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Pie In The Eye
Soupy sez a lot about his 50 zany years in show biz.
MARTIN NATCHEZ
Special to the Jewish News
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Open 7 days a week
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11/30
2001
76
C
omedy is the lowest
rung on the ladder,
but it's the most nec-
essary thing in the
world, "sez" Soupy Sales, whose
kooky clowning ruled Detroit
television in the 1950's.
Typically, it was pure shtick,
with a punch line that stuck
like gum:
Knock at the door: Mr.
Sales, do you like books?
Soupy: I love books! I love
books so much that I live in a
10-story building!
Nobody did it better than
Sales. Soupy Sez! My Life and
Zany Times (M. Evans and
Company, $21.95), his
mirthful yet candid autobiog-
raphy co-written with Charles
Salzberg, documents Sales'
50-plus years in show busi-
ness, along with never-before- Soupy shuffling about his Detroit set in 1955.
told struggles that the "pied"
piper of groans masked in
front of the camera and
Detroit Days
behind the laughs.
Following World War II service in the
Born Milton Supman, the youngest
Navy, Sales secured radio and televi-
son of Irving and Sadie Supman spent
sion jobs in Cincinnati and Cleveland,
his earliest childhood in Franklinton,
working
under the name Soupy Hines.
N.C., where his father ran a dry goods
But
his
happiest
years would be spent
store. Living amidst the South's social
in
Detroit,
from
1953-1959, where
fabric of racial and anti-Semitic atti-
WXYZ produc-
tudes, he remembers that, being the
"only Jews for miles around," his fami- tion chief John
Pival saw his
ly somehow co-existed peacefully in
potential, changed
the shadows of the Ku Klux Klan.
his name to Soupy
At age 4, Sales' father died of tuber-
Sales and slotted
culosis. His mother remarried two
him with kiddy
years later and moved her three boys
program (Lunch
to Huntington, W.Va., where young
With Soupy) and a
Milton — nicknamed Soupbone —
late-night
variety
appeared in an elementary school pro-
(Soupy's
On!).
show
duction of "Peter Rabbit" that pointed
It
was
Pival
who
to his future.
also helped create
"I felt like a lightning bolt had
Sales' "Cat-in-the-
struck me," writes the 75-year-old TV
Hat" persona;
icon.
dressing him in a
"It's weird, I know, because I was
"ridiculously" crooked top hat, a sweater
only 6 years old, and yet somehow I
and an oversized, polka-dot bow tie.
knew that entertaining people was
But all the funny stuff was left to the
going to be my life. To this day, the
Channel 7 executive's new star-to-be.
thing that makes me happiest is the
Amazingly, when interviewed, Sales
applause and laughter I get from an
noted that he wrote all his own mate-
audience."
rial for both shows, week after
week, in addition to introduc-
ing a television breakthrough.
"I just loved the business so
much," he said. "In those days,
we didn't have any budgets for
writers, so you had to do it
yourself. It was just one of
those things that kept me
going. It was like air to me and
made me a workaholic.
"I also knew that there were a
lot of kid shows at that time,
but mine was the first one that
broke the fourth wall -- work-
ing closer to the camera than
anyone had ever worked. It just
led to the situations with the
dogs [White Fang and Black
Tooth] and made everything
totally different."
By 1959, having already tast-
ed national success with
Saturday telecasts of Lunch
With Soupy sponsored by Jell-
0, Sales made the decision to
move to Los Angeles, where he
could continue his affiliation
with the ABC network and
attract an even larger audience
at local station KABC.
His career was purring like a fine-
tuned Ford, until 1963, when station
management informed Sales that they
were going to replace him with syndi-
cated programming and stop produc-
tion of his live show.
Moving On
Then married to his first wife,
and with two sons of his own,
Sales next accepted an offer to
move his hellzapoppin' TV for-
mat show to WNEW in New.
York.
He would soon curse it as
the "worst station in the
world,' because of constant
management confrontations
that left him infuriated and
embittered. In 1966, at the
end of his contract, Sales felt
that exiting live television was the
right thing to do.
"There comes a time when you
have to make a stand for what you
think is right, and at the time I
thought it was time to move on," he