Vic & Sade 39-01-16 Flower Garden Arranger

Vic and Sade were 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
Dates Format
June 29, 1932 to September 29, 1944 15 minutes daily
August 21, 1945 to December 7, 1945 15 minutes daily
June 27, 1946 to October 26, 1946 30 minutes weekly
July 11 to July 25, 1949 three half-hour television episodes replacing Colgate Theatre, Monday nights.
spring 1957 seven 15-minute television episodes for WNBQ, Thursday nights.
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.

Vic and Sade was written by the prodigious Paul Rhymer for the entire length of its long run. The NBC radio series premiered on June 29, 1932 on its fifteen stations. 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 15 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.

Characters
Sade
Sade, the straightwoman of the cast, was a housewife who took pride in her housekeeping.
Rush/Russell
Paul Rhymer had intended to introduce Rush by having Sade give birth to an 8-year-old boy, but the sponsor objected. 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.

Uncle Fletcher
Uncle Fletcher was a talker who had an outrageous story and advice about everything.

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.

Principal cast
Character Actor
Vic Gook Art Van Harvey (1932–46, 1957)
Frank Dane (1949 TV)
Sade Gook Bernardine Flynn
Rush Gook Bill Idelson (1932–42, 1945–46)
Dick Conan (1949 TV)
Eddie Gillilan (1957 TV)
Uncle Fletcher Clarence Hartzell (1940–46)
Russell Miller David Whitehouse (1943–44)