Posted on 10/23/2009 1:06:49 PM PDT by bondm
The comedy icon made pie-in-the-face gag a pop-culture phenomenon: It was a simple gag, but one that made Soupy Sales a household name: a pie in the face, or 20,000 pies, to be exact. That slapstick comedic trick, along with a warehouse of goofy faces and wacky characters helped elevate Sales (born Milton Supman) to one of the country's most beloved comedians in the late 1950s. Sales died on Thursday at the age of 83 at a hospital in the Bronx, after several years of declining health...
With his loose-limbed physicality and malleable face, Sales honed his craft on children's television programs in the 1950s, blazing a trail for everything from "The Simpsons" to Pee-Wee Herman by cracking wise for kids while making jokes their parents found funny too. He's best known for his long-running kids show "Lunch With Soupy Sales," where he originated the pie-throwing gag. He moved on to "The Soupy Sales Show," which ran for 13 years in Detroit, New York and Los Angeles, before being picked up in other cities and overseas.
The program was salted with silly puppets named Pookie, White Fang and Black Tooth, but it was Sales who commanded center stage with his pratfalls, campy jokes, loopy characters and puns. The obligatory pie-in-the-face gag became such a phenomenon that...stars such as Frank Sinatra, Mickey Rooney, Tony Curtis and Sammy Davis Jr. lined up to be smeared for its hip cachet.
Sales was born in the tiny town of Franklinton, North Carolina, on January 28, 1926...The family's name was so often mispronounced as "Soupman" that his parents jokingly nicknamed his brothers "Hambone" and "Chickenbone," bestowing on him the name "Soupbone," which was eventually shortened to Soupy....
The show was titled Soupy's On. If I was out at a bar at that time, I would always have the bartender turn the channel to 7.
He and the late Rube Weiss ( shouting shorty Hogan ) were hilarious.
He had a great repertoire of "fly in the soup" jokes
He will be missed
Wow, that’s sad. Well, in the words of the late, great White Fang, “Rrr Rrr? Rrrr Rrrr! Rrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!”
He was a really funny guy. RIP
(Hey, Black Tooth, Soupy died)
Black Tooth: Ooooh, eh ooohhh.
(RIP)
There is a tape of him, done as a practical joke while he was on live, he opened the door to his set and off camera a well endowed young woman was gyrating sans top...you shoud have seen the look on his face and trying to keep from losing it...Absolutely hilarious!
Sandy Becker, Chuck McCann and Soupy were the best.
RIP. :(
I still remember him asking me (and a million other kids) to go into our parents wallets and send pictures of the presidents to the station addressed to the “send the crew to the bahamas” fund. Some dough arrived without a return address.
He got a suspension. And some pictures of presidents.
We’re getting very close to having no more of the “greats” left.
Rest in peace, my silly friend, and “tanks” for the memories.
As I recall, Soupy got into a lot of trouble over a joke that he told about taking his girlfriend to a baseball game. As he described it, while he kissed her between the strikes, she kissed him between the ... :=)
I heard of him, but can’t place him....I think he might have been on a game show in the 80’s...Still can’t place him though. Well you can’t know everyone I guess. I do pray for him and his family.
I enjoyed them all for his experimental push the enveloper spirit.
IIRC, Allen Funt did a movie after his long running Candid Camera series, What Do You Say to a Naked Lady?
You really get the team spirit feeling of the people who worked with him.
They really loved each other and the work.
A rare situation.
I guess I’m an outlier but personally growing up with him and his humor, I just never really enjoyed it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pae99gvWR8Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNv3rVV1mfs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_OioLUqcFo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As7MaQSc7qc
There’s loads more at YouTube.
Yup, I remember him too. He was funny. Got in trouble though when he told the kids to go into their parents pockets and send him ‘’the green stuff’’(money). I liked ‘’White Fang’’, ‘’Pookie’, the ‘’man at the door’’ sketch and his ‘’Filo Kevetch’’ sthick. R.I.P Soupy.’
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