soupy sales

Soupy Sales, the rubber-faced comedian whose anything for a chuckle career was built on 20,000 pies to the face and 5,000 live TV appearances across a half-century of laughs, he died Thursday. He was 83.

Sales, who had health problems and entered Calvary Hospice last week, died in the Bronx, New York, said his former manager and longtime friend, Dave Usher.

At the peak of his fame in the 1950s and '60s, Sales was one of the best-known faces in the nation, Usher said.

At the same time, Sales retained an openness to fans that turned every restaurant meal into an endless autograph-signing session, Usher said.

Sales began his TV career in Cincinnati and Cleveland, then moved to Detroit, where he drew a large audience on WXYZ-TV. He moved to Los Angeles in 1961.

The comic's pie-throwing schtick became his trademark, and celebrities lined up to take one on the chin alongside Sales. During the early 1960s, stars such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis and Shirley MacLaine received their just desserts side-by-side with the comedian on his television show.

Sales was born Milton Supman on Jan. 8, 1926, in Franklinton, N.C., where his was the only Jewish family in town. His parents, owners of a dry-goods store, sold sheets to the Ku Klux Klan. The family later moved to Huntington, W.Va.

His greatest success came in New York with "The Soupy Sales Show" — an ostensible children's show that had little to do with Captain Kangaroo and other kiddie fare. Sales' manic, improvisational style also attracted an older audience that responded to his envelope-pushing antics.