A Belated Goodbye to Soupy Sales, a Man Who Made Me Laugh

My king of comedy passed quietly from cancer October 22,2009. He didn't achieve the world fame of Jerry Lewis. In fact, I doubt there are many Frenchmen that would recognize his name, but he brought a smile to the face of thousands of children, teens and adults across America on Saturday afternoon.

There were so many celebrity greats that died this year that the passing of Soupy Sales received less attention. Sure Michael Jackson had hits but they were not nearly as funny as "White Fang, You're a Mean Dog." The story of Farrah Faucet is inspirational but she didn't have wonderful pals like Pookie, White Fang, Black Tooth, Hippy, Peaches or the mysterious unknown man at the door.

During the height of Soupy's popularity, the children's show was syndicated and that's where I became a Soupy Sales fan. I wasn't a lonely, isolated teen. I was relatively popular, a homecoming queen, a good student and in a lot of school activities. Regardless of what activity it was, if it was held on Saturday at 1:00, I didn't attend. The zany man with the contagious smile was on at that time.

Dancing was a major part of my life. I knew every popular dance from the boogaloo to the "banned by the school" horse. Soupy provided another dance, the Soupy Shuffle. It wasn't attractive, it wasn't sexy, in fact, it was quite unbecoming but I did it at least once at every dance, and much to the chagrin of my life partner, still do.

Soupy Sales had famous celebrities lined up to receive their pie-in-the-face from either White Fang (Who really was a mean dog) or Soupy himself. There was always a schmaltzy story that earned the recipient the pie. Was it really that funny or was it just one of those "you had to be there" types of funny?

I watched several videos of the Soupy Sales Show and found myself smiling and laughing. It wasn't that the humor was that clever, gosh no, it was schmaltzy and silly. It was Soupy's reaction, the fun the whole set had and the feeling that you were part of a select group that hung around together on Saturday. Here's three videos of a show from 1965.

Part one
Part two
Part Three

There's also a collection of some celebrated moments with the background parody "Come Pie with Me." here Another video of Soupy with Pookie that ends with Soupy and White Fang is here

There's a wealth of videos that give you the idea of the type of humor on Soupy's show. It wasn't high class humor but often made up on the spot and it showed. Here's a clip of Soupy and White Fang. The skit was typical of many of Soupy's skits. He and White Fang did four minutes of lead and development for a simple punch line. It was funny then and still is because of it's innocence and because you just had to love the smiling mug of Soupy Sales.

Soupy was good clean fun but sometimes his humor got him into hot water. There's the notorious New Year's Day episode that got him suspended for several days. He ad libbed a bit and told the kids to sneak into their parent's bedroom, get some green paper with pictures of president's on it and send it to him. In return they'd get a post card from Puerto Rico. Someone complained and Soupy was off the air for a while. Here's his version of the story.

Soupy Sales was born January 8, 1926 as Milton Supman. His childhood nickname was Soupy and an Ohio television manager suggested he use the name Sales as his last name. He was an educated man with a degree in journalism from Marshall University but spent most of his life making us laugh. Check here for the picture of the pie left in his honor on his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I'll miss you Soupy. You made me laugh and still do.