Soupy Sez: Pie In The Sky

Living in Detroit I grew up with Soupy Sales who died yesterday at a Bronx hospice. He was 83 and had been ill for some time.

Later in 1971-72 I was working at WXYZ Radio on the AM side when I'd run into Soupy from time to time in the WXYZ Broadcast House cafeteria line.  He left Detroit ten years earlier for LA but would come back for visits.  I couldn't believe I ws standing next to my childhood comedic guru in a cafeteria line!

WXYZ:  Sales began his TV career in Cincinnati and Cleveland, then moved to Detroit, where he drew a large audience on WXYZ-TV. He moved to Los Angeles in 1961.

The comic's pie-throwing schtick 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. The family later moved to Huntington, W.Va.

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, who was typically clad in a black sweater and oversized bow-tie, was once suspended for a week after telling his legion of tiny listeners to empty their mothers' purse and mail him all the pieces of green paper bearing pictures of the presidents.

Fox's Bill O'Reilly (when he had more hair) interviewed Sales:






Related:  NYDN NYT NYP  Definitive obits:  Detroit News Detroit Free Press  Photos