Vic & Sade
The Show That Lived in a Small House
Paul Rhymer built one of the most distinctive programs in the history of American radio from almost nothing: a small house, three characters, and a telephone. Vic & Sade premiered on June 29, 1932, on the Blue Network, originating from NBC's Studio B on the 19th floor of Chicago's Merchandise Mart. The premiere week happened to coincide with the 1932 Democratic National Convention, also underway in Chicago, which meant the city was full of noise and spectacle — and here was this quiet little 15-minute program about a bookkeeper and his wife, going out at 8:30 in the morning. Rhymer was 26 years old.
What Rhymer had created wasn't a soap opera and wasn't a serial in the ordinary sense. There was no dramatic continuity from one episode to the next, no cliffhangers, no villains. What there was instead were thousands of 12-minute sketches, each self-contained, each built around the daily texture of life in a small Illinois town. Announcer Bob Brown opened every episode with the words "Well, sir," ushering the listener into the Gooks' home as if dropping by for a visit, and the visit was reliably the same and reliably different. That paradox — the comfort of routine with the surprise of invention — turned out to be exactly what a certain kind of listener wanted, every single weekday afternoon.
Fred E. H. Schroeder, writing in the Journal of Popular Culture, noted that the show maintained "perfect Aristotelean unities of action, place, and time." Nearly everything that happened, happened in the Gook living room, or came in through the telephone, which Radio Guide called the show's one indispensable prop. The sound effects were almost entirely a ringing phone and a slamming door, with occasional falling crockery. That was it. The whole program ran on voices and imagination.
Paul Rhymer and Where It All Came From
Rhymer was born November 21, 1905, in Fulton, Illinois, and grew up in Bloomington, where his family settled by 1911 on West Monroe Street and later at 414 Virginia Avenue in Normal — a street name that quietly reappears in the show's fictional geography. He won the Merwin Cup at Bloomington High School in 1925 for a short story, played trombone in the school band, enrolled at Illinois Wesleyan University, and dropped out in 1929 after his father's death. Before landing at The Pantagraph, he worked as a filling station attendant and a signal maintainer's helper on the Chicago and Alton Railroad — his father's railroad. His career at The Pantagraph lasted about two months and ended when his editor found out he had been fabricating interviews with people who didn't exist.
He joined the NBC continuity staff in Chicago after that, spent three years writing copy, and created an earlier show called Keystone Chronicles before program director Clarence Menser, in 1932, assigned him to develop a family skit for a Procter & Gamble audition. Procter & Gamble passed. Menser liked the show enough to put it on a sustaining basis anyway, and eventually P&G came around — at which point Rhymer quit NBC's staff and went freelance, writing each morning, attending rehearsal and the broadcast at the Merchandise Mart, and leaving his afternoons free. Procter & Gamble also sent him and each cast member a three-pound can of Crisco every week as a promotional gesture. Bill Idelson later recalled that the cast had more Crisco than they knew what to do with.
Rhymer modeled Vic after his own father and used the character to express his observations on small-town life and to gently poke at bureaucracy and fraternal organizations. Real Bloomington landmarks — Miller Park, People's Bank, the Chicago and Alton Railroad depot — found their way into the fictional town of Crooper, Illinois. A Time magazine piece about the show noted: "Few towns have been so profitably exploited as Bloomington." In 1938, Rhymer went back to Bloomington for a "Paul Rhymer Day." Bloomington High School now awards the Paul Rhymer Medal for the best short story submitted by students, and the Wisconsin Historical Society holds his archive — approximately 40,000 documents — donated by his widow Mary Frances Rhymer in 1969.
The Three Voices in the House
The show premiered with only two characters: Vic and Sade. No other voices were heard. Art Van Harvey, who played Vic — full name Victor Rodney Gook, bookkeeper for Consolidated Kitchenware Company's Plant Number Fourteen — had been a grain salesman before radio. He was 48 years old when Menser chose him for the role. Van Harvey brought what one scholar described as a Hoosier accent mixed with second-generation German, and Arthur Frank Wertheim, in his book Radio Comedy, called him "a Wallace Beery type" who played Vic "in a quiet low-key style with a twist of cynicism that made the small-town Midwestern character unforgettable." Vic's passions were parades, alarm clocks, cigars, wide-brimmed hats, and doorbells. He was a member of the Sacred Stars of the Milky Way lodge, Drowsy Venus Chapter, where he held the rank of Exalted Big Dipper. The lodge had been founded by one R. J. Konk.
Bernardine Flynn, who was 28 when Menser cast her as Sade, had graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1926 and moved to Chicago, where she had become one of the few female radio announcers trusted to broadcast without becoming emotional. Radio Guide described her as playing Sade with a nasal twang that faintly echoed Jane Ace. Rhymer deliberately exploited Flynn's professional self-control for the role: Sade never laughed, no matter how absurd the situation got. Her catchphrase was "Oh, ish!" Sade's dearest friend was Ruthie Stembottom, who lived on University Street with her husband Fred, a factory foreman. Sade and Ruthie together had collected more than 3,000 washrags and never missed a washrag sale at Yamilton's Department Store.
On July 8, 1932 — barely two weeks after the premiere — Vic and Sade discussed a nine-year-old boy named Victor Rush Meadows, the son of one of Sade's old school friends. A week later, on July 15, Rush arrived. Rhymer had originally intended to introduce the character by having Sade simply give birth to an eight-year-old boy, but the sponsor objected. Rush was instead adopted. Bill Idelson, who played him, was born August 21, 1919, in Forest Park, Illinois, to Russian immigrant parents; he had already been playing Skeezix on WGN's Uncle Walt and Skeezix since 1931. Radio Mirror wrote of Rush: "as each year goes by, he gets wiser, which amazes him greatly." Vic called Rush by affectionate names — "Pocketwatch," "Egg-Crate," "Paperweight," "Horse-Chestnut" — and Sade sometimes called him "Willie." For the first eight years of the run, these three voices were the only ones heard on the show.
The World Just Outside the Door
Rhymer populated his fictional Crooper, Illinois, with an extraordinary supporting cast of characters who were, for years, entirely invisible — known only through what Vic, Sade, and Rush said about them. The town had two hotels: the Butler House (the fancy one) and the Bright Kentucky (not fancy, backed up to the railroad tracks). The movie house was the Bijou, which most townspeople pronounced "Bye-Joe," and it always seemed to be showing a picture with Gloria Golden and Four-Fisted Frank Fuddleman. The restaurant was the Little Tiny Petite Pheasant Feather Tea Shoppe, whose menu included such items as olive runt, scalded cucumbers, rutabaga shortcake, bent grass ox butter, and beef punkies.
Vic's boss was J. K. Ruebush — universally called "Old Rubbish." Consolidated Kitchenware's traveling inspector, Mr. Buller, was said to have pulled his own teeth. Guss Fuss was a visiting executive from Dubuque. Vic's secretary was Miss Olive Hammersweet. Lodge brothers Robert and Slobert Hink had siblings named Bertie and Dirtie and Bessie and Messie, lived in Hoopestown, and once rode a power mower from Moline to Decatur. Rishigan Fishigan of Sishigan, Michigan, had married Jane Bayne from Paine, Maine. Old Mr. Gumpox drove the garbage wagon, pulled by a horse named Howard that suffered from dizzy spells. Rush's best pal, Blue-Tooth Johnson, loved baseball and could usually be found near third base at Tatman's vacant lot. Smelly Clark held the long-distance record for spitting and was adept at sneaking into the Bijou. Rush was devoted to adventure novels starring a character called Third Lt. Clinton Stanley — who, in a bit of backstage humor, was named after one of the show's producers.
Rhymer named a group of jailbirds after all the vice presidents at NBC. Hotel clerk Charlie Urquhart was named after an NBC production manager. The show's comic texture was built from this kind of density — a world so thoroughly imagined that its unseen inhabitants felt as real as the three people in the living room.
Uncle Fletcher and the Show's Upheavals
The first major disruption came from outside the fiction: Art Van Harvey suffered a heart attack, and Vic had to be temporarily written out. Rhymer used the occasion to bring Uncle Fletcher — who had been drawing heavy listener mail as an off-mike, never-heard presence since at least 1938 — fully into the cast. Auditions were held, and the assumption was that the role would go to veteran character actor Sidney Ellstrom. Then Clarence Hartzell walked in. Hartzell had been born October 26, 1910, in Huntington, West Virginia, graduated from Cincinnati's Conservatory of Music, and played Pappy Yokum on NBC Radio's Lil' Abner before coming to Chicago. When he spoke his first lines as Uncle Fletcher, Idelson and Flynn immediately championed him over Ellstrom. Hartzell played the character from 1940 through the show's last broadcast in 1946.
Radio Life described Uncle Fletcher as "one of those puzzling old men who hover between near insanity and clear lucidity." He collected keys and watch fobs. He frequented the Bright Kentucky Hotel. He once gave his landlady, Mis' Keller, a four-foot length of railroad track as a gift, thinking she could use it as a doorstop. His anecdotes tended to end the same way: the subject made his plans, walked somewhere, and "there he later died." He talked for years about the upcoming wedding of Mis' Keller and Harry Feedburn. Mayor Geetcham gave him a pass to ride the garbage wagon. Hartzell later took essentially the same character to Lum and Abner under the name Ben Withers.
The second upheaval was Idelson's departure for the Navy in 1942. Rhymer considered none of the four principals replaceable and refused to recast Rush. Instead he introduced a rotating set of new characters: the Brainfeebles (first heard in early 1943), and then Russell Miller, explained as the orphaned nephew of Consolidated Kitchenware's Mr. Buller, introduced on June 3, 1943. Some Rush scripts were recycled to feature Russell Miller, including "Working on Hank Gutstop's Debts" and "Sleepers Beware." The transition worked well enough to keep the show going, but Rush's particular quality — what Rhymer had described as deadpan innocence combined with a schemer's eye for angles — was hard to replicate.
How It Stood in Its Day
At its height, Vic & Sade was broadcast over all three major networks simultaneously and as many as six times a day. Time magazine put its devoted listenership at seven million in 1943. It was voted the number one daytime radio series in 1942 by a poll of listeners and editors, named the best-written program on radio in 1936, and won the best daytime serial in Motion Picture Daily's survey in 1940 — then won that trophy again for three consecutive years around 1941–43. In 1938, Rhymer was voted best scriptwriter by radio artists, and the series led Hearst radio editors' poll for daytime serials that year. At the Chicago Radio Ball in November 1937, Rhymer received an award for best written program of the year.
The admiration wasn't limited to radio polls. Ogden Nash compared Rhymer to Mark Twain, and John O'Hara echoed the comparison in a Collier's column. A Collier's piece described some of the sketches as "as good as Mark Twain for small-town humor and a true picture of life in the Midwest." At least one journalist reached for Charles Dickens. Jim and Marian Jordan of Fibber McGee and Molly were fans. Carlton E. Morse and his I Love a Mystery crew kept a Radio Life interviewer waiting fifteen minutes because they wouldn't stop listening to the show. President Roosevelt was said to have listened when he could. Kurt Vonnegut later called it "the Muzak of my life." Fred Rogers was a documented fan. The Los Angeles fan group that called itself the Vic and Sadists included Ray Bradbury, Stan Freberg, and Norman Corwin among its members.
The End of the Run and What Came After
The show left NBC on September 29, 1944, and returned on CBS in August 1945 in a different format: Vic and Sade sketches sharing time with singer Jack Smith, sponsored by Procter & Gamble for Oxydol. Idelson came back from the Navy to resume Rush. Many characters who had previously existed only as names were now cast and brought to the microphone. The revival ran until December 7, 1945.
A final run on Mutual from June 27 to September 19, 1946 — sponsored by Fitch Shampoo — reorganized the show as a 30-minute situation comedy with a live studio audience. The format was a significant departure from the intimate three- and four-person world that had been the show's whole identity for fourteen years, and the run is generally regarded as an artistic and commercial failure. One broadcast featured the Gooks coping with the closing of the sidewalk, which forced townspeople to troop through their living room on a detour to University Street — the kind of Rhymer premise that would have worked beautifully in 12 minutes of understated radio and struggled to fill a half-hour with a laughing audience.
After the show ended, Idelson had a long career in television, winning Writers Guild Awards for episodes of Get Smart and The Andy Griffith Show and producing The Bob Newhart Show, among other credits. Flynn joined the touring company of Apple of His Eye starring Walter Huston — Huston personally asked her to join after seeing her in Chicago — and later played Lona Drewer Carey on the NBC-TV serial Hawkins Falls from 1950 to 1955. Van Harvey also appeared in Hawkins Falls and in the 1950 film The Golden Gloves Story. Hartzell played Cactus Jim on NBC-TV and Doc on The Silver Eagle on ABC Radio.
In 1957, Flynn and Van Harvey reprised their roles on WNBQ in Chicago for a seven-week run titled The Humor of Vic 'n' Sade, back to the original three-character format with 15-minute episodes and a stripped-down set. It was cut short when Van Harvey died in July 1957. Rhymer followed in 1964, Flynn in 1977, and Hartzell in 1988. Idelson outlived them all, dying December 31, 2007. Norman Corwin, on Idelson's death, told the Los Angeles Times: "He was a luminary. He stood out among the radio comedians, and he stood out because of very good writing by Paul Rhymer and very good acting by himself."
Approximately 330 original recordings survive. The episode "Decoration Day Parade," broadcast May 28, 1937, is the earliest surviving audio recording from the show and was selected for the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2015. The Library of Congress also holds copyright deposit copies of approximately 1,000 scripts from 1934 to 1944. Two script collections were published in the 1970s — the first edited by Mary Frances Rhymer with a foreword by Bradbury, the second with a foreword by Jean Shepherd — and the scripts hold up as written works in their own right. The Friends of Vic and Sade organization, formed in 1972, kept the memory of the show alive for decades through newsletters and shared recordings, with Barbara Schwarz as its driving force. What Rhymer built in that small house halfway up in the next block turned out to be durable in ways that most radio comedy of the period was not.