We news folks are so eager to boil stories down to the essence that we often miss the point.
To have reduced Soupy Sales to a kiddie show host who would be hit in the face with pies was a simplification that was both indisputably correct and way off. That’s like calling Lassie a collie.
Mike Ganis, a reader and New Yorker relocated to Houston, did a better job in one e-mailed sentence: “My brothers and I wouldn’t miss Soupy’s show. That sounds all well and good, but I already had graduated from college.”
Bingo!
As a charter member, circa 1965, of the Soupy Sales Society – I still have the button – I was disappointed but not surprised that Sales’ death, Oct. 22 at 83, as reported on TV, radio and in print, mostly seemed anecdotal. Most obits were either dismissive or ignorant of Sales as an acquired taste who performed a TV impossibility: He bridged viewers ages 10 to 30.
The only TV newsperson I saw who tried to convey that Soupy Sales was a period hero who left his mark was Ch. 7 anchor Bill Ritter. Ad-libbing, Ritter fondly listed Sales’ puppet characters, White Fang, Pookie, Black Tooth . . . until he stopped and shrugged, perhaps recognizing that few, if any, in his immediate space, knew what he was emoting about. No good try goes unpunished.
But at a party, later that Friday, Sales’ death was the dominant topic of conversation, none of which I prompted. Long, smiling reminiscences ensued.
On his show, Soupy Sales rarely told a laugh-out-loud joke or participated in a genuinely funny skit. What made them genuinely laugh-out loud funny was Soupy.
He had the comedic timing of Jack Benny, and Sales’ rubber-faced double-take stood alone. And when he shot a smile at the camera, it was as if he was saying to you – and only you – “How silly is all of this?” Consider that more than 35 years before both the English and NBC’s U.S. versions of “The Office” had their characters shoot the camera a look – just to let us know that we’re in this together – Soupy Sales was nailing it weekday afternoons on Ch. 5.
As a guest on his WNBC Radio show in the 1980s, I became friendly with the former Milton Supman. In 2004, his health and voice down to a whisper, I asked about a few of the on-air, urban legends that grew from his shows in Cleveland, then Detroit and then New York. What about telling kids to get into their parents’ wallets then send the cash to him; were thousands really sent?
“Thousands in play money. Only $1 of real money.”
The time he opened that door at the back of the set to see, off-camera, a naked woman?
“True. I had no idea it was coming. She was the girlfriend of the floor director. She was nude, at least as far as I could tell. My wife has the same outfit at home.”
And that vulgar joke about taking his girlfriend to the ballgame? “Never happened.”
As for what clearly did happen, hitting Frank Sinatra in the face with a pie?
“His idea. He asked to get hit with a pie.”
Like a badge of honor, a badge of show business honor.
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ABC’s “America’s Funniest Home Videos” isn’t nearly as funny as it was, not since becoming reliant on laugh tracks attached to clips of people in head-first falls from trees, bicycles, skateboards and horses. The show recently issued this on-air dare to college students: “Want to win $10,000 to $100,000? Prank your dorm, scare your friends in the frat or sorority house, wake up your roommate in a funny way or think of your own practical joke.”
Hey, why not have a casting call down at the munitions plant?