It's said that good writing is the soul of radio. A Bloomington-Normal boy made good exemplifies that adage.
It's hard to dramatize the failure of the butcher to deliver meat, or the business of buying a Christmas present for the boss. Yet Paul Rhymer did so for a big nationwide audience on the NBC radio network during the golden age of radio in the 1930s and 1940s.
One of the most popular shows on the air was a soap opera called "Vic and Sade." These mostly 15-minute vignettes ran weekdays.
“Which explored the gentle absurdities of Midwestern small town life from the perspective of Vic and Sade Gook, their foster son, Rush, and uncle Fletcher,” said Bill Kemp, librarian and archivist at the McLean County Museum of History.
Rhymer was born in Fulton, Illinois, but he grew up in Bloomington-Normal — first on West Monroe Street and then in the 400 block of Virginia Avenue in Normal. He went to Bloomington High School, and spent two years at Illinois Wesleyan University, though he did not graduate.
“He doesn't seem to have had all that much interest in academics," said Kemp. "He had more of an interest in his fraternity, Sigma Chi. And it was said that he would drop into classes now and then to see how things were going. He worked for The Pantagraph briefly, as a stringer or reporter, but it was discovered that much of his writing was fabulist in nature. They were more fiction than nonfiction. He was dismissed, but nonetheless, he had talent, real talent.”
Rhymer headed to Chicago and ended up at NBC Radio where he created "Vic and Sade."
“He pounded out script after script, thousands of them for more than a decade. He was just a wonderful writer, almost a genius in many ways,” said Kemp. “He had admirers among the highest literary types ... Edgar Lee Masters and Ogden Nash were loyal listeners of 'Vic and Sade.'"
Ray Bradbury, who went on to become a noted science fiction author, was a boyhood fan of the show.
“I have driven Yellow cabs in Chicago, sold magazines in Cicero, and dived off the highest tower at Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis … I have been in love three times and playing the piano is my secret vice. Like George Ade and Harry S. New, I am a Sigma Chi. I have a Studebaker open job, and an immense vocabulary. I have been writing stories very earnestly ever since high school and will probably continue to do so,” Rhymer told Time Magazine.
Vic and Sade lived in the fictional town of Cooper, Illinois, but Rhymer based much of the show on his memories of Bloomington. The show's announcer began each episode, or installment, by noting that the Gook family lived on Virginia Avenue in "the small house halfway up the next block."
"Some 7 million radio fans would find life harder to bear without 'Vic and Sade.' They would also find it difficult to explain why. It is a soap opera in which nothing much ever happens. But it is as American as doubletalk,” wrote a Time Magazine article on Dec. 27, 1943.
Vic worked as a bookkeeper for plant number 14 of the Consolidated Kitchenware Company. He was a loyal member of a fraternal society, as were many in that part of the 20th century, a point Rhymer gently satirized.
“Vic is an exalted Big Dipper in the Drowsy Venus chapter of the sacred stars of the Milky Way, kind of a playful jab at fraternal societies, much like we'll see later, with the loyal order of raccoon, Lodge and honeymooners, Jackie Gleason's Honeymooners,” said Kemp.
Rhymer had a knack for names. There was Rev. Kidneyslide, Mr. Gumpox, and Rush’s teacher, Miss Applerot. There was Ike Kneesuffer, Sweet Corn McBlock, and Sade’s confidant, Ruthie Stembottom. There also was Rishigan Fishigan of Sishigan, Michigan, who married Jane Payne from Bane, Maine, Godfrey Dimlok who invented a bicycle that could say "Mama," Bluetooth Johnson, Cora Bucksaddle, Ole Chinbunny, and Smelly Clark. There were more than 100 characters mentioned in the show, but the audience heard actors voice only four, Vic, Sade, Uncle Fletcher, and Rush.
Rhymer gave a lot of credit to the cast — stage actress Bernardine Flynn as Sade, and vaudevillian Art Van Harvey as Vic.
“They could read aloud from the telephone book and sound entertaining,” said Rhymer in an interview.
Time wrote that "few towns have been so profitably exploited as Bloomington." There were landmarks named in many shows — Miller Park, People's Bank, the Chicago and Alton Railroad Depot, and Virginia Avenue, to remind residents Rhymer came from Bloomington-Normal.
“He is an incorrigible practical joker. He once named all of NBC’s vice presidents in his script as a gang of jailbirds and is given to telling strangers that his handsome wife is three-quarters Eskimo, allergic to heat,” said the Time article.
Episodes would have names such as cleaning the bookcase, watch fob collection, bacon sandwiches, the hammock, Hank's $200 wardrobe, or the bottom buffet drawer. Rhymer would shape installments on those concepts.
In April of 1938, Bloomington gave back some of the affection Rhymer showed the town in the show. The Young Men's Club, which still exists, organized Paul Rhymer Day complete with a proclamation, key to the city, and 1,000-person banquet at what is now the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts.
Rhymer was known as the man who put Bloomington on the "air."
Rhymer died in the fall of 1964 at the age of 59. His wife, Mary Frances Murray, who unlike Paul graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University, published two collections of "Vic and Sade" scripts.
Bill Kemp said the show holds up in many ways today.
“Seinfeld, the beloved show of the late '80s and '90s was known as the show about nothing. But in many ways, 'Vic and Sade' was the original show about nothing. Reimer just had this talent of writing about everyday Midwestern pitter patter, pleasant folks doing their darnedest to get along with each other,” said Kemp.
