Bob Elliott died at 92 Tuesday after a long career in comedy as the other half of the legendary "Bob and Ray" show of radio and television.
He passed away at his home in Cundy's Harbor, Maine and his son, comedian and actor Chris Elliott, confirmed to
The New York Times that his father died of throat cancer.
Elliott joined Ray Goulding, who died in 1990, to become the comedy team of "Bob and Ray" on Boston radio and then on NBC radio, said
People magazine. They had a television show on NBC from 1951 to 1953.
"'Bob and Ray' took their naturally sonorous radio voices and bent them into every imaginable shape, creating (what a New Yorker writer called) 'a surrealistic Dickensian repertory company, which chastened the fools of the world with hyperbole, slapstick, parody, verbal nonsense, non sequitur, and sheer wit, all of it clean, subtle, and gentle,'" The New Yorker's Joshua Rothman wrote in 2013.
Elliott and Goulding went on to perform on "The Ed Sullivan Show," "The Tonight Show" and Broadway, noted People. Elliott, who often played the straight man in the comedy duo, continued to perform with "American Radio Company of the Air," after Goulding died.
Elliott portrayed Chris Elliott's father in the Fox television series "Get a Life" and the movie "Cabin Boy." Chris Elliott and his daughter, Abby, became the first parent-sibling duo to be cast members on the long-running live comedy series "Saturday Night Live."
On Wednesday, Abby Elliott shared a photo on Twitter of her and her grandfather when she was young.
Others shared their condolences on social media.
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