Pie in the Face

I remember watching the show.


* REMEMBRANCES
* OCTOBER 24, 2009

Soupy Sales: 1926—2009
TV Host Who Served Up Pie-in-the-Face Humor
By STEPHEN MILLER

An expert on the aeronautic properties of pies, Soupy Sales estimated he was hit in the face by upward of 20,000 of the desserts during his years as a TV show host.

Mr. Sales, who died Thursday at age 83, was a rubber-faced comedian who emceed a show featuring puppets, songs, and off-the-wall humor. Regularly featured were two dogs, White Fang and Black Tooth, visible only as giant puppet paws.

Though pitched at children, Mr. Sales's shows found a ready audience among teenagers and adults, who relished sometimes surreal humor, as well as the host's manic energy. Jokes were most often punctuated by a pie to the host's face.

"That was a joke, that it was for kids," says Dave Usher, Mr. Sales' manager in the 1950s. "So many other people would watch it because it was hip."

Mr. Sales honed his humor at a series of jobs in live television in the early 1950s, culminating in "Lunch With Soupy," a noon-time half hour he hosted for several years at ABC Detroit affiliate WXYZ-TV. He also was emcee for the station's night-time jazz program, "Soupy's On," featuring such guests as Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie.

In 1961, Mr. Sales moved the show to Los Angeles, where he also served as occasional guest host of "The Tonight Show." Sensing crossover appeal to an adult audience, ABC in 1962 scheduled Mr. Sales as a successor to "The Steve Allen Show." He later moved his show to New York City, where it was produced at WNEW and syndicated to 40 cities and Canada and Australia.

Mr. Sales once caused a minor sensation with a surprise guest, Frank Sinatra, who broke into the song "A Foggy Day (in London Town)" before receiving the customary pie to the face. The episode kicked off a spate of celebrity pie-ings. He also had a Top-10 hit with "Do the Mouse," a dance number.

The show made news in 1965 when in an ad-libbed bit, Mr. Sales urged viewers to rifle their parents' wallets and send in "little green pieces of paper." The stunt garnered little actual money, but got Mr. Sales suspended briefly, a reprimand that might have added to his appeal among young viewers.
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Mr. Sales delighted in his goofball reputation. Responding to a speech by in which Norman Minow, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, called television a "vast wasteland," Mr. Sales said, "Try me and see the best waste in town!"

Born Milton Supman in rural North Carolina, Mr. Sales recounted growing up in the only Jewish family in a tiny town. How small was it? So small, he joked, that "the zoo closed because the clam died." The name "Soupy" was derived from his last name and "Sales" was added by a station manager in Cleveland. He made Soupy Sales his legal name in 1957.

After Metromedia Inc. decided not to renew his show in 1966, Mr. Sales kept active in show business. He tried acting on Broadway and was a regular on the variety show circuit. He spent a several years as a panelist on "What's My Line," and toured clubs with an act heavier on one-liners than on physical comedy.

In 1982, he told the Washington Post that he was sick of being pied. But he was undeniably an authority on the topic, and was once called as an expert witness in the trial of a Navy sailor who threw a chocolate cream pie at his commanding officer.