Soupy Sales dies at 83; slapstick comic had hit TV show in 1960s
The comedian acquired a cult-like following among adults with a show ostensibly meant for children. His signature routine, which he elevated to an art form, was pie-throwing.
Soupy Sales, a comic with a gift for slapstick who attained cult-like popularity in the 1960s with a pie-throwing routine that became his signature, has died. He was 83.
Sales had numerous ailments and died Thursday at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, said Kathy O'Connell, a longtime friend.
As the star of "The Soupy Sales Show," he performed live on television for 13 years in Detroit, Los Angeles and New York before the program went into syndication in the United States and abroad.
Ostensibly for children, the show had broad appeal among adults who found Sales' puns, gags and pratfalls deliciously corny and camp. His cast consisted of goofy puppets with names like White Fang, Black Tooth and Pookie, and a host of off-camera characters, including the infamous naked girl.
The high point of every show came when a sidekick launched a pie into Sales' face. Sales once estimated that he was hit by more than 25,000 pies in his lifetime.
The gag became more than hilarious; it evolved into a hip badge of honor. Frank Sinatra was first in a long line of celebrities who clamored for the privilege to be cream-faced, including Tony Curtis, Mickey Rooney, Sammy Davis Jr., Dick Martin and Burt Lancaster.
"I've never done a pretentious show; it's always had a live feeling, the kind of thing that comes across when you don't know what's going to happen next," Sales told author Gary Grossman in the 1981 book "Saturday Morning TV." "I've never done anything simply because I thought I could get away with it. I've just wanted to do the funniest show."
The possibility of humor dogged Sales from the start. He was born Milton Supman on Jan. 28, 1926, in the North Carolina backwater of Franklinton. The Supmans were the only Jews in town. Sales' father ran a dry goods store that sold sheets to the Ku Klux Klan.
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