[Vision2020] Comic Soupy Sales Dies at 83

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of today's (October 23, 2009) Spokesman Review.

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Comic Soupy Sales, 83, dies
Pie-in-face shtick launched his career

Soupy Sales, the rubber-faced comedian whose anything-for-a-chuckle career
was built on 20,000 pies to the face and 5,000 live TV appearances across
a half-century of laughs, died Thursday. He was 83.

Sales died at Calvary Hospice in the Bronx, New York, said his former
manager and longtime friend, Dave Usher. Sales had many health problems
and entered the hospice last week, Usher said.

At the peak of his fame in the 1950s and ‘60s, Sales was one of the
best-known faces in the nation, Usher said.

“If President Eisenhower would have walked down the street, no one would
have recognized him as much as Soupy,” said Usher.

The comic’s pie-throwing shtick became his trademark, and celebrities
lined up to take one on the chin alongside Sales. During the early 1960s,
stars such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis and Shirley MacLaine received
their just desserts side-by-side with the comedian on his television show.

“I’ll probably be remembered for the pies, and that’s all right,” Sales
said in a 1985 interview.

Sales was born Milton Supman on Jan. 8, 1926, in Franklinton, N.C., where
his was the only Jewish family in town. His parents, owners of a dry-goods
store, sold sheets to the Ku Klux Klan.

His greatest success came in New York with “The Soupy Sales Show” – an
ostensible children’s show that had little to do with Captain Kangaroo and
other kiddie fare. Sales’ manic, improvisational style also attracted an
older audience that responded to his envelope-pushing antics.

Sales returned from the Navy after World War II and became a $20-a-week
reporter at a West Virginia radio station. He jumped to a DJ gig, changed
his name to Soupy Heinz and headed for Ohio.

His first pie to the face came in 1951, when the newly christened Soupy
Sales was hosting a children’s show in Cleveland. In Detroit, Sales’ show
garnered a national reputation as he honed his act.

After moving to Los Angeles in 1961, he eventually became a fill-in host
on “The Tonight Show.”

He moved to New York in 1964 and debuted “The Soupy Sales Show,” with
co-star puppets White Fang and Black Tooth. By the time his Big Apple run
ended two years later, Sales had appeared on 5,370 live television
programs – the most in the medium’s history, he boasted.

Sales remained a familiar television face, first as a regular from
1968-’75 on the game show “What’s My Line?” and later appearing on
everything from “The Mike Douglas Show” to “The Love Boat.”

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Soupy Sales rehearses for his Broadway debut in “Come Live With Me” in New
York in 1966.

http://tinyurl.com/yl6gy92

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"Soupy Sales: Fang's Talent Agency"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As7MaQSc7qc

"Soupy Sales: The Mouse"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP1_F9zEF7o

"Soupy Sales: Pookie Does Motown"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxSkzgxsIkg

"Soupy Sales: I Dream of Jeannie"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vTDkv-dzVg

Rest well, Soupy.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Be true to your teeth and they won't be false to you."

- Soupy Sales