Soupy Sales, 83, slappy, sticky comic of kiddie TV

DETROIT - Soupy Sales, 83, the rubber-faced comedian whose anything-for-a-chuckle career was built on (by his estimate) 20,000 pies in the face and 5,000 live TV appearances across a half-century of laughs, has died.

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

At the peak of his fame in the 1950s and '60s, Mr. 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," Usher said.

At the same time, Mr. Sales stayed open to fans, turning every restaurant meal into an endless autograph-signing session, Usher said.

"He was just good to people," said Usher.

Mr. Sales began his TV career in Cincinnati and Cleveland, then moved to Detroit, where he drew a large audience on WXYZ-TV. The comic's pie-throwing shtick became his trademark, and celebrities lined up to take one on the chin alongside him. During the early 1960s, stars such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis, and Shirley MacLaine received their just de(s)serts side-by-side with the comedian on his television show.

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

Mr. Sales was born Milton Supman on Jan. 8, 1926, in Franklinton, N.C. 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.

He 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 in the face came in 1951, when the newly christened Soupy Sales was hosting a children's show in Cleveland. In Detroit, his show was originally called 12 O'Clock Comics when it debuted in 1953. It soon changed its name to Lunch With Soupy Sales and took off. His 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. In 1959, the show moved to national broadcast on ABC. He moved to Los Angeles in 1960. His show ran on ABC for another year, and ran as a local show until 1962. He briefly became a fill-in host on The Tonight Show.

He moved to New York in 1964 and debuted The Soupy Sales Show, with costar puppets White Fang (the meanest dog in the United States) and Black Tooth (the nicest dog in the United States). This is where he enjoyed his greatest success. The Soupy Sales Show was supposedly a children's show, but it had little in common with Captain Kangaroo and other kiddie fare. Mr. Sales' manic, improvisational style attracted an older audience that responded to his envelope-pushing antics.

Mr. Sales, typically clad in a black sweater and oversize bow tie, was once suspended for a week after telling his legion of tiny listeners to empty their mothers' purses and mail him all the pieces of green paper bearing pictures of the presidents. The cast of Saturday Night Live later paid homage to this stunt by asking their audience to send in their joints of marijuana. His influence was also obvious in the Pee-Wee Herman character created by Paul Reubens.

By the time his Big Apple run ended in 1966, Mr. Sales had appeared on 5,370 live television programs - the most in the medium's history, he boasted. Taped episodes were syndicated nationally. He also had a pair of albums that hit the Billboard Top 10 in 1965; the single "Do the Mouse" sold 250,000 copies in New York alone.

He remained a familiar television face, first as a regular from 1968-75 on the game show What's My Line? and later appearing on shows 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 in New York as a disc jockey in 1985, a stint best remembered because he filled the hours between shock jocks Don Imus and Howard Stern.

He 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.