Vic and Sade

Vic and Sade was an American radio program created and written by Paul Rhymer. It was regularly broadcast on radio from 1932 to 1944, then intermittently until 1946, and was briefly adapted to television in 1949 and again in 1957.
During its 14-year run on radio, "Vic and Sade" became one of the most popular series of its kind, earning critical and popular success: according to "Time", "Vic and Sade" had 7,000,000 devoted listeners in 1943. For the majority of its span on the air, "Vic and Sade" was heard in 15-minute episodes without a continuing storyline. The central characters, known as "radio's home folks", were accountant Victor Rodney Gook, his wife Sade (Bernardine Flynn) and their adopted son Rush (Bill Idelson). The three lived in "the little house halfway up in the next block."
Broadcast history.
"Vic and Sade" was first heard over NBC's Blue network in 1932 and originated in Chicago. At the height of its popularity, it was broadcast over all three major networks and as many as six times a day.
Overview.
"Vic and Sade" was written by the prodigious Paul Rhymer for the entire length of its long run. The principal characters were a married couple living in "the small house halfway up in the next block". On July 8, 1932 Vic and Sade discussed the plight of 9-year-old Rush Meadows, who was the son of one of Sade's school friends. On July 15th Rush arrived, and soon listeners forgot that the boy had been adopted by the Gooks. It was in this format, with only three characters, that the program thrived for the next eight years and won many awards for the writer, actors and sponsor.
In 1940, the actor who played Vic, Art Van Harvey, became ill, and Sade's Uncle Fletcher (Clarence Hartzell) was added to the cast to fill the place of the missing male lead. When Van Harvey recovered his health, Uncle Fletcher was kept on as a fourth character. During World War II, the actor who played Rush, Bill Idelson, was called into military service, and he left the show. The spring months of 1943 were a tumultuous period, but eventually a second son figure, Russell Miller (David Whitehouse), was brought in, and the program continued as it always had. The show faltered somewhat with Whitehouse, who sounded as if he was reading his lines aloud in school. Idelson later returned as Rush.
Paul Rhymer frequently gave each of the principals a day off, by confining his scripts to only two of the main characters. Vic and Sade would discuss a domestic problem while Rush was in school; Sade and Rush would review the day's events while Vic was still at the office; Vic and Rush would tackle some project while Sade was out shopping. Several episodes deliberately make no forward progress whatever, as the cast introduces the episode's premise but gets bogged down in endless details. Rhymer evidently felt some pressure from the sponsor's advertising agencies to include more romance and human interaction in his scripts, like the other daytime dramas on the air. He complied by adding ridiculous touches (his romantic lead, Dwight Twentysixler, always speaks with his "mouth full of shingle nails"!) and oddball characters (Orville Wheeney, the slow-witted gas-meter man; Jimmy Custard, the crochety town official who never quite makes clear what he does as the City Calistrator with the statistics he collects; Mr. Sprawl, the frail old man who dotes on "peanuts with chocolate smeared on the outsides").
"Vic and Sade" went off the air September 29, 1944 but was brought back several times. In 1945, the cast was augmented to include many characters who were previously only talked about. In 1946 it was a summer replacement series, now in a half-hour format and played in front of a studio audience. Later that year it became a sustaining (unsponsored) feature on the Mutual network. In 1949 three television episodes were made (with only Flynn remaining from the original cast), using an elaborate set that included the whole house as well as the front and back yards; the three episodes replaced the "Colgate Theatre" anthology series, with the same company as sponsor. In 1957 a series entitled "The Humor of Vic 'n' Sade" ran for seven weeks, returning to the original three-character format with 15-minute episodes, a multi-camera setup and a small, stripped-down, bare set. Both Flynn and Van Harvey reprised their roles, with teen actor Eddie Gillian as Rush; the revival was cut short when Van Harvey died in July 1957.
Characters.
All of the action of "Vic and Sade", all of the people and all of the places in the town were created strictly through the dialogue. Listeners heard just the voices of the three, later four, principal speaking characters, embellished with very few sound effects. This effect is lost as the series progresses and more and more voices are added.
Non-speaking characters.
The following characters were not portrayed by actors until very late in the show's run (and rarely even after that) but were frequently discussed by Vic, Sade, Rush and Uncle Fletcher.
Setting.
The town in which Vic and Sade live is named only once, in passing through a humorous credit in one episode ("Sade's gowns by Yamilton's Department Store — Crooper, Illinois"), over the course of the entire series, as far as it is known from existing scripts and recordings. In the June 20, 1940 episode, Rush says of his school's principal, "Mr. Chinbunny is attending a meeting of Illinois high school principals." Therefore, their town must be in Illinois. The town is based on a vaguely fictionalized version of Bloomington, Illinois, where Rhymer grew up. In fact, Bloomington is the county seat of McLean County, where Plant Number Fourteen is located.
Venues frequently referenced.
Communities oft mentioned.
As well, several actual Illinois communities near Bloomington were frequently referenced on air:
Influence.
Once voted the best radio serial in a poll of 600 radio editors, "Vic and Sade" also received praise from many well-known listeners, including Ray Bradbury, Norman Corwin, Stan Freberg, Edgar A. Guest, Ogden Nash, John O'Hara, Fred Rogers, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jean Shepherd, James Thurber, Tom Lehrer and Hendrik Willem van Loon. Nash and O'Hara both compared Rhymer to Mark Twain, while others made a comparison with Charles Dickens, but Rhymer defies comparison since his work is basically a "sui generis". The series had an influence on the writing of Kurt Vonnegut, who called it "the Muzak of my life."
Bernardine Flynn said the show once received a letter from a judge who called a recess each afternoon so he could listen to "Vic and Sade".
Extant episodes.
Despite such high praise, 2000 disc recordings of the show were destroyed just before 1940 and some 1200 have been lost since that time, including all episodes made before 1937. Today only about 330 original recordings have survived. (See #Audio downloads.) It is estimated that Rhymer wrote more than 3500 scripts for the show. Some of his scripts were collected in books (See #Bibliography).
Resources.
Wisconsin Historical Society.
Paul Rhymer's papers, including many "Vic and Sade" scripts and recordings, are held at the Wisconsin Historical Society.
Cast and credits.
Other personnel.
Announcers included Bob Brown (from 1932 to 1940), Ed Herlihy, Ed Roberts, Ralph Edwards, Mel Allen, the legendary New York Yankee broadcaster (went by Melvin) and Jack Fuller.
In addition to Rhymer himself, directors included Clarence Menser, Earl Ebi, Roy Winsor, Charles Rinehardt, Homer Heck, and Caldwell Cline.
The organist for the 15-minute version was Lou Webb.