Comedy Pioneer Soupy Sales Dies
Master of the pie-in-the-face gag was 83.
Soupy Sales, a beloved comedian who rose to fame in the 1950s with a wacky brand of humor typified by pies to the face, died on October 22, 2009, at Calvary Hospice in the Bronx, New York. He was 83, and had been enduring many health problems.
Sales began his career in radio before moving into television, and became enormously popular throughout the nation in the 1950s and 1960s.
He was born Milton Supman on January 8, 1926, in Franklinton, North Carolina. His last name, which was frequently mispronounced “Soup Man,” led to the nickname “Soupy.”
His family later moved to Huntington, West Virginia, and when he returned from service in the Navy during World War II, he found work as a reporter for a West Virginia radio station. When he moved on to become a DJ gig, he changed his name to Soupy Heinz and relocated to Ohio.
When Heinz was deemed a potential problem with the Heinz food company, which was one of the advertisers, he adopted the last name Sales.
Sales’ first pie to the face came in 1951, while he was hosting a children's show in Cleveland. He acquired a national reputation when he got his own show based in Detroit, which lasted seven years. It was here that he honed his anarchic act, an amalgam of goofy sketches, wordplay and the ubiquitous cream pies.
He moved the show to Los Angeles in 1961, and later became a fill-in host on The Tonight Show. In 1964 he relocated the show to New York, where he enjoyed even greater success. Although it was marketed as a children’s program, the show attracted broader audiences thanks to the host’s high-energy antics.
A sign of the show’s appeal beyond the younger demographic came when Frank Sinatra agreed to come on the show — on the condition that he take a pie in the face. From there, numerous other stars followed suit, including Tony Curtis, Shirley MacLaine, Mickey Rooney, Sammy Davis Jr., Dick Martin and Burt Lancaster.
During the show’s run, Sales also released two successful albums and enjoyed a ht record with the novelty song “Do the Mouse,” based on a silly dance he created on his show.
In the ensuing years, Sales remained a familiar television face, including a stint as a regular on the game show What’s My Line? He also appeared on numerous variety shows, and also had small acting roles in TV series as well as a few feature films. In the mid-1980s he returned to radio in New York City
He is survived by his wife, two sons from a previous marriage, a brother and four grandchildren.
Soupy Sales had the distinction of being by the Television Academy Foundation’s Archive of American Television. During the interview, conducted Charles Salzberg at the Friar’s Club in New York City, Sales talked about breaking into television in 1950 at local station WKRC-TV in Cincinnati with The Soupy Soda Show, a teenage dance show He also discussed his work in other local markets, including Cleveland’s WXEL-TV, where his show Soup’s On marked his first pie in the face — which would become his trademark gag.
Sales talked additionally about his run with WXYZ-TV Detroit’s Lunch with Soupy Sales, a children’s show, which also had an adult following. Sales described the series in detail, including the look of the set and the characters who appeared (including lion puppet “Pookie” and dog puppet “White Fang,” whose great white hairy arm was all that was seen). Sales described his network break, with a replacement series at ABC in the mid-50s.
He talked about his work as host and performer on The Soupy Sales Show, which ran on ABC, first originating in Detroit, then in Los Angeles. He also described his show’s second primetime incarnation on ABC in 1962. Sales detailed the celebrities who appeared on his show, which famously included Frank Sinatra. Finally, Sales described reviving his series at WNEW in New York (and talked about a famous incident that got him suspended — when he told children to send money to him care of the station).