Serious Soupy

Other than they talked to the same age group, there wasn’t a lot in common between Captain Kangaroo and Soupy Sales.

The Captain was very low key. Soupy was energetic. The Captain was full of common sense. Soupy was silly.

Yet Soupy had a serious side, too, that he chose to express off the air. Here’s a story from September 29, 1962 about how Milton Supeman tried to help teenagers.

The Serious Side of Soupy Sales
By BOB THOMAS
AP Movie-Television Writer
HOLLYWOOD (AP)—It's tough on new comedians to discover that the established comics have taken up most of the known diseases for their pet projects.
The rules of show biz are such that a funnyman must also have his serious side—as spearhead for some worthy cause. Soupy Sales realized this as he started pushing into the television bigtime as slapstick favorite of the younger crowd.
He chose as his particular cause that disease afflicting thousands of teen-agers—drop out.
The youngster who drops out of high school and goes no further with his education has been getting attention from many civic-minded persons, up to and including President Kennedy. They reason that the drop out is a waste of the nation's resources. Further, education is increasingly important in today’s world, in which automation is replacing work done by unskilled labor.
"I had been doing charity work, but it wasn't being directed toward anything," said Soupy. "Jerry Lewis has muscular dystrophy and the other comedians have their own causes. I thought since I had worked with kids, I should find something that affected them.
"Combating the drop out is just as important as fighting any dreaded disease. This is a kind of disease that can blight lives, yet it can be cured by the people themselves, if given enough love, understanding and guidance."
Soupy has gone all out with special television and radio spot announcements to coincide with the return to school. He also carries on the campaign with his daily television show in Los Angeles. The local station, KABC, has put together a 25-minute short called "Drop Out Blackouts."
Last week the film was presented to Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Anthony J. Celebrezze for use in the nation's schools. I saw the film and it is an effective piece of salesmanship, getting to the teen-agers with Soupy's unique brand of humor.
“Don’t be a drop out,” warns Soupy, and a body plunges off a high roof.
The comedian revealed he almost dropped out of high school as a lad. "I figured I was going into show business," he said. "You don't need a diploma to tell jokes, I thought.
"But I changed my mind and even graduated from Marshall College in Huntington, W. Va., getting my degree in journalism. I'm glad I did. Now I write all my own material."
Parents might find this a poor argument for his campaign, but at least the teenagers are on his side.

1962 was an interesting year for Soupy. He, rather improbably, was picked as a guest host for the Tonight show. NBC was using fill-ins of all kinds, awaiting Johnny Carson’s contract on another network to expire so he could permanently take over.

Perhaps the most sour critic in America, Harriet Van Horne, disapproved. Mind you, she seemed to disapprove of almost everything, judging by some of her other columns we’re transcribed here. This one is dated June 6, 1962. She has a low opinion of everyone who filled in for Paar, and Paar himself.

Tonight Show in Soup
Substitute MCs Keep Program In Embarrassed Suspension
By HARRIET VAN HORNE
Scripps-Howard Staff Writer
NEW YORK, June 6—Until Johnny Carson—a pro—assumes command of the Tonight show on Oct. 8, NBC is flinging substitute M.C.'s onto the screen as if they were dummy hands at bridge. From a viewer's vantage, a malign hand would seem to be dealing—and from a rather soiled and tattered old deck.
In consequence, the Tonight show is now in a state of what might be termed embarrassed suspension but live and in color.
This week the master of the revels is one Soupy Sales. I've seen Mr. Sales' name in the daytime TV log a thousand times. But until recently, I was under the impression that Soupy Sales was an animated cartoon.
Well, having viewed the Tonight show I can now report that Soupy Sales is not a cartoon, though his animation is such that it nearly qualifies him for the rank. An anxious man with blurred diction and the arrogance that probably hides a sinking heart, Mr. Sales has made a notable success of his kiddie shows. In his own field, I am advised, he is superbly at ease, with a golden arm for pie-throwing.
In truth, Soupy, if I may be so familiar, made his name and fame hurling pies. It was taken for granted that he would open his week's run on Monday by tossing an open-faced custard at some poor stooge standing there (at union minimum) braced for impact.
Ah but Soupy staged a stunning surprise. He resisted the obvious and hurled a man into an enormous pie. Versatile you might say. A man who refuses to be a dupe to his art.
To give you a full account of all that transpired on the Soupy show last night would tax your credulity. I still can't believe it myself.
First, we had Marie Wilson. While her host was busy grimacing and offering footnotes of total irrelevance, Miss Wilson told us some backstage stories. How she once borrowed Zsa Zsa's wig in Las Vegas—a lovely Blue wig—how she usually dresses for a show (a low cut bathing suit turned frontwards) and so on. For whatever it means to her, Miss Wilson had our sympathy.
Not so Gene Shepard, the disk jockey, idol of the "night people," a man of raw and un-concocted conclusions. Mr. Shepard offered what I can only describe as a skull solo. He thumped his head with his knuckles while the band played "The Sheik of Araby." Bowing modestly to the studio applause, Mr. Shepard volunteered that he keeps his head in condition by soaking it in ointment. I believe you, Mr. Shepard.
I expect there was a great deal more of this sophisticated entertainment but my little screen suddenly went dark—by arrangement.
It strikes me that all the substitutes seen so far on the Tonight show have one quality in common with Jack Paar. That is, a note of privileged vulgarity runs through every sentence. There's also a tendency toward petulance, the egomania that's almost out of bounds. Perhaps it's something the Paar "personal," as they say, left in the studio air.
While I've not watched every new face on the Tonight show, it would seem that the M. C. viewers found most at ease was Merv Griffin. A number of viewers have said so in their letters. I must beg to disagree.
Mr. Griffin is a man of over-weaning courtesy, and as such a pleasant change from some of the others. But he's a graceless, non-listening interviewer, the sort who smiles cheerily as he interrupts a good story with a senseless question.
Mr. Griffin has another habit I find annoying. He tells brittle show business stories, the sort of stories that must be told with a theatrical air, and gets them all wrong. Also, he relates these glittery yarns in the tone of a man putting a child to sleep with a bedtime story.

Soupy talked to adults later in his career when he appeared as a panelist in the ‘70s syndicated version of What’s My Line?. The show shed its Park Avenue atmosphere of the ‘50s and ‘60s and became a little more down-to-earth. Arlene Francis was still charming and got off some clever humour. Anita Gillette was bright and friendly. And Soupy, well, couldn’t help being “on” some of the time, but at the same time he made fun of himself, especially if one of his jokes didn’t go over. It was a really good mixture.

Arrogant? Hardly. Sinking heart? Give me a break. Soupy Sales was a guy who liked a little innocent, and perhaps corny, fun. There was more to him than tossing a pie or two. I guess he had that in common with the Captain, too.

Soupy

You’ve seen it in cartoons. A character will stop and observe: “I like him. He’s silly.”

That describes Milton Supman. The world knows him better as Soupy Sales.

The best kid show hosts were the ones who were having fun on camera, not talking down to their audience, and doing ridiculous (and sometimes inside) stuff that appealed to smart youngsters, astute college students and adults who had a sense of humour. Most of those emcees appeared on local television. So did Soupy Sales, but he got a national audience in summer of 1955 with a 15-minute show on ABC-TV, then again starting in October 1959 with a half-hour Saturday show called Lunch With Soupy Sales. Both shows were beamed out of Detroit, where Soupy was pulling in $150,000 a year. He moved to Hollywood in December 1960 (still on ABC), guest hosted on the Tonight show in June 1962, signed a four-picture contract with MGM (which figured he’d be “the next Jerry Lewis” as AP columnist Bob Thomas put it at the time). Then he chucked it all and moved to New York City in 1964.

Let’s pick up Soupy there with a couple of newspaper stories from 1965. First up is a piece from the syndicated TV Keynotes column from the King Features Syndicate. It appeared in newspapers on June 11th, by which time Soupy was riding a gimmick called “The Mouse,” a dance he did on his show that he turned into a novelty album that was briefly on the Billboard chart about this time. The story also talks about his most famous stunt of his New York TV career.

Soupy Sales Latest Whiz On TV
By HARVEY PACK
NEW YORK — Fans either love Soupy Sales or they hate him. There's no in between and that's the way Soupy wants it.
"People who love you watch you." philosophizes Soupy, the current rage of local New York television and creator of that popular dance "The Mouse,'' 'And if they hate you they've got to watch you just to give their hate muscles some exercise."
But at the moment Soupy is riding a crest of love. Teenage girls converge daily around the entrances of New York TV station WNEW waiting to meet and greet the uninhibited host of a kiddy show which has become something of an "in" program among New Yorkers.
When Soupy arrives he graciously accepts their gifts (edible offerings are not consumed since one never knows whether the chef was one of those rare Soupy-haters); he chats with all of them, signs their autograph books and even scrawls his name on a few arms which will undoubtedly not see soap and water again until the fickle youngsters find another idol.
Hottest In Business

Soupy is one of the hottest performers in the business today, a fact which seems to confuse Soupy because he's been doing the same thing on TV for more than a dozen years. Born in North Carolina and reared in Huntington, W. Va., he entered the field of radio in Huntington soon after graduating college. Stints in Cincinnati and Cleveland were followed by his debut in Detroit back in 1953, which really launched him as a top audience getter and a clown in the true slapstick tradition.
From Detroit, where he was carried on the ABC network Saturday mornings, he went to Hollywood and became a pet of the Sinatra clan. His pie throwing became his trademark and his celebrity fans in the film capital considered being plastered with a Soupy pie a status symbol.
They gave him a nighttime network show which was a flop and, except for a week as host of the "Tonight" show, that was the last anyone heard of Soupy Sales. Then, last September he brought the same kiddy show which had been a sensation in Detroit and Los Angeles to New York. WNEQ-TV put him on at 4:30 p.m. and forgot about him. He was tops in his time slot, but nobody at the station really cared.
On Jan. 1, 1965, Soupy walked up to the camera and stuck his face right into the lens which is one of his favorite tricks. "Hey, kids," he began that New Years's day, "your folks are probably sound asleep so sneak into their rooms, open their wallets and send Old Soupy all the green paper with pictures of presidents."
Publicity Results
The kids were hip and knew Soupy was having fun, but a few irate parents — who were not sleeping — wrote letters and suddenly WNEW knew they had a guy on named Soupy Sales.
"I had used that same gag for years in Detroit and Los Angeles," said Soupy one afternoon, while sitting in the windowless, humid, pop art decorated office where the station has imprisoned him. "Nothing ever happened. Even here it wasn't until two weeks later that the thing exploded."
When the station suspended Soupy it became something of a local issue and the resulting publicity definitely brought the Soup to a boil. A sensational in person show at a New York theater, his hit record of "The Mouse," and eventual switch by the station to an early evening time slot and appearance with Ed Sullivan and other major TV shows have all contributed to his phenomenal rise.
"I write the show myself," he explained, "I always have. Of course, I now find it harder to handle all the writing. I think the reason we're so successful is that I gear every gag and every situation for kids and adults on two different levels. The kids love to watch puppets or see me throw a pie . . . and their parents have their ears tuned for some inside gag.
"Where do I want to go now? I'd like to do the same kind of free wheeling comedy on a network at night. I know it would work. And movies. That's what I really want. They're great for a comedian . . . particularly one like me."
He handed me the script for that day's "Soupy Sales Show." I read one gag. Man: Whatever happened to your brother? Girl: Didn't you know he was caught in a cement mixer? Man: Where is he now? Girl: You know that sharp turn on Route 46 in New Jersey? That's him. Man: No kidding . . I'll wave to him next time I go by.
Crazy? Nutty? Of course it is, but that's Soupy Sales and you either love him or you hate him.

Soupy’s first wife contributed to this piece about him found in Family Weekly, a newspaper magazine supplement, on September 5, 1965. One of the more impressive revelations was likely unintentional—Soupy as a crack businessman. He did a really good job of marketing his persona.

WHO IS THIS SOUPY SALES?
By MRS. SOUPY SALES
as told to Jack Ryan
MY HUSBAND was a prisoner of teen-age mobs! They besieged him for 10 days last spring in New York's famed Paramount Theater while he was making an appearance there.
Some girls rented rooms in the Astor Hotel and demanded a "Soupy view." When Soupy leaned out his window and waved to the crowds, the police threatened to arrest him.
My wifely visiting rights consisted of sneaking through the mobs and seeing him backstage. Toward the end of his run, I found him haggard and 15 pounds lighter but still exclaiming: "This is it—what we took all the knocks for!"

Despite acclaim by kids and adults (20 percent of his audiences are grownups), I still heard a man ask: "Who IS this Soupy Sales?" Well, I could have told him. Soupy is the slapstick comic who made pie-in-the-face throwing so popular that Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis, Burt Lancaster, and other Hollywood stars lined up to get a meringue of shaving cream shoved in their faces. He is the constant cut-up who invented a dance step at a party which developed into a teen-age favorite, the Mouse (his records for the dance have sold a million copies). And his is the face goggling at you from sweatshirts and bubble gum. There are now 60 such items selling at the rate of $10 million a year.
But as his wife for 15 years, let me tell you who Soupy Sales really is: not the comic kids love and adults either hate or love, but the thirty-ish man with wiry black hair who never quite outgrew being the "school nut" in our home town of Huntington, W. Va.
His widowed mother ran the local dry-goods store, and he was known as Milton "Soupbone" Hines, and his buddies were nicknamed "Chickenbone" and "Hambone." Soupbone studied to be a newspaperman but was more interested in show time than deadline.
We were married in 1950, after his graduation from Marshall College, and he went to work for a radio station at $20 a month. "You just wait," he'd promise. "You'll see." I did see, too, but it truly was a wait. A good friend of ours managed the Huntington station, and one day we got terrible news—he'd been fired.
It was a sour moment but, as it so happens, the real beginning, too, because he landed a job in Cincinnati and called in Soupy as a disc jockey. So we took our first step to conquer the hip big cities—and, believe me, using the same downing that slayed them in Huntington.
Cincinnati? I remember my husband changing his name to Sales because Soupy Hines sounded "like a commercial." I also remember Soupy's discouragement He had enthusiastically presented an idea for a new type of show, a teen-age dance program with music and fun. "It'll never go," said the bosses. Six months later Dick Clark came on with a similar program, and "American Bandstand" made show-business history.
We next packed for Cleveland, where a newspaper named Soupy's show "best of the year"—but he was fired the following week. "They think I'm a nut just because I talk loud, make funny faces, and gag up a show," Soupy would say, talking loud, making faces, and tossing off gags. "Am I a nut?" Certainly not I told him. Doesn't every husband act that way after he's been fired?
We have good memories of Cleveland, though. Our oldest boy Tony, now 13, was born there and so was Soupy's trademark. He wrote an Indian skit which needed a totally unexpected climax, and what could be more unexpected than a pie flying in from nowhere?
Soupy wanted to work in Detroit but he couldn't get a job until a station executive there accidentally turned on Soupy's audition tape, which had been long-forgotten. We moved to Detroit with happy results.

Our youngest boy Hunt now 11, was born there. Soupy got a network show and became one of the highest-paid local performers in the nation. He worked so hard, though, that on one of the rare occasions he was home, Tony rushed to him with: "Hey, Dad, Soupy Sales is on! You gotta see him!" After seven years in Detroit Soupy suddenly said: "Look, this is great, but when I'm 50, with mortgage paid and kids raised and sitting on my patio, you know what’ll I ask myself—'Could I have made it really big?'"
So we packed up for Los Angeles, and lightning struck when Soupy was summoned to the phone for a "call from Frank Sinatra." Soupy thought it was a practical joke, but there came Frankie's voice saying: "Could I be on your show? Not just a walk-on. I want the works—pie in the face and all." So Sinatra, who rates $50,000 a guest appearance, came on free—and all Hollywood followed.
Soupy became a celebrity. We bought a big house, and Soupy had time for the boys and his hobby, painting. So one day, he said: "You know, New York is really big . . ." and I began to pack.
New York was big. It brought Soupy to the entire country through everything from the Ed Sullivan Show to county fairs to campus "concerts," where everybody shows up with a pie in hand.
Why do people love Soupy? Maybe because he reciprocates boundlessly and has retained a sense of absurdity about adult life, talking to such show characters as White Fang, the "meanest dog in the world," and tossing off nonsensical one-liners such as "Show me a dead Communist, and I'll show you a Red Skeleton."
Anyway the love affair became nationwide, and I had just settled down in New York when our oldest boy announced he had formed a rock & roll trio called Tony and His Tigers, had cut his first record, and "was going places!" Before I could get my breath, Soupy charged in and said:
"I just signed to do five pictures for Columbia! We're going to shoot them on location all over the country. Better pack . . ."
I felt as if I'd just been hit in the face with a pie.

Soupy was involved in a few interesting projects that didn’t get off the ground. One was a projected TV series with Gale Gordon called Where There’s Smokey, which had a spot on ABC’s Wednesday night schedule unveiled to affiliates in March 1959. For whatever reason, the network decided not to go with it. Then ABC announced the following March it was financing a live action/animation pilot produced by former Disney storyman Brice Mack with Sales interacting with a mouse, penguin and others animated by his Era Productions. Whether any of the artwork survives, I don’t know. But I’d like to think one of the gags involved a cartoon character who pointed to Soupy and said “I like him. He’s silly.” I’m sure the audience would have agreed.