Soupy Sales

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" height=169 style=" border-bottom: 1px solid #CCCCCC;" BGCOLOR="#111111" TEXT="#F7F7FF" bgproperties="fixed" background="017a0ad1dyxtip.jpg"> <bR> <div> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="1" WIDTH="698" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#C0C0C0" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="VOID" RULES="NONE" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=CENTER HEIGHT= 111 ><NOBR><div> <IMG SRC="00d69690.jpg" border=0 width="105" height="105" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> </NOBR></tD> <tD VALIGN=CENTER><NOBR><div> Waxahachie Independant School District    <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#00FF00" FACE="Comic Sans MS" >               Waxahachie, Texas</FONT></div> <div> <B>Waxahachie High School Alumni 1962</B></div> <div> <B>WHS Seniors '62</B></div> </NOBR></tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <bR> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" height=268 BGCOLOR="#111111" TEXT="#F7F7FF" bgproperties="fixed" background="01f9b9c3.jpg"> <div>                                                   </div> <div> <B><SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">  </SCRIPT> </B></div> <bR> <div> <B> <TABLE BORDER="5" CELLPADDING="12" CELLSPACING="1" WIDTH="560" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#00FF00" BORDERCOLORDARK="#00FF00" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" BGCOLOR=#000000 > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP COLSPAN=2 HEIGHT= 3168 WIDTH="498"><div> <I><B> </B></I></div> <div> <I><B> <TABLE BORDER="3" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="1" WIDTH="378" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#FFFFFF" BORDERCOLORDARK="#FFFFFF" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" BGCOLOR=#000000 > <tR> <tD VALIGN=CENTER HEIGHT= 377 ><NOBR><div> <A HREF="laughter_2.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Laughter 2"><B><IMG SRC="0c947550.jpg" border=0 width="327" height="341" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></A></div> </NOBR></tD> </tR> </TABLE></B></I></div> <bR> <div> <I><B>Soupy Sales</B></I></div> <bR> <div> <B>Soupy Sales (born Milton Supman on January 8, 1926) is an American comedian and actor. Sales was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on January 7, 2005, a day before his 79th birthday.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Supman was born in Franklinton, North Carolina. He is a graduate of Huntington High School in Huntington, West Virginia and Marshall University. His career began as a script writer and then DJ at radio station WHTN in Huntington.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Soupy had gotten his unusual nickname from his family. His older brothers had been nicknamed "Hambone" and "Chicken Bone"; young Milton was dubbed "Soup Bone", which was later shortened to "Soupy". When he became a disc jockey, he began using the stage name "Soupy Hines". After he became established, it was decided that "Hines" sounded too close to Heinz, which made a line of soups at that time, and so Soupy chose the surname "Sales" after a comedian by that name.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Sales is best known for his long-running daily noontime children's television show. Improvised and slapstick in nature, Lunch With Soupy Sales was a rapid-fire stream of sketches, gags, and puns. Almost all resulted in Soupy receiving a pie in the face, which became his trademark. The show was also known as The Soupy Sales Show.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Lunch With Soupy Sales consisted of Soupy, his four pets and an endless array of people who came to the door to annoy him, exploit him and, invariably, pie him.  All of the people at the door and all four pets were performed by a gentleman named Clyde Adler who was the perfect straight man for the Sales madness.  As I learned from newspaper articles of the time, Adler was not a professional comedian; he was, by trade, a film editor at the Detroit TV station where Soupy had invented his winning format.  Conscripted to help Soupy there, he had taken an open-ended Sabbatical from the editing biz to migrate West with the comic.  Clyde played White Fang (a white dog paw, reaching just barely into camera range) and Black Tooth (a black paw), then raced around to the back of the set to play Pookie or Hippie (the puppets) or some guy-at-the-door.  Except for the rarest of accidents, no part of him but his voice and forearms ever appeared on the show.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"Raah-oh-raah-oh-raah," White Fang would intone in his gruff voice, intelligible only to Soupy.  Soupy would have to translate for us...</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"What's that you say, White Fang?  Paramount keeps calling you about shorts?"</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>White Fang would answer, "Raah," which even I could tell meant, "Yeah."</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Soupy: "Did you leave your shorts at the Paramount Theater again?"  And here would come the pie.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Or at the door: A travelling psychiatrist (Clyde, of course) would arrive in answer to Soupy's desperate phoned plea for help.  "Ya gotta tell me, doc," Soupy would beg.  "Is it possible for a man to be in love with an elephant?"</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Clyde, sporting maybe the worst Viennese accent in show business would answer, "No, it is not possible! A man cannot be in love with an elephant!"</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Whereupon Soupy would whip out a piece of jewelry the size of a hula-hoop.  "In that case," he would say, "do you know here I can get rid of an engagement ring this big?"  And here would come another pie.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Or Pookie and Hippie would fill three minutes, miming to a scratchy record by Stan Freberg, Johnny Standley or Eddie "The Old Philosopher" Lawrence.  (Among the many gifts Soupy gave me was that he introduced me to comedy albums, Freberg's especially.)</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>And at the end would come the pie.  Always, the pie.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Characters on the show</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Appearing on the show were the puppets:</B></div> <div> <B>White Fang, "The Meanest Dog in the USA"</B></div> <div> <B>Black Tooth, "The Sweetest Dog in the World"</B></div> <div> <B>Hippie the Hippo, who never spoke</B></div> <div> <B>Pookie the Lion, a 1950s hipster</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Other famous characters were:</B></div> <div> <B>Philo Kvetch, a private detective played by Sales in a long-running comedy skit on the show (a parody of early 20th century fictional detective Philo Vance).</B></div> <div> <B>The Claw, evil nemesis of Philo Kvetch, revealed in the last episode to be Nikita Kruschev, who had been deposed about a year earlier.</B></div> <div> <B>"Onions" Oregano, henchman of The Claw, who ate loads of onions. Every time Oregano would breathe in Philo's direction, Philo would make all sorts of comic choking faces, pull out a can of air freshner, say "Get those onions out of here!", etc.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>History of the show</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>The show originated in 1953 from the studios of WXYZ-TV in Detroit, Michigan. It was later telecast nationally on the ABC television network, and in 1964 found a weekday home at WNEW-TV in New York City. This version was syndicated by Screen Gems to local stations outside the New York market. (By some measures, this show marked the height of Sales' popularity. The show featured a number of guest appearances by stars like Frank Sinatra. Sales' hit dance record, "The Mouse", is from this period of his career as well. And this was the period during which Sales starred in the movie comedy, Birds Do It.)</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>A new show appeared in 1978 with the same format and ran for one season. Sales later had a radio show for several years on WNBC radio in New York, at the same time Howard Stern had an afternoon show on that station. They did not get along, and there was a well-known incident of Stern's people cutting the wires in Soupy's in-studio piano.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>New Year's Day incident</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>On New Year's Day 1965, Soupy, miffed at having to work on the holiday, ended his live broadcast by encouraging his young viewers to tiptoe into their still-sleeping parents' bedrooms and remove those "funny green pieces of paper" from their pants and pocketbooks. "Put them in an envelope and mail them to me," Soupy allegedly instructed the children. "And you know what I'm going to send you? A post card from Puerto Rico!" In his 2001 autobiography Soupy Sez! My Life and Zany Times, Soupy admits it is true. He was suspended by the station for two weeks for encouraging children to steal.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Claims that Sales told dirty jokes on air</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>For some unexplained reason, the show became a hit not only with children but also with college students. Urban legend has it that this was because Sales sneaked dirty jokes onto his show for their amusement. Sales vehemently denies that and states in his autobiography:</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>...about those myths. There were all these other things I was supposed to have said, like "What begins with 'F' and ends with 'UCK'...a firetruck," or, "I took my wife to the ball game and kissed her on the strikes and she kissed me on the balls," or, "My wife is a great cook, she makes great pies—I eat her cherry and she eats my banana." And people would swear that I said it! Now, you know that in those days you couldn't say nuthin' (like that on television).</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>I got so annoyed at these stories that I used to have a standing offer of ten thousand dollars cash to anyone who could prove that I said any of the things that people claim I've said. Look, at every TV station, whether you know it or not, there's a little spool in the master machine in engineering that records everything that's said, everything that goes on. And believe me, if I said half the things I'm supposed to have said, they would be on some blooper record making the rounds.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>After many years, I think I finally figured out how these ridiculous stories got started. Kids would come home and they'd tell a dirty joke, you know, grade school humor, and the parents would say, "Where'd you hear that?" And they'd say "The Soupy Sales Show," because I happened to have the biggest show in town. And they'd call another person and say, "Gladys—did you hear the joke that Soupy Sales was telling on his show?" and the word of mouth goes on and on, until people start to believe you actually said things like that.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Topless dancer prank on Sales</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>There was a door in the set behind him. At one point in the show there would be a knock, and Soupy would answer it. He never knew in advance who would be there. Normally, the guest would be a fairly major celebrity.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>One time, as Sales was ending the show, when he opened the door he saw a topless dancer gyrating with a balloon. Viewers saw only the balloon (although a second, non-broadcasting camera captured the uncensored version) and Sales was forced to try and keep the show going without letting on as to the risque events backstage. Some reports say the gag was furthered by the crew by switching the studio monitors, so Soupy would think the stripper image was going out over the air! This event (in censored and uncensored variations) has been featured on many blooper compilations.</B></div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <A HREF="file://F:\Web Sites\whs62 New\Our 50's\Our Comedy\Soupy Sales\soupyshow1.ram" TARGET="_top" TITLE="file://F:\Web Sites\whs62 New\Our 50's\O"><B>See Video Clip Here</B></A></div> </tD> </tR> </TABLE></B></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="laughter_2.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Laughter 2"><B>Back</B></A></div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" height=42 style=" border-top: 1px solid #CCCCCC;" BGCOLOR="#111111" TEXT="#F7F7FF" bgproperties="fixed" background="0182a2f1dyxtip.jpg"> <div> <A HREF="http://whs62.net" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://whs62.net">Home</A>     <A HREF="http://whs62.net/Roll" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://whs62.net/Roll">Roll Call</A>    <A HREF="http://whs62.net/In_Memory" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://whs62.net/In_Memory">In Memory</A>   <A HREF="http://whs62.net/Long_Ago" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://whs62.net/Long_Ago">Long Ago</A>    <A HREF="http://www.whs62.net/Our_50s/" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.whs62.net/Our_50s/">Our 50's</A>   <A HREF="http://whs62.net/Reunions" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://whs62.net/Reunions">Reunions</A>   <A HREF="http://whs62.net/Today" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://whs62.net/Today">Today</A>    <A HREF="http://whs62.net/Contacts" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://whs62.net/Contacts">Contacts</A>    <A HREF="http://whs62.net/Links" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://whs62.net/Links">Links</A></div> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>