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Soupy Sales, the rubber-faced comedian whose
anything-for-a-chuckle career was built on 20,000 pies to the face
and 5,000 live TV appearances across a half-century of laughs, died
Thursday. He was 83.


      Sales died at Calvary Hospice in the Bronx, New York, said his
former manager and longtime friend, Dave Usher. Sales had many
health problems and entered the hospice last week, Usher said.


      At the peak of his fame in the 1950s and '60s, Sales was one of
the best-known faces in the nation, Usher said.


      "If President Eisenhower would have walked down the street, no
one would have recognized him as much as Soupy," said Usher.


      At the same time, Sales retained an openness to fans that turned
every restaurant meal into an endless autograph-signing session,
Usher said.


      "He was just good to people," said Usher, a former jazz music
producer who managed Sales in the 1950s and now owns Detroit-based
Marine Pollution Control.


      Sales began his TV career in Cincinnati and Cleveland, then
moved to Detroit, where he drew a large audience on WXYZ-TV. He
moved to Los Angeles in 1961.


      The comic's pie-throwing schtick became his trademark, and
celebrities lined up to take one on the chin alongside Sales.
During the early 1960s, stars such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis
and Shirley MacLaine received their just desserts side-by-side with
the comedian on his television show.


      "I'll probably be remembered for the pies, and that's all
right," Sales said in a 1985 interview.


      Sales was born Milton Supman on Jan. 8, 1926, in Franklinton,
N.C., where his was the only Jewish family in town. His parents,
owners of a dry-goods store, sold sheets to the Ku Klux Klan. The
family later moved to Huntington, W.Va.

      His greatest success came in New York with "The Soupy Sales
Show" - an ostensible children's show that had little to do with
Captain Kangaroo and other kiddie fare. Sales' manic,
improvisational style also attracted an older audience that
responded to his envelope-pushing antics.


      Sales, who was typically clad in a black sweater and oversized
bow-tie, was once suspended for a week after telling his legion of
tiny listeners to empty their mothers' purse and mail him all the
pieces of green paper bearing pictures of the presidents.


      The cast of "Saturday Night Live" later paid homage by asking
their audience to send in their joints. His influence was also
obvious in the Pee-Wee Herman character created by Paul Reubens.


      Sales returned from the Navy after World War II and became a
$20-a-week reporter at a West Virginia radio station. He jumped to
a DJ gig, changed his name to Soupy Heinz and headed for Ohio.


      His first pie to the face came in 1951, when the newly
christened Soupy Sales was hosting a children's show in Cleveland.
In Detroit, Sales' show garnered a national reputation as he honed
his act - a barrage of sketches, gags and bad puns that played in
the Motor City for seven years.


      After moving to Los Angeles, he eventually became a fill-in host
on "The Tonight Show."


      He moved to New York in 1964 and debuted "The Soupy Sales
Show," with co-star puppets White Fang (the meanest dog in the
United States) and Black Tooth (the nicest dog in the United
States). By the time his Big Apple run ended two years later, Sales
had appeared on 5,370 live television programs - the most in the
medium's history, he boasted. He had a pair of albums that hit the
Billboard Top 10 in 1965; "Do the Mouse" sold 250,000 copies in
New York alone.


      Sales remained a familiar television face, first as a regular
from 1968-75 on the game show "What's My Line?" and later
appearing on everything from "The Mike Douglas Show" to "The
Love Boat." He played himself in the 1998 movie "Holy Man,"
which starred Eddie Murphy.


      He joined WNBC-AM as a disc jockey in 1985, a stint best
remembered because Sales filled the hours between shock jocks Don
Imus and Howard Stern.


      Sales is survived by his wife, Trudy, and two sons, Hunt and
Tony, a pair of musicians who backed David Bowie in the band Tin
Machine.

Gallery

Soupy Sales, the rubber-faced comedian whose
anything-for-a-chuckle career was built on 20,000 pies to the face
and 5,000 live TV appearances across a half-century of laughs, died
Thursday. He was 83.


Comedian Soupy Sales dies at 83

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