Soupy Sales (born Milton Supman on January 8, 1926) is an American comedian and actor. Sales was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on January 7, 2005, a day before his 79th birthday.
Soupy got his unusual nickname from his family. His older brothers had been nicknamed "Hambone" and "Chicken Bone"; young Milton was dubbed "Soup Bone," which was later shortened to "Soupy." When he became a disc jockey, he began using the stage name "Soupy Hines." After he became established, it was decided that "Hines" sounded too close to Heinz, which made a line of soups at that time, and so Soupy chose the surname "Sales" after comedian Chic Sale.
Supman was born in Franklinton, North Carolina. He is a graduate of Huntington High School in Huntington, West Virginia and Marshall University. While attending college, he also performed in nightclubs as a comedian, singer and dancer.
Soupy's college career was interrupted by World War II. He joined the United States Navy and served on the USS Randall (APA-224) in the South Pacific. He entertained his shipmates by telling jokes and playing crazy characters over the ship's public address system. One of the characters he created was "White Fang", a large dog that played outrageous practical jokes on the seamen.
When the war ended, he returned to Marshall University where he earned a Masters Degree in Journalism. After graduation, he began a career as a script writer and then disc jockey at radio station WHTN in Huntington.
Soupy moved to Cincinnati in 1949, where he worked as a morning radio DJ and performed in nightclubs. While in Cincinnati, he began his television career on WKRC TV with Soupy's Soda Shop (TV's first teen dance program) and Club Nothing!, a late-night comedy/variety program.
When the WKRC owners cancelled his TV shows, Soupy moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he hosted another radio and TV series (and continued doing his nightclub act). It was in a skit on his late night Comedy/Variety TV series Soupy's On! that he got his first pie in the face. Once again, his show was cancelled and Soupy moved to Detroit in 1953, and went to work for local ABC affiliate WXYZ-TV.
Sales is best known for his long-running daily noontime children's television show. The show was originally called 12 O'clock Comics and was later also known as The Soupy Sales Show. Improvised and slapstick in nature, Lunch with Soupy Sales was a rapid-fire stream of sketches, gags, and puns. Almost all resulted in Soupy receiving a pie in the face, which became his trademark.
Soupy brought pie throwing to an art form — straight to the face, on top of the head, a pie to both ears from behind, moving into a stationary pie and countless other variations. By some estimates, Soupy has been hit by over 25,000 pies.
Clyde Adler, a film editor at Detroit's WXYZ-TV, performed in sketches and voiced and operated all puppets on Sales' show during the Detroit run in the 1950s, and in Los Angeles in 1959-62 and 1978. Actor Frank Nastasi assumed the role of straight man/puppeteer when Sales took the show to New York from 1964-66.
Appearing on the show were the puppets:
Other famous characters were:
The show originated in 1953 from the studios of WXYZ-TV in Detroit, Michigan. Beginning in October 1959, it was telecast nationally on the ABC television network. In 1960, Soupy moved to The KABC TV Studios in Los Angeles, California. ABC dropped the show from the network schedule in March 1961, but it continued as a local program until January of 1962. The show briefly went back on the ABC network as a late night fill-in for the Steve Allen Show, but was once again cancelled after three months.
In 1964, Soupy found a new weekday home at WNEW-TV in New York City. This version was seen locally and syndicated by Screen Gems to local stations outside the New York market. (By some measures, this show marked the height of Sales' popularity. The show featured a number of guest appearances by stars like Frank Sinatra. Sales' hit dance record, "The Mouse", is from this period of his career as well (Soupy performed "The Mouse" on the Ed Sullivan Show in September 1965, one of several appearances with Sullivan, one of which was on the same show as Beatles' appearance) and this was the period during which Sales starred in the movie comedy, Birds Do It.)
"The New Soupy Sales Show" appeared in 1978 with the same format and ran for one season. Sales later had a radio show for several years on WNBC radio in New York; at the same time Howard Stern had an afternoon show on that station. They did not get along, and there was a well-known incident of Stern cutting the wires in Soupy's in-studio piano at 4:05 p.m. on May 1, 1985.
On New Year's Day 1965, Soupy, miffed at having to work on the holiday, ended his live broadcast by encouraging his young viewers to tiptoe into their still-sleeping parents' bedrooms and remove those "funny green pieces of paper" from their pants and pocketbooks. "Put them in an envelope and mail them to me," Soupy instructed the children. "And you know what I'm going to send you? A post card from Puerto Rico!" (followed by his getting hit with a pie) In his 2001 autobiography Soupy Sez! My Life and Zany Times, Soupy admits it is true. He was suspended by the station for two weeks for encouraging children to steal.
For some unexplained reason, the show became a hit not only with children but also with college students. Urban legend has it that this was because Sales sneaked dirty jokes onto his show for their amusement. Sales vehemently denies that and states in his autobiography:
... about those myths. There were all these other things I was supposed to have said, like "What begins with 'F' and ends with 'UCK' ... a firetruck," or, "I took my wife to the ball game and kissed her on the strikes and she kissed me on the balls," or, "My wife is a great cook, she makes great pies—I eat her cherry and she eats my banana." And people would swear that I said it! Now, you know that in those days you couldn't say nuthin' (like that on television).
I got so annoyed at these stories that I used to have a standing offer of ten thousand dollars cash to anyone who could prove that I said any of the things that people claim I've said. Look, at every TV station, whether you know it or not, there's a little spool in the master machine in engineering that records everything that's said, everything that goes on. And believe me, if I said half the things I'm supposed to have said, they would be on some blooper record making the rounds.
After many years, I think I finally figured out how these ridiculous stories got started. Kids would come home and they'd tell a dirty joke, you know, grade school humor, and the parents would say, "Where'd you hear that?" And they'd say "The Soupy Sales Show," because I happened to have the biggest show in town. And they'd call another person and say, "Gladys—did you hear the joke that Soupy Sales was telling on his show?" and the word of mouth goes on and on, until people start to believe you actually said things like that.
These stories may have been started by the off-screen pranks that Soupy's studio crew liked to play on him. They frequently did things to make Soupy break up during the live broadcasts. Reportedly, these pranks included notes with dirty jokes left where Soupy would see them during the show.
The show's set included a door in the background. At one point in the show there would be a knock at the door, and Soupy would answer it. He never knew in advance who would be there. Normally, the guest would be a fairly major celebrity.
One time during the Los Angeles years, as Sales was ending the show, when he opened the door he saw a topless dancer gyrating with a balloon. Viewers saw only the balloon, although a second, non-broadcasting camera captured the uncensored version, and Sales was forced to try to keep the show going without revealing the risque events backstage. This event, in censored and uncensored variations, has been featured on many blooper compilations.
Actually, this was the second time Soupy's studio crew pulled this prank on him. The first time occurred while the show was being broadcast live from Detroit. Some reports say the gag was furthered by the crew switching the studio monitors, so Soupy would think the stripper image was going out over the air. Unfortunately, this show was not recorded, so one has to imagine Soupy's reaction the first time this prank was played on him.
From 1968 to 1975 Sales was a regular panelist on the syndicated revival of What's My Line?. He generally was the first panelist introduced and occupied the chair at the far left side of the panel (facing the camera).
Sales was also a panelist on the short-lived 1980 revival of To Tell the Truth. Other notable game show appearances include over a dozen episodes of the original "Match Game" from 1966 to 1969, a weeks worth of shows on the 1970's edition of Match Game, a few guest spots on Hollywood Squares (Dec. 12, 1977 & April 4, 1978) and a recurring role in all of the many different dollar amount versions of The $10,000 Pyramid from 1973 to 1991.
Soupy's sons, musicians Hunt Sales and Tony Sales, played bass and drums in the band Tin Machine with David Bowie, as well as playing on the albums Runt by Todd Rundgren and Lust For Life by Iggy Pop. Both sons had a band together in Detroit while their father while still in TV there. The band, Tony and the Tigers, had a local hit with the song Turn it On Girl. Tony and the Tigers also appeared on the TV show Hullabaloo in 1966.
Hunt Sales created the percussion riff for "Lust for Life" that has been used in numerous commercials.
