Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Ray Bolger Show( A.K.A. Where's Raymond)

The Ray Bolger Show ( a.k.a. Where's Raymond) aired from October 1953 until June 1955 on ABC.

Singer-dancer Ray Bolger tried 2 situation-comedy formats in 2 successive years in the mid 1950's and had little luck with either. The 1953-1954 edition called, Where's Raymond, cast him as Raymond Wallace, a musical-comedy star with a bright, infectious personality but an unfortunate tendency to arrive at the theater at the last possible moment before the show began-causing constant pandemonium. Jonathan ( Allyn Joslyn) was his meticulous agent( and brother), Pete ( Richard Erdman) his pal, and June ( Betty Lynn), a friend who ran a restaurant near the theater. This format was little more than an excuse to get Ray into one of his dance routines in each show, often employing one of his famous characterizations such as his role in the Broadway show Where's Charley? ( where he introduced "Once In Love With Amy") or the scarecrow from The Wizard Of Oz.

In the fall of 1954 the program became The Ray Bolger Show. It still had Ray cast as Raymond Wallace but this time he was in love with a young lass from Iowa named Susan ( Marjie Millar), who was trying to achieve fame in the big city as a writer. His attempts to help her inevitably backfired. Of the previous year's supporting cast , Pete returned, being joined by Susan, her roommate Katie ( Christine Nelson), and Ray's new friend Artie ( Charlie Cantor). Sylvia Lewis who served as Ray's dancing partner in the big production numbers, was the choreographer for Ray's show throughout it's 2 year run.

The Theme Song Lyrics

Once In Love With Amy (from the 1948 Broadway musical Where's Charley?) words and music by Frank Loesser

Once in love with Amy, always in love with Amy
Ever and ever fascinated by her, sets your heart afire to stay.

Once you're kissed by Amy, tear up your list it's Amy
Ply her with bonbons, poetry, and flowers, moon a million hours away.

You might be quite the fickle-hearted rover so carefree and bold
Who loves a girl and later thinks it over and just quits cold.

But once in love with Amy, always in love with Amy
Ever and ever sweetly you'll romance her, trouble is the answer will be
That Amy'd rather stay in love with me.

(instrumental), always in love with Amy
Ever and ever fascinated by her, sets your heart afire to stay.

(instrumental), get rid of your list it's Amy
Ply her with bonbons, poetry, and flowers, moon a million hours away.

You might be quite the fickle-hearted rover so carefree and bold
Who loves a girl and later thinks it over and just quits cold.

But once in love with Amy, always in love with Amy
Ever and ever sweetly you'll romance her, trouble is the answer will be
That Amy'd rather stay in love with me.

An Article from Time Magazines on some of the new TV shows of 1953

New Shows
Monday, Oct. 26, 1953

Where's Raymond? (Thurs. 8:30 p.m., ABC-TV) is an amusing exhibition of perpetual motion by Ray Bolger. As a fancy-free Broadway dancer who is the despair of his starchy manager-brother (Allyn Joslyn), Bolger squanders his salary, plays marbles with the neighborhood kids, habitually gets to the theater seconds before curtain time. But once onstage, he is his familiar self, dancing on rubber legs, rolling soulful eyes, singing like he never left his morning shower. Although the hero is a bit too addlepated, Bolger-in-motion makes up for all shortcomings. Sponsors: American Tobacco Co. and Sherwin-Williams Co.

Jamie (Mon. 7:30 p.m.. ABC-TV) puts eleven-year-old Brandon (Shane) De Wilde to work, as Jamieson John Francis McHummer. in the "heartwarming story of an orphan lad in search of a real friend among his many well-meaning relatives." Young Brandon makes a captivating orphan, the trial and delight of his understanding grandfather, Ernest Truex. Sponsors: Duffy-Mott Co. and Ekco Products.

Topper (Fri. 8:30 p.m., CBS-TV), after 27 years of consorting with ghosts in Thorne Smith's novels and in the movies, starts all over again on TV. As Topper,

Leo G. Carroll is properly stuffy and henpecked (by Lee Patrick) until a playfully dead young couple (Anne Jeffreys and Robert Sterling) and their 165-lb St. Bernard show him how to have his fun and his wife's adoration too. Despite the convulsive dubbed-in laughter, it is a whimsical half-hour with a comic formula. Sponsor: R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.

Colonel Humphrey Flack (Wed. 9 p.m., Du Mont) is a supercilious old rogue (played by Alan Mowbray), who is supposed to be "a modern Robin Hood with a heart of gold" because the victims of his magnificent swindles are swindlers who think they are swindling him. This apparently makes everything all right. Sponsor: American Chicle Co.

The Marriage (Sun. 7:30 p.m., NBC Radio") involves the family problems of Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, who made domesticity pay off handsomely in the Broadway hit play, The Fourposter. As Ben and Liz Marriott—17 years married, two children—they give refreshingly restrained performances, make the most of intelligently written scripts which sometimes skirt close to radio taboos, e.g., when daughter protests that brother has gone to the bathroom with the complete works of James Fenimore Cooper. Unsponsored.

Here is Ray Bolger's Obituary from The New York Times

RAY BOLGER, SCARECROW IN 'OZ,' DIES

By GLENN FOWLER
Published: January 16, 1987

Ray Bolger, the loose-limbed song-and-dance man who became known to millions as the Scarecrow in ''The Wizard of Oz,'' died yesterday of cancer in Los Angeles. He had his 83d birthday last Saturday and lived in Beverly Hills.

Among his many roles on stage, screen and television in a career than spanned six decades, none captured the public imagination more than his appearance in the 1939 movie starring Judy Garland that sent him, along with the Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr) and the Tin Woodman (Jack Haley), on a journey along the Yellow Brick Road with Dorothy, the girl from Kansas uprooted by a cyclone, in her search for the Wizard (Frank Morgan).

The last survivor of the four, Mr. Bolger also outlived their nemesis, Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West, who died in 1985. The film, in which the Scarecrow's lean, seemingly straw-filled body is propelled by long legs that bend with the wind, is a perennial favorite on television, being shown worldwide at least once a year.

The Broadway stage was Mr. Bolger's first and abiding love. Born Raymond Wallace Bolger in Boston on Jan. 10, 1904, he began acting in amateur theatricals and at one point was dismissed by an insurance company after being caught dancing in a hallway. He Started at 19

His got his first paid acting job at the age of 19 with a repertory company and soon was appearing in vaudeville with Gus Edwards. There followed Broadway appearances in ''George White's Scandals'' (1931), ''Life Begins at 8:40'' (1934) and, in 1936, the musical ''On Your Toes,'' in which he won acclaim for his dancing in the number ''Slaughter on 10th Avenue,'' choreographed by George Balanchine.

Soon he was in Hollywood appearing in such musicals as ''The Great Ziegfeld,'' ''Rosalie'' and ''Sweethearts'' as well as ''The Wizard of Oz.'' But he was inevitably drawn back to the Broadway stage and in the years after World War II he was a regular in the Little Bar at Sardi's, where show-business luminaries gathered.

In 1948 he opened in the musical ''Where's Charley,'' a vehicle that made him as celebrated on the stage as he had already become in film. In the remake of the hoary stage play ''Charley's Aunt,'' he created his most memorable singing number, ''Once in Love With Amy.'' Long after the three-year run of ''Where's Charley,'' he was called upon to sing the lilting ballad and to perform the soft-shoe-dance routine accompanying it almost every time he appeared on television. A Comedian First and Last

Mr. Bolger, who was 5 feet 10 1/2 inches tall, was so thin that in his solo performances in the spotlight he appeared to be much taller. His legs were so flexible he appeared to be disjointed - even disembodied - as he leapt into the air to punctuate a song-and-dance number. Indeed, many who watched him in later years were unable to shake the image of the straw-stuffed Scarecrow flopping about on boneless legs as he lurched down the Yellow Brick Road.

Although he won his greatest acclaim as a dancer, Mr. Bolger considered himself first of all a comedian. For that reason, he was parcticularly gratified by the success of the farce, ''Charley's Aunt,'' the starring vehicle that was produced by his wife, Gwen Rickard, whom he had met in 1924 and married five years later. She remained a strong force in his career until it ended less than three years ago with an injury that removed him from the performing stage.

In mid-1984 he suffered an injury to his right hip that necessitated his receiving an artificual joint. ''I stepped down from the stage and there was nothing there,'' he said afterward. ''I tried to do another show, but I was not up to par and I had to cancel.'' A 'Dancer in Self-Defense'

His last performance was in 1985 as a narrator in ''That's Dancing,'' an anthology that included a Scarecrow dance that had been cut from the final version of ''The Wizard of Oz.''

Early in his career he decided that comedy was his metier and that his gift for dancing was mainly a vehicle to enable him to win the comic roles he sought.

''I was hired as a comedian in my first show,'' he said many years later. ''I became a dancer in self-defense. I was doing a comedy monologue and didn't know how else to get off, so I danced off. I've been dancing ever since, but I'm still a comedian.''

Over the years he danced and sang his way into many shows, including ''Keep Off the Grass'' (1940), ''By Jupiter'' (1942) and ''Three to Make Ready''(1946) During World War II he organized U.S.O. shows that toured American military and naval bases around the world.

Among his films were ''The Harvey Girls'' (1945), ''April in Paris'' (1952) and ''Babes in Toyland'' (1961).

He became a familiar figure on television, beginning in 1952 with his debut on ''The Comedy Hour,'' followed in 1953 by ''The Ray Bolger Show,'' which appeared weekly on ABC. In 1956 he did the NBC-TV series ''Washington Square.''

In 1979, departing from his light-hearted appearances, he made a dramatic appearances as a somber dignitary of the Roman Catholic Church in ''The Runner Stumbles.'' Frequent Returns to the Stage

With all his work in film and television, he continually returned to the stage, appearing in one-man shows and song-and-dance concerts.

In a sense, these concerts were a return to his first attempts in show business. As a teen-ager in Boston, where he attended public schools, he danced on street corners. After brief jobs as an insurance agent and a vacuum-cleaner salesman, he got a job dusting the studio of a noted ballet instructor of the time, Senia Rusakoff. But he was not drawn to classical dance.

He learned the acticg craft with a repertory company headed by Bob Ott, to whom he later gave credit for schooling him in the comedy. Soon his long, rubbery legs propelled him into a style of dance that he was later to make his own, characterized by the swooping steps that seemed to carry him across a stage in one or two bounds.

Leaving the Ott troupe, he went into vaudeville on his own, playing small towns in New England and the mid-Atlantic states before he finally arrived in New York, where he landed a job dancing at movie houses in the Paramount chain between films. It was there that Gus Edwards found him in 1926 and put him on the Broadway stage.

Among the awards Mr. Bolger received were the Tony award in the 1948-49 season and two Donaldson awards for best performance. In 1980 he was elected to the Theater Hall of Fame.

Surviving is Mr. Bolger's wife, the former Gwen Rickard. The couple had no children.

Mr. Bolger died at the Nazareth Nursing Home in Los Angeles. A funeral service will be held on Monday at the Good Shepherd Church in Beverly Hills.

For an episode guide go to http://www.tv.com/the-ray-bolger-show/show/23122/summary.html

For another episode guide go to http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/Stage/2950/US/Comedy/RayBolgerShow.htm

For more on Ray Bolger go to http://www.reelclassics.com/Actors/Bolger/bolger.htm

For more on Ray Bolger go to http://www.pbs.org/wnet/broadway/stars/bolger_r.html

To watch a clip from The Ray Bolger Show go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9di9dXIWZ2Y