42 | JANAURY 6 • 2022

ARTS&LIFE
BOOK REVIEW

O

nce upon a time,
a star, a superstar,
perhaps the leading
television performer in all of
America, lived right here in
Jewish Detroit, seemingly next
door to everyone.
In the 1950s, when school
children had a lunch break
long enough to allow them to
walk home, enjoy lunch with
their stay-at-home mom and
get back in time for afternoon
class, Lunch with Soupy filled
a need. It gave households
— those that already had the
brand-new luxury of a televi-
sion — a focus for their time
together.
Soupy, wearing his oversized
bow tie and his battered top
hat, interacted with his fam-
ily of characters, including a
mostly offscreen pair of dogs,
Black Tooth and White Fang,
and a mostly offscreen angry
neighbor. Often Soupy got a
pie in the face as reward for
his efforts. Somehow, Soupy
also managed to eat his lunch
during the show and tout his
Jell-O brand dessert.
Even the littlest children
responded to the unthreaten-
ing slapstick of Soupy Sales
and the cartoons he showed.
Older siblings and their moth-
ers came to love his ridiculous
puns and zany skits.
Remarkably, while Soupy
perfected his program for chil-
dren at noon, he also hosted a
late-night program for adults.
At 11 p.m., Soupy’s On featured

music by Soupy’s guests, the
greatest big-band and jazz
musicians who appeared at
Detroit music clubs, sophis-
ticated conversation about
music, and zany skits mocking
various aspects of popular
culture. Soupy would trans-
form himself for these skits
in an instant into the French
actor Charles Vichyssoise,
or the Western hero Wyatt
Burp or noted author Ernest
Herringbone.
Segregation flourished in
the 1950s: Club owners pre-
sented some
local venues
as “black and
tan clubs,”
where the
audiences
could include
white and
Black patrons.
Other clubs
were not so
accommodat-
ing. The finest
musicians, Black
and white, were
honored guests
on Soupy’s On. Club owners
even insisted on inserting a
clause in performers’ contracts
insisting that, in addition to
performing at the club, they
appear on Soupy’s program.
While running a show at
lunchtime and another at bed-
time, what did Soupy Sales do
with the rest of his day? He
scheduled personal appear-
ances all around Detroit, for

nearly anyone
who asked
him. Dave
Usher, Soupy’s manager at the
time, said, “He would average
about five or six calls a day
from viewers asking, mainly
because of his kid’s show, if
he’d make appearance at vari-
ous locations. So we’d show up
whenever . . .”
When he announced on
television that he would show
up at a Big Boy restaurant or
a movie theater, thousands of
his followers would swarm

him. He would also make
appearances at private parties,
just because someone asked.
Soupy explained why: “He
felt he owed it to the people of
Detroit.”
You learn all this and more
in Francis Shor’s Soupy Sales
and the Detroit Experience:
Manufacturing a Television
Personality (Cambridge
Scholars Publishing).

THE EARLY YEARS
Soupy Sales started out as
Milton Supman, born in

A Beloved Entertainer
New book profiles the life and work of the legendary Soupy Sales.

LOUIS FINKELMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

LUIGI NOVI VIA WIKIPEDIA

Soupy Sales autographing books at the Big Apple
Convention in Manhattan, 2008.