07/19/2007
"I never was so happy in my life"
Lately, I've been reading a lot about old radio comedy programs, brought on by a spell of listening to Jack Benny tapes whilst shaving (me, not Jack Benny).
There's another favorite series I collected for a while, Vic and Sade. This show ran every weekday for 12 years in the 30's and 40's, created and written by one guy: Paul Rhymer.
The show was aired daytimes, during the soap opera programming aimed at housewives. Easy to brush off an inconsequential strip show from 70 years ago, I suppose.
But consider what Ogden Nash had to say about the show:
I think Vic and Sade is one of the all-time great pieces of American humor, and it is not stretching the point very far to mention Paul Rhymer in the same breath with James Thurber and Mark Twain.
John O'Hara concurred. Others compared Rhymer to Dickens. Jean Shepherd, in his introduction to a book of Vic and Sade scripts, makes comparisons to Ionesco and Pinter.
Really? And sponsored by Crisco?
Really. My introduction to this subtle hilarity (no overt jokes, guaranteed) came in the late 70's and early 80's, when WBAI ran a daily feature called The Morning Serial. I guess it was on while I dressed and slurped coffee in Park Slope, before schlepping to the D train. For months, they ran Vic and Sade episodes. Slowly, I realized how funny it was. Not a lot of cast (4 people), no effects, no gags, no contrivances. It crept up on me.
You'll have to make allowances for some of the minor points that didn't age well; the names of almost everyone can be a bit distracting, I think. The main characters are Vic, Sade, and Russell (Rush) Gook. There's Yamilton's Department Store, Y.Y. Flirtch, a lodge brother of Vic's, and Russell's friends Smelly Clark and Bluetooth Johnson. Everything just a tad exaggerated, in the olde American style of rustic humor.
But that aside, it's killer. And consider that one person wrote every show (over 3000); no writing staff, no assistants, nothing. Rhymer sat down every single day at 9 A.M. and generated a 12 minute script that was at least good and generally excellent, and then the cast had to rehearse and get it on the air by early afternoon. Live, no tape. No flies on the cast, either - as you listen to the mp3, notice how naturally the dialogue flows
This transcription contains heavyhanded advertising from Crisco's Radio Neighbor about how to make flaky pie crusts with this canned grease; always a pressing issue, I daresay.
And now, from the little house halfway up on the next block, we hear Sade and Russell...