By-line: Soupy Sales dead at 83

Soupy Sales is one of those enigmatic characters who are a presence in your youth that you can never quite get a grip on. At least not in the Deep South where our exposure to him was fleeting, at best. His death was front page news in the Times, but Section B, page 3, a day later in the local fish wrapper. According to the Times: Soupy Sales, whose zany television routines turned the smashing of a pie to the face into a madcap art form, died Thursday night. He was 83. Cavorting with his puppet sidekicks White Fang, Black Tooth, Pookie the Lion and Hobart and Reba, the heads in the pot-bellied stove, transforming himself into the private detective Philo Kvetch, and playing host to the ever-present “nut at the door,” Soupy Sales became a television favorite of youngsters and an anarchic comedy hero for teenagers and college students. Clad in a top hat, sweater and bow tie, shuffling through his Mouse dance, he reached his slapstick heyday in the mid-1960s on “The Soupy Sales Show,” a widely syndicated program based at WNEW-TV in New York. Some 20,000 pies were hurled at Soupy Sales or at visitors to his TV shows in the 1950s and ’60s, by his own count. The victims included Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis, all of whom turned up just for the honor of being creamed. Somehow, Soupy is identified as being Jewish from New York when he was actually born in North Carolina. His last name was Supman, which was mispronounced as Soupman and therefore, his stage name. I was about 13 years old when his television show was finally aired in Baja Georgia. Back in the day we only had 2 1/2 TV channels to watch, CBS, NBC and, ABC if the stars and rabbit ears were aligned, so whatever was on any of them was what you watched. I don't remember which one Soupy was on but I do remember occasionally sitting down to watch him and wondering what the hell it was all about. It was too childish for adults and too adult for kids. Then came the famous skit where he got close to the camera and whispered so that mommy and daddy couldn't hear and he urged... "All you kids go into mommy and daddy's room and look in their wallets and take out all that dirty green paper with pictures of old men with beards on them. Put them in an envelope and mail them to me, Soupy Sales, and I'll send you a post card from a beautiful south Pacific island." From that point forward, I was a fan. It was years later, in retrospect, that I finally understood and appreciated what he was all about. And now, many years later, I realize what an enormous impact he had on all of television. He pretty much gave birth to irreverent comics such as Letterman. A tip of the hat to you Soupy. Rest in Peace.