Milton Supman’s Detroit Home, more professionally known as Soupy Sales. Milton Supman (January 8, 1926 – October 22, 2009), known professionally as Soupy Sales, was an American comedian, actor, radio/television personality, and jazz aficionado.He was best known for his local and network children’s television show, Lunch with Soupy Sales (1953-1966), a series of comedy sketches frequently ending with Sales receiving a pie in the face, which became his trademark.From 1968 to 1975, he was a regular panelist on the syndicated revival of What’s My Line? and appeared on several other TV game shows. During the 1980s, Sales hosted his own show on WNBC-AM in New York City.
Milton Supman was born in Franklinton, North Carolina, to Irving Supman and Sadie Berman. His father, a Jewish dry goods merchant, had emigrated from Hungary in 1894.His was the only Jewish family in the town; Sales joked that local Ku Klux Klan members bought the sheets used for their robes from his father’s store.
Sales got his nickname from his family. His older brothers had been nicknamed “Ham Bone” and “Chicken Bone.” Milton was dubbed “Soup Bone,” which was later shortened to “Soupy”. When he became a disc jockey, he began using the stage name Soupy Hines. After he became established, it was decided that “Hines” was too close to the Heinz soup company, so he chose Sales, in part after vaudeville comedian Chic Sale.
Sales graduated from Huntington High School in Huntington, West Virginia in 1944. He enlisted in the United States Navy and served on the USS Randall (APA-224) in the South Pacific during the latter part of World War II. He sometimes entertained his shipmates by telling jokes and playing crazy characters over the ship’s public address system. One of the characters he created was “White Fang”, a large dog that played outrageous practical jokes on the seamen. The sounds for “White Fang” came from a recording of The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Sales enrolled at Marshall College in Huntington, WV, where he
earned a master’s degree in Journalism. While at Marshall, he performed in
nightclubs as a comedian, singer and dancer. After graduating, Sales began
working as a scriptwriter and disc jockey at radio station WHTN (now WVHU) in
Huntington. He moved to Cincinnati, Ohio in 1949, where he worked as a morning
radio DJ and performed in nightclubs. Sales began his television career on
WKRC-TV in Cincinnati with Soupy’s Soda Shop, TV’s first teen dance program,
and Club Nothing!, a late-night comedy/variety program. When WKRC canceled his
TV shows, Sales moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he hosted another radio and TV
series on WJW-TV (Channel 8) and continued his nightclub act. It was in a skit
on his late night comedy/variety TV series Soupy’s On! that he got his first
pie in the face. Sales claimed he left the Cleveland station “for health
reasons: they got sick of me.” He relocated to Detroit in 1953 and worked
for WXYZ-TV (Channel 7), ABC’s O&O station
Lunch with Soupy Sales began in 1953 from the studios of WXYZ-TV, Channel 7,
located in the historic Maccabees Building, in Detroit. Sales occasionally took
the studio cameras to the lawn of the Detroit Public Library, located across
the street from the TV studios, and talked with local students walking to and
from school. Beginning no later than July 4, 1955, a Saturday version of
Sales’s lunch show was broadcast nationally on the ABC television network. His
lunchtime program on weekdays was moved to early morning opposite Today and
Captain Kangaroo.
During the same period that Lunch with Soupy Sales aired in
Detroit, Sales also hosted a nighttime show, Soup’s On, to compete with 11
O’Clock News programs.The guest star was always a musician, often a jazz
performer, at a time when jazz was popular in Detroit and the city was home to
twenty-four jazz clubs. Sales believed that his show helped sustain jazz in
Detroit, as artists would regularly sell out their nightclub shows after
appearing on Soup’s On.
Coleman Hawkins, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Charlie
Parker, and Stan Getz were among the musicians who appeared on the show; Miles
Davis made six appearances.[8] Clifford Brown’s appearance on Soup’s On,
according to Sales, may be the only extant footage of Brown, and has been
included in Ken Burns’ Jazz and an A&E Network biography about Sales.
Sales briefly had a third dinner time show filmed largely in the Palmer Park section of Detroit. Sales’ three shows were rumored to have earned him in excess of $100,000 per year. One of his character puppets was Willy the Worm, a “balloon” propelled worm that emerged from its house and used a high pitched voice to announce birthdays or special events on the noontime show; but the character never appeared when Soupy moved to Los Angeles. In his lunchtime show, Sales always wore an orlon fabric sweater. In many of his shows, he appeared in costume, performed his dance, the Soupy Shuffle, introduced many characters such as Nicky Nooney, the Mississippi Gambler, etc., and took “zillions” of pies in the face. Drivebyeyes.com Go to Domustoria.com/signup/ and get posts like this every week!