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.

