Vic & Sade was an old-time radio show that took place in “the small house half-way up in the next block.” Some say it was the original show about nothing - 50 years before Seinfeld claimed that title.

Details:
Vic & Sade scripts and shows are posted online at vicandsade.net.

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Vic & Sade: The first show about nothing

by Phil Houseal
Feb 24, 2010

Decades before Seinfeld there was another “show about nothing.”

I can’t believe I had never heard nor heard of this radio show - Vic & Sade.

With my XM Radio subscription, I have become a devotee of classic radio, and follow closely the escapades of Burns & Allen, Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Fred Allen, and Abbot & Costello.

But one morning as I did my stretches I heard a beguiling exchange.

Mr. Sprawl (an old man with raspy voice): I spent two summers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin... it’s on the lake... it’s on Lake Erie there. On a clear day, a man can see right across to Canada.

Vic (a younger man): Milwaukee, Wisconsin is on Lake Michigan, Sprawl.

Mr. Sprawl: This is Toledo, Ohia

Vic: You’re talking about Toledo, Ohio. I was under the impression we were talking about Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Mr. Sprawl: Toledo, Ohia

Vic: OK, let’s discuss Toledo, Ohio. Yes, Toledo is on Lake Erie...

Mr. Sprawl: I was born in Boston, Massachusetts...

It was an existential exchange straight out of Sartre. There was no plot to speak of, no twist, no moral. It was like my memories of sitting on the floor at family gatherings, listening to my obsessive-compulsive aunts discuss what they saw at the store that day, interrupting each other, repeating the same observation over and over as if it were a philosophical touchstone.

But I couldn’t stop listening.

They were using words I heard growing up on a Midwestern farm - words like cellarway, crick (not creek), davenport (not couch), supper (not dinner - dinner is what we called lunch), and dropping our “g’s” at the end of words like talkin’, eatin’, and dancin’, and pronouncing “Ohio” as “Ohia.”

And we spent many an hour talkin’ about nothin’. We just observed people, then got amongst ourselves and talked about what those other people were doing. I remember as a boy riding to town with my best friend and his parents on a Thursday evening, to angle park on the one-block-long Main Street and sit in the car to watch people. You see, the stores stayed open late on Thursday only, and we had nothing to buy, so we watched the shoppers walk up and down Main Street. I swear this happened! Even then I thought it was strange. But for grownups, seeing Mrs. Butterbaugh buying a new dress, or old Mr. Boone duck into the saloon, gave them gossip to last until Sunday.

This radio show was just like that. It was not the typical setup/payoff like Abbot & Costello, or the barrage of jokes by Bob Hope. In fact the shows had no jokes.

I learned Vic & Sade was the most popular radio series of its kind in the 1930s and 40s. It was unique in that it ran in daily 15-minute segments, with no continuing storyline. It was as if you dropped in on the Victor Gook family. There was Vic, his wife, Sade, and their son, Rush. They lived in “the small house half-way up in the next block.”

The shows had no discernable plot or action. It truly was a show about nothing. But the way they talked, and the depth of discussion imbued even the most trivial matters made it riveting listening.

Mr. Sprawl: My daughter Florence, she’s gonna sew a pocket on the shawl for me... then I’ll have a place to put peanuts with the chocolate smeared on the outside. I love them peanuts with the chocolate smeared on the outside.

Vic & Sade was written entirely by Paul Rhymer. He was a writer who loved everyday language, and the humor that could be found in even the most mundane matters. It was in the vein of Max Shulman, a contemporary who wrote Dobie Gillis, or S.J. Perelman, screenwriter for the Marx Brothers movies.

Rhymer penned 3500 episodes of Vic & Sade, and had 7 million listeners at its peak. Although he was compared to Mark Twain as a humorist, Rhymer himself had no idea why his “shows about nothing” were so popular. He gave credit to the actors, who he claimed could be funny reading the phone book. In many scripts, that’s pretty much what they seemed to be doing.

One writer summed it up this way: “Vic & Sade... evokes an ideal which America will always harken to: the ideal of the ordinary family doing ordinary things and finding its significance in them.”

Isn’t that pretty much how we go through each day?

Mr. Sprawl: When I was in Toledo, Massachusetts, looking across Lake Erie looking into Canada there, I....