oh that sounds like uh fascinating work well
you run across a lot
of meatheads but uh generally it is interesting and i find i'm able to improve
uh make them remember
people they're introduced to well could you tell us uh how it works how your
system works certainly well
suppose you're introduced to a man named four dice you form a mental picture of
four dice
thereafter whenever you're introduced to that man you think of four dice you
remember his name
well how would that work with a name like mine goulding for instance what goulding
well suppose your name was ram shot you'd think of uh you'd think of a hunter
shooting a ram and you'd
never forget the name uh-huh well now how would that work with my partner's
name mr elliot
suppose his name was richmond oh you'd think of a man surrounded by wealth a
rich man
well in other words what you're telling us here is that your system doesn't
work for names like elliot
and goulding yes it does but that's in the more advanced case and i don't want
to go into that
right right here on the air so then you're goulding what goulding yes so the
whole thing now is that you
teach young executives how to remember names that's that's about it and we give
them a course which
includes remembering long lists of numbers that seems to help their memory a
great deal for instance
we give them number like 351 and after a few weeks of study they're able to
read that right back to you
three five one oh you've taken like
well i i think our time is about up all right it's been nice talking to you mr
gruber and uh
anytime you're in new york please come by and all right chat with us how do i
get out which door was
so thank you paul welcome back bob and ray are with us and uh in addition to
the big uh of course
the uh retrospective at the museum of broadcasting you you were preparing a
project now for national
public radio back on the radio again yeah we're going to do a series beginning
in october uh uh what's
called the sunday sunday show sunday show national public radio yeah and i'm
just taking a guess here but
beyond sunday yeah yeah uh and it's what kind of things will we hear here
well you hear a lot of old bob and rayianna we'll have like a half hour segment
in that show for the
first eight weeks and uh we'll bring back a we have a new soap opera we're
bringing back
or uh starting i should say called the uh what is it called garish summit garish
summit
it's our answer to dallas and all those other shows it sounds like a blockbuster
it is i think so
we uh we have also some video tape uh i guess this will go along with the what
the folks will see at
the uh museum of broadcasting uh this is from a early tv show or maybe yeah
this goes back to
51 it's two other guys when we look at this yeah 1951 right 1951 for a series
done get my glasses out to
look at this you folks at home may want to do the same thing uh do we need to
say any more about this
this is no it was one of the features that we did from time to time very short
my name is bud sternly
have you ever seen me before no i never have and have you received any remuneration
for the impartial
survey which we're about to conduct which i understand you've agreed to take is
that right that's right
sir i have you have received no remuneration no sir i have not now sir i
thought you're about
to put your finger in the pie there that's right sir i am uh do you put your
finger in many pies no sir
i do not well i have a pie over here sir i would ask you to take your choice
which one you'll try
first on this experiment you're going to try your own pie first all right sir
all right now you've stuck
your finger in your pie right now you just put that down and try the pie that
we have here i'll help you
now sir you have tried both pies both ours and your own i wonder if you would
give us the results
of your text well i like your pie infinitely better you like our pie but the
crust is more crunchier
more crunchy and the apples i believe was slightly better slightly better has a
finer aroma better
and uh it's milder much milder thank you very much
that uh you can't beat a mild pie and i think i saw the hat you were wearing on
the trophy train
that you mentioned earlier when i came to my hometown a few years ago wally
blue's microphone is on there
yeah and uh a bunch of was this a weekly a daily show daily yeah right out of nbc
right here this
well was it this floor could have been i think it was coast to coast 15 minutes
coast to coast yeah
and uh you guys were responsible for quite a lot of programming weren't you
several hours a week
oh yeah we when we first were here at nbc we had a network we had an early
warning a local radio show
from like 6 to 8 30 and then we had a network radio show from 11 15 to 11 30 in
the morning
and at night we had a a coast to coast television show at 7 or 7 15 for 15
minutes and then on saturday
night we had a one hour radio program good i don't know how we were on that
treadmill for so long
actually but we did that for you guys were pretty much the franchise then for
the network for a while
we were presenting nbc every other time we turned around
does it interest you or uh that your appeal has not grown through the years it's
it's always well
actually it has grown through the years
what i'm trying to say is they're pretty much washed up at this point um what i
meant to say as as the
as the years have gone by uh the the age group to which you appeal has always
broadened
does that make any sense we should have said that the first time
we have yeah no no well i think we all do we all understand what i meant
uh i'll tell you what we're going to do we're going to pause here and collect
ourselves and
not to mention our thoughts we'll be back after station identification with
more of bob and ray
hello i'm larry bud melman president of melman bus lines with another of my
five good reasons
why you should ride melman buses number two clambering over row after row of
seats is dangerous
especially in a moving vehicle that's why we've built an island each and every
melman bus enabling the
passenger to reach his selected seat with ease and comfort the bus of the
future is here today at melman
thank you bob and ray uh with us tonight also coming up later in the show
friend lebowitz will be joining us
and uh before we go any farther as they say before they go any farther i want
to mention
that uh your son uh works on our staff chris elliot right over there mr elliot
in fact he's been on
the program several times
funny man and uh now he's he's your son he's not actually bob and ray's son is
he oh that's the one
one case where that doesn't work we gotta we get that hang up your hat bob and
ray a lot of times yeah
um does does uh does he ever listen to things you do and help you write them or
uh well he listens to
everything we do i guess yeah yeah that's what i was trying to say earlier that
uh you are one of the
few acts in show business who has uh been very successful for a very long
period of time and still
uh seems to appeal all the time to a younger and younger audience well i hope
so
uh now you have a little yes sir i'm sorry no i was going to say anything i was
just listening
uh you have a little something else you were going to do for us well another
guest if we
if you're sure i would love to have another he's a he's a world traveler and uh
certainly has a prominent
place in in the broadcasting field because he's written books he's uh best of
all he's a raconteur
we know him by his dapper little trademark a pencil thin mustache
he is martin lasur ladies and gentlemen oh maybe uh you could tell us how that
happened first of all
martin you mean my dapper little trademark yeah well uh i wasn't thinking while
i was shaving this
morning and uh my dapper trademark went on the floor sorry to hear about that
well the doctor i called
the doctor he said it'll go in in about two weeks and uh martin has canceled
all other engagements until
that happens and we're very appreciative what we want to get to is some of
those stories that that you
tell that only you can tell that go over so well the stories that uh adventures
you have well sure you
know i when i first started in this business i was a cub reporter on the old
saint paul ledger dispatch
eagle tribune courier citizen daily item and morning sun that was a famous
merger wasn't it yes it was
well i was in the city room there one day and i heard the phone ring and uh
the editor picked up the phone and he was talking it seems that there was a man
hanging
from the uh 15th floor of the vaseline building over at uh 15th and chestnut
street so i i said to the
editor i said uh could i go over and cover that story this would be a big break
for you in the newspaper
game oh i don't know so uh he said to me go on over he said take public
transportation what was that
trolley car so i get over there about 15 minutes later and still hanging up
there yeah and there's a
crowd of people policemen firemen fire trucks and i said well look has anybody
tried to uh humor this
man you know tell him a few stories maybe