The first time I ever desperately wanted to see someone get hit in the face with a pie, it was this man. Soupy Sales had a TV show on New York’s channel 5 four a few years when I was a kid, and he could take a pie like nobody else. Somewhere betwen Mr Rodgers and Jerry Lewis in his on air persona, he was both the zany and straight man in a program that laid the ground work for shows like Peewee’s Playhouse and TV Funhouse. He’s most famous for the “go through your parents’ pockets” stunt, which is one of the few urban ledgends that actually happened. The fifties and sixties were the heyday of TV where you were being invited into someone’s house: The Mickey mouse Club, the Winchell and Mahoney show, Captain Kangaroo, all these guys inviting you to hang out with them and then playing cartons. Even Sesame Street has some similarities. Those hosts welcomed me into a home that was both outside and yet inside of my home, where wacky puppet neighbors got you into trouble and food was for smearing on your face. Sales’ antic Mad- Magazine style marked one of the places where my tastes and those of the adults in my life overlapped. My family got over awkward social moments by swapping our imitations of Sales’ dog White Fang or doing The Mouse (3:18 for the impatient):
Soupy’s show was one big long shtick, but look at how happy he is to be doing it!
Tags: childhood, Obit, Soupy Sales, tv