Ray Rayner (born Raymond M. Rahner; July 23, 1919 – January 21, 2004) was an American television presenter, actor and author.

Rayner's first media job was for WGBB radio in Freeport on Long Island while he was attending night school at Fordham University.

[1] He enlisted in the Army Air Forces, serving as the navigator of a B-17 during World War II, when he was shot down over France on April 3, 1943.

By 1965, Rayner's clown character, along with "Sandy", played by Don Sandburg, were added to Larry Harmon's Bozo coloring books.

[17][19] Following the cancellation of The Dick Tracy Show, a new afternoon program called Rocket to Adventure ran until 1968; this featured early appearances by Gigantor and Tobor the Eighth Man.

[1][17] At one point, WGN-TV had enough hope in being able to syndicate Rayner's scenes alongside The Dick Tracy Show to produce a pilot for that purpose.

[10] He always wore a jumpsuit, covered with small pieces of paper that held reminders of what to do next on the program (a cartoon, a commercial, a visit from Chelveston, etc.).

The arts-and-crafts was a regular segment that always began with a finished version prepared in advance by someone "behind the scenes" (often the wife of Producer Dick Flanders) that was displayed to the audience, followed by Rayner's attempts to demonstrate the process in an amusing, all-thumbs effort, also set to music, that resulted in a comically sub-par facsimile that more resembled a random collection of felt, construction paper and glue.

[25] He held an annual jellybean contest where viewers were to submit guesses of the quantity in a large jar displayed for a period of time on the show.

Another bit was a lip-synching sketch Rayner usually did to an older novelty song such as "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh" by Allan Sherman.

[10][26] Rayner also featured a "How and Why" segment on his shows with J. Bruce Mitchell of Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, as did Garfield Goose and Friends.

[27] Along with Bozo's Circus, a video game was added to Rayner's show that viewers could play by phone called TV Powww.

[4] During his time at Channel 9, starting in 1974, Rayner also hosted a Thursday night broadcast of the Illinois State Lottery's then-weekly drawings, which featured a top prize of $300,000 ("Weekly Bonanza") and a second prize of $50,000 to a field of about a dozen contestants who had won a special lottery game over the preceding seven-day period.

[7] Rayner was the station's weatherman, complete with notes pinned to his jacket as they were to his coveralls in Chicago; he also hosted the local PM Magazine in Albuquerque.

[33][34] Rayner continued to accept some Chicago theater roles and took some time to patiently answer children's questions about his work even after moving to Albuquerque.

[2] Rayner moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after his wife, Jeanne, a former nurse, died of lung cancer in 1995.