DETROIT – In honor of the late Soupy Sales, Detroit Historical Museum is bringing back elements of his display from the popular recent exhibit Detroit’s Classic TV
Personalities.
The display opens today at the Museum and will continue through Sunday, Dec. 6th.
The display features a variety of memorabilia from Sales and his wife Trudy’s personal collection, including props from his kid show like White Fang and Black Tooth arm puppets, a Pookie the Lion puppet, one of his signature bow ties, and books, records and other collectibles. Some additional local Sales items displayed are from the collection
Mekeisha Madden Toby / Detroit News Television Writer
Soupy Sales never met a pie he didn't like and he gave as well as he took.
Because he was a kid at heart, Sales could get away with throwing the creamy dessert in the faces of legendary celebrities such as Frank Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine. Because he was just as iconic, they asked him to do the honors.
The comedian, who once estimated that his face had met up with about 20,000 pies, died Thursday in a New York hospice. He was 83.
"I'll probably be remembered for the pies, and that's all right," said the comic, in a 1985 interview, who inspired the likes of Pee Wee Herman and Andy Kaufman. "That's fine and dandy."
Born Milton Supman on Jan. 8, 1926, in Franklinton, N.C., he got the nickname "Soupbone" from his parents who referred to his older brothers as "Chickenbone"
and "Hambone." The one-time radio disc jockey began his TV career in the 1950s
in Detroit with a little show called "Lunch with Soupy Sales" on WXYZ-TV (Channel 7), the local ABC affiliate.
Sales created a whole world of silliness and wonderment on the show with canine puppets White Fang and Black Tooth, Pookie the Lion and other characters that endeared him both to adults and children. In the 1960s, Sales moved to Los Angeles and then New York, turning his show and his shtick into national treasures.
"His death marks the end of an era," said Ed Golick, the creator behind DetroitKidShow.com and a devoted fan who grew up watching Sales. "There's nobody like him. I had the pleasure of having lunch and dinner with him and he was everything I'd hoped. He was always there with a joke. He was every Detroit kid's best friend."
Golick, with the help of co-producers Tim Kiska and former WJBK-TV (Channel 2) personality Michael Collins, is putting together a documentary called
"A Celebration of Detroit TV." The film is slated to air on local PBS affiliate
WTVS-TV (Channel 56) early next year and will focus on shows that were unique
to this market from 1947-1980 before local programming all but vanished, programs like "Lunch with Soupy Sales."
"I remember watching just to see what he was having for lunch," Golick said.
Gordon Castelnero, who also came of age in Sales' heyday, tapped into his nostalgia to write "TV Land Detroit" (The University of Michigan Press, $22.95).
"Soupy Sales launched the 'Golden Age' of Detroit television and he was our first big TV star," said Castelnero, who has produced documentaries on local Detroit icons such as John Kelly and Marilyn Turner and Lou Gordon. "Kids used to run home from school to have lunch with him, teenagers danced the Soupy Shuffle, and adults skipped the 11 p.m. news to watch "Soupy's On." He was a comedic genius who made us laugh through his wit and simplicity."
Sales is survived by his wife, Trudy, and two sons, musicians Hunt and Tony, who backed the likes of Muskegon native Iggy Pop as well as David Bowie in the band
Occasionally I receive emails I feel would be of interest
to our Detroit Memories Newsletter subscribers.
With permission from the authors, I'll publish them.
~~~~~~~~
Hi Eileen.
First, let me say how much I love reading Detroit Memories. I love being reminded of something that has been long buried in my memory banks.
I was born at Women's Hospital in Detroit. Grew up on the east side, then hit the suburbs (Warren, then East Detroit), where I lived until I moved to Arizona in 1991.
My two best friends are also turning 60 this year. We all graduated from East Detroit High School in 1967. They are:
Lillian Tripi, born 9-10-49, now residing in Warren.
Mary Miller, born 10-4-49, now residing in Southfield.
We are all meeting in Las Vegas to celebrate our birthdays during the first week of November. In honor of my 60th, I am sponsoring the November issue.
Thanks!
Sharon Nail
Scottsdale, AZ 85254
~~~~~~~~
Eileen:
An old elementary school classmate informed me of the newsletter, and I have been enjoying it each month.
I am related to the Grinnell Brothers piano family, although it is distant and I would have to consult my uncle's genealogy writings. I don't ever remember meeting any of those relatives, but I do remember taking DSR downtown via Grand River and going to many businesses and department stores on Woodward Avenue. I remember Hudson's, Demery's and Crowley's, with Christmas on Santa's lap photos to prove it. I also remember going into the Grinnell Brothers store on Woodward near Grand Circus Park, almost directly across from the Telenews Theater, I believe.
I enjoyed Bud Davies and always wanted a sport coat like his, one with a cordoroy collar. I appeared on his show, dancing with my girlfriend at the time, at the Michigan State Fair, 1966, I believe, just after I was discharged from the Army. It was done on early tape or kinescope, so I watched it when I got home. Ah, the memories.
Best wishes to you. Keep up the good work!
Tom Grinnell
Portland, OR
~~~~~~~~
Dear Eileen,
Great website!
I don't know if you can put this link on your website, but we formed the Pasteur Elementary School Alumni Foundation 12 years ago. We are the only alumni association for a Detroit public elementary school. We have had four reunions (including one with a teacher from the 50's), and many of us also volunteer at the school which is located at Stoepel and Pembroke in northwest Detroit.
So far we have 1,000 alumni on our database and over 200 members who help support the work we do. We give books to every student in the school, food to needy families in December, scholarships for college, dictionaries to graduates, and we grant teachers educational wishes from their wish lists.
EDGEWATER AMUSEMENT PARK was on the north side of 7 Mile Road, between Shiawassee and Berg (between Telegraph and Lahser for the east-siders).
The water that made it "edgewater" was the Rouge River.
I was last at the park in 1972. Our class had a trip there on the last day of school. In 1985, my wife and I bought a house on Shiawassee near 7 Mile but, by then, the park had been gone six or seven years. Still, we would walk through the abandoned field and reminisce.
In 2005, the grounds were now occupied by the Greater Grace Temple and a senior housing center that the church had built many years before moving to that location.
It was here that Rosa Parks' funeral was held in November of that year.
Mark Sweetman
Livonia MI
LISTEN TO THE EDGEWATER PARK COMMERCIAL FROM 1964:
DETROIT - Soupy Sales, the rubber-faced comedian who made an art form out of taking a pie in the face and delighted a generation of Detroiters with his loopy TV show on Channel 7 in the 1950s, died Thursday night in New York.
Sales, who had been in ill health for several years, was 83. His former manager, Dave Usher, said Sales last week entered a Bronx hospice, where he died. He is survived by his wife, Trudy, and two sons, Hunt and Tony.
“He was the first person from Detroit television whose first name had instant recognition from coast to coast,” said former Channel 7 anchorman Bill Bonds. “If you said ‘Soupy' in New York, they knew who it was. If you said ‘Soupy' in Los Angeles, everybody knew who it was. I'd worked in both markets, and the first thing anybody said when I mentioned I was from Detroit was ‘Soupy.' ”
Born Milton Supman in Franklinton, N.C., and raised in West Virginia, Sales was best known to Detroiters as the goofy yet cerebral host of “Lunch with Soupy,” a half-hour show that featured Sales hamming it up in a variety of sometimes surreal situations.
The show, which began airing in Detroit in 1953, featured a cast of unforgettable characters: an incorrigible dog by the name of White Fang, “the meanest dog in all Deeeetroit,” who communicated via a series of guttural noises; Black Tooth, an overly affectionate dog whom Sales would constantly tell “don't kiss”; Hippy the Hippo, and Willy the Worm.
Of course, there were the pies. Sales once estimated that he took 9,000 pies in the face during the course of his career.
But the most famous of Sales' bits was “lunch.” A typical menu might include a hot dog as the main course. Before Sales would take a bite, viewers would hear the sound of squealing pigs. Or, viewers might hear the sound of mooing cows as Sales sipped milk.
The lunchtime show was also known for its unpredictability. Sales would leave the set, camera in tow, and harass other Channel 7 hosts.
He once left the set in mid-show and
hunted down Channel 7's Edythe Fern
Melrose, a woman of unyielding dignity
who was known as “The Lady of
Charm.” Sales blasted her with a pie.
“She didn't know it was coming,” once
recalled former Detroit radio personality
Mark Andrews, himself since deceased,
who watched the program as a grade-
school student at Fraser's Eisenhower
Elementary. “It might be the funniest
moment I've seen on television.”
The show was “must-see” TV, long before NBC came up with the phrase. Thousands of Detroit baby boomers would become “Birdbaths,” the designation given to members of his club.
Tom De Lisle, a Detroit writer and TV producer, once recalled to the Free Press growing up on Detroit's east side and watching the show. He and his brother, Skip, lived close enough to their grade school that they could go home for lunch to watch Sales.
“We calculated that we could catch the last joke on the show and make it back to our desks by the time the bell rang if we ran like hell. And that's what we did,” recalled De Lisle. “We stood in the doorway, hung right to the last second of Soupy's show, said ‘Go!' and ran. The show was creative, different and live every day.”
With the success of the noontime show,Channel 7 quickly developed a nighttime show, “Soupy's On,” for the 11 p.m. time period.
“Soupy's On” was a comedy-variety show, with Sales performing sketch comedy with a team of local actors and actresses. He also regularly featured the best jazz performers of the day, including Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk.
Sales created a multitude of characters for his evening show: Charles Vichyssoise, a slippery French crooner who was forever sparring with unruly patrons at the Club Chi Chi; Wyatt Burp, and Ernest Hemingbone, who argued with his literary rivals.
Sales later admitted that the pace of doing a noon show and a 11 p.m. live comedy program — one hour of live television, five days a week — contributed to the breakup of his marriage, played havoc with his family life and left him exhausted.
But he made serious money for Channel 7 — so much money that Sales could be credited with saving the American Broadcasting Company, which owned the station, in addition to the ABC-TV network. At the time, ABC was struggling and relied heavily on its owned-and-operated stations in cities like Detroit, where Sales was raking it in.
Sales left Detroit in late 1959 and ended up at KABC-TV, the ABC-owned station in Los Angeles.
“I thought it was time to move on because I didn't want to be 60, 65 and be sitting around one night having a drink and wonder if I could have made it in another market,” he wrote in his autobiography, “Soupy Sez.”
After Detroit, Sales hosted children's shows in New York and Los Angeles. Frank Sinatra asked to appear on the Sales show in Los Angeles and take a pie in the face.
When Sinatra appeared on the set, a director offered the singer a tour of the set. “Don't bother,” Sinatra reportedly said, “I know the show better than you do.”
Sales' L.A. show ran between 1961 and 1963, but was canceled because local television was moving from live, locally produced TV to syndicated material.
But Sales had one more go-around with children's television, at New York's WNEW-TV between 1964 and 1967, where he get into trouble for jokingly asking his fans to send him money. (See YouTube video below.)
Sales was suspended for the stunt, but reinstated after massive demonstrations in front of WNEW-TV studios.
Sales left Channel 5 in New York in 1968 after years of fighting with station management.
His attitude about station managers, which remained unchanged until his death, was that TV executives ruined television. He said that most station managers would not “know a tap dancer from a trombone player,” and that their primary contribution was “getting drunk on their six-martini lunches.”
His mark on television remained well into the 1980s and beyond. New York Times critic John J. O'Connor noted in 1986 that Pee-wee Herman's act could be traced back to Sales.
Said Channel 7 anchorman Erik Smith: “He was our youth.
He was my lunch every day. He was my Jell-O. He had
that profound an impact as an individual as anybody in
the history of Detroit television. I still find myself doing
some of his mannerisms. And I'm still a proud Birdbath.”
QUESTION: I often watched Soupy Sales' noon kid's show until I started high school in '58, and many times stayed up late enough to watch his 11:00 show meant for adults. I seem to remember a skit he once did on the late show that involving Soupy teaching White Fang the alphabet. He had a blackboard with the alphabet written on it and he pointed to A, said "A", and White Fang said "A" (sounding a bit like Scooby Doo would sound years later). He continued with the other letters of the alphabet until he reached the letter F, at which point White Fang came back with what sounded more like "K". Soupy tried F again and White Fang said "K" again. Finally Soupy, getting annoyed, said to White Fang "How come every time I see F you see K". I think his night time show was off the air for a couple of weeks after that. I haven't seen this little episode mentioned anywhere. Did I just make it up?
Over the past decade, I’ve spoken with many former WXYZ-TV employees who'd either worked on Lunch With Soupy or were frequent visitors to the set. All had stories about Soupy and his stage crew’s practical jokes, and all had favorite double entendres that Soupy had snuck into the show.
But what about Soupy’s standing ten-grand offer? Soupy knew that the Detroit shows were done live, before the invention of videotape. With no evidence, he knew he'd never have to pay up. Only the last two years of the show were taped, and those master tapes were destroyed years ago.
Many thought that the behind the scenes laughter on the show was staged, but it was very real. Soupy’s main goal was to try and crack up his stage crew, while the crew did their best to reciprocate. Dirty notes slipped between the buns of Soupy’s hamburger, orange juice spiked with vodka and Jell-O molds in the shape of a female torso that “jiggled in all the right places” were de rigueur on the show. And Soupy’s encounter with the naked lady at the door is probably the best-known TV blooper of all time.
When the show moved to Los Angeles in 1959, it became tightly scripted and, in the process, lost a lot of its spontaneity. And because it was now seen nationally, Soupy could no longer sneak in little double entendres.
I was lucky enough to have lunch with my idol on two occasions. The first time was in 1979. He was in top form, and was everything I had hoped he would be. He had an amazing memory for people, places and events that he had encountered in Detroit decades earlier. And the man was just plain funny. I had noticed that he was wearing an expensive pair of Italian loafers, with no socks. When I asked him about it, he said, “Oh, I never wear socks. I like to feel my little piggies go wee wee wee, all the way home.”
My second “Lunch with Soupy” was nearly 25 years later. I was shocked when Soupy entered the restaurant with the assistance of a walker. He had suffered a back injury a few years earlier and was now hunched over in pain. A recent operation on his vocal chords hadn’t been successful, and he now couldn’t speak above a whisper.
His body had worn out, but his brain was still razor sharp. He still loved telling the old stories and his eyes twinkled every time a stranger approached him to than him for his years of entertainment.
When a celebrity dies, it is
customary for his or her fans to
place flowers on their star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame. Shortly
after his death, it was reported
that shaving cream pies were
being placed next to Soupy’s star.
A fitting tribute to a very funny man.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GREEN PIECES OF PAPER
Soupy describes how he asked kids to send him "green pieces of paper
with pictures of bearded men." It almost cost him his job.
Don't miss watching this. It's a hoot!
Soupy Sales receives his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2005.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Soupy Sales Goes Out With Love
New York Post / October 27, 2009
SOUPY SALES would have loved his memorial yesterday at the Riverside Funeral Home. Freddie Roman, Joe Franklin and Kenny Kramer -- who inspired the character played by Michael Richards on "Seinfeld" -- were among those who paid their last respects.
One of Soupy's two rock musician sons, Tony or Hunt --
our source didn't know which -- recalled his dad's advice:
"Be true to your teeth, and they won't be false to you."
Professor Irwin Corey had to be removed from the podium
after his eulogy turned into a diatribe about health-care
reform, in which he insisted that Soupy -- along with
Odetta, Eartha Kitt and Miriam Makeba -- died prematurely
because of inadequate treatment. And a female rabbi told
the crowd that Soupy's parents, Irving and Sadie Supman, the only Jewish family in Franklinton, NC, owned a dry-goods store and sold sheets to the Ku Klux Klan.
