If you were ever a fan of the great Bob (Elliott) and Ray (Goulding) you may recall the non-identical twin band leaders Clyde and Claude McBeeBee, the McBeeBee Twins. Interviewed by Elliott, the twins always spoke in near unison, just out of sync.
The twins appeared in a funny segment of the 1979 special Bob and Ray, Jane, Larraine and Gilda. In that segment the twins go on a double date with Gilda Radner and Jane Curtin. The clip of that segment used to be separately available on YouTube. Now video of the special in its entirety is posted here (the McBeeBee Twins segment is at 11:10).
Whitney Balliett perfectly described the comedy of Bob and Ray in his New Yorker profile of the duo:
Bob & Ray invented, dreamed up the lines for, and then played, mainly on radio and television, a surrealistic Dickensian repertory company, which chastens the fools of the world with hyperbole, slapstick, parody, verbal nonsense, non sequitur, and sheer wit, all of it clean, subtle and gentle…Bob & Ray’s humor turns on their faultless timing and on their infinite sense of the ridiculous. It is also framed by that special sly, dry, wasteless vision of life perfected during the last couple of centuries by middle-class New Englanders…
I went looking for that clip of the McBeeBee Twins on a double date this morning. Instead, I came up with the twins closing out the encore of Bob and Ray’s 1970 show The Two and Only, preceded by “Children’s Menu.” Listen up only if you can tolerate brilliant silliness and need a laugh.
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