Posted on 10/23/2009 9:57:22 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Soupy Sales died at age 83 yesterday. He hosted an afternoon kiddie show that reached its height of popularity in the mid-1960s. He was totally unlike other kids-show hosts of that, or any other, era. He wasn’t soft-spoken, like Mr. Rogers; he wasn’t grandfatherly, like Captain Kangaroo; he didn’t want to teach you anything, like Mr. Wizard.
What Soupy was was a unique combination of silly and hip. He mixed slapstick with self-conscious irony. He was forever getting a pie thrown in his face. He talked to puppets, especially two — White Fang and Black Tooth — that were really little more than offstage voices, with arms that entered the camera frame. He played jazz on his show and snapped his fingers like a nightclub performer. Cool cats and kitties of the era, like Frank Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine, dropped by to visit and take a pie in the face, because Soupy was, for a little while, himself very cool.
He had a Top 10 hit at the height of Beatlemania with “Do The Mouse.” His musical sons, Hunt and Tony, played with David Bowie in the band Tin Machine, and backed Iggy Pop on Lust For Life, among much other excellent L.A. session-work.
The Soupy Sales Show’s set decor said “clubhouse,” but the off-camera guffaws — when Soupy made the crew laugh with constant his ad libs — introduced a generation to the idea that there were real people behind the TV cameras, that this was a show, not a fantasy-world. Well before The Larry Sanders Show, Soupy was busy breaking the fourth-wall surrounding the creation of TV.
To his eternal and ambivalent fame, he was once suspended from the show for a New Year’s Day 1965 joke: he asked kids to go into their parents’ bedrooms and take the “little green pieces of paper” they found — i.e., money — and send them in to him.
I interviewed him for EW years ago, by phone. As the conversation began to fade, Sales thanked me for not asking him about the “little green pieces of paper” controversy. “Everybody thinks they have to bring that up — why?” he asked me, irritation in his voice.
“Because their editors tell them to, thinking they’ll get a bit more controversy out of it,” I suggested.
“Yeah,” he said, sighing. “Maybe. Or maybe some people just like to make happy people unhappy.”
I hope Soupy Sales has found some happiness now.
I loved the old Soupster. One of the funniest shows ever. White Fang always arrived just in the nick of time to leave Soup pretty well mauled.
May the angels sing him home
He could have brusquely dismissed those irritating reporters simply by saying “No Soupy for You!”
Great post. He’s before my time, but I’ve heard the “little green pieces of paper” story and I think its fabulous. I wish I had heard about this yesterday...but I think there may have been a missing white girl somewhere in need of media attention, or something.
I remember him. He was funny
He was on lots of gameshows during the 60’s, too. That’s how I seem to remember him.
After he jokingly asked the kids to send him those little pieces of green paper, the station received thousands of dollars. To its embarrassment, the station could not send much of the money back because the little kids never put a return address on the envelope.
Soupy's sons went on to play in bands with Iggy Pop and David Bowie.
Mrs. jimfree took a cream pie to work today as a memorial.
Always found it odd that they suspended him over this but not the appearance of a (largely offcamera) stripper (who was captured in her act with an unaired second "blooper" camera) while "The Stripper" played.
They started out by playing on Todd Rundgrens first solo album, Runt.
"Forward them to me!!!"
I laughed at a Cinderella parody called “The Sisty Uglers” until I couldn’t breathe. My Mom threatened t turn Soupy off, but my Dad wouldn’t let her.
saw Tin Machine, good show
I think EW was wrong to refer to them as session musicians, they toured with the performers as well.
I remember watching the little green pieces of paper show. I was 4. I though it was dumb.
I’d forgot about white Fang and Black Tooth.....
Netflix has a couple of Soupy Sales tv show DVD titles.
I purchased the 3 disc set years ago only to discover that it largely consisted of 1970s programming. But it does include the famous stripper blooper.
And there is a title of 1959 episodes.
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