Slapstick Comic Icon Soupy Sales Dies

Posted by Harris Lentz in OBITS by Harris Lentz, III on November 7th, 2009

Soupy Sales was a slapstick comedian who elevated pie-throwing to an art form to become a cult icon with his children’s television programs in the 1960s and 1970s.

He was born Milton Supman in Franklinton, North Carolina, on January 8, 1926. With his last name often mispronounced “Soupman”, he was dubbed with the nickname “Soupbone”, which eventually evolved into just “Soupy”. His brothers bore the dubious nicknames “Hambone” and “Chickenbone”. He began working in radio after serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II.

He began a daily children’s television show, Soupy Sales Comics, for Detroit’s WXYZ-TV in 1953. He was Detroit’s top-rated television personality by 1955, when his show became known as The Soupy Sales Show. He shared the screen with such puppet pals as White Fang (“The Biggest and Meanest Dog in the USA”) and Black Tooth (“The Biggest and Sweetest Dog in the USA”), both of whom were represented by over-sized paws jutting from the corner of the screen. Sales became best known for his signature prank of throwing a pie in the face of his guests. His popularity was assured when Frank Sinatra asked to appear on the program, and earned the customary pie-in-the-face. A host of Hollywood’s finest soon lined up for the same treatment (though the pies were generally made of shaving cream).

Sales had his first film starring role in the 1966 fantasy comedy Birds Do It as Melvin Byrd, a janitor at a NASA laboratory who gains the ability to fly.

He also starred in the 1989 “The Farmer’s Daughter” episode of the television anthology horror series Monsters, and was featured as Sonny Day and Professor Prophet in several episodes of Roger Corman’s Showtime series Black Scorpion in 2001.

Sales died in a Bronx, New York, hospital on October 22, 2009, at age 83.

Written by Harris Lentz III