Who'll fill his pies?

R.I.P., Soupy Sales

Date published: 10/28/2009

By Paul Akers

IF YOU GRADUATED from U.Va., you know that it will always be Mr. Jefferson's University, not yours. Every VMI cadet is permanently humbled by Stonewall. William and Mary were royals, a status no student there is apt to attain. But how would you like to be, like me, a son of Marshall, condemned to labor in the shadow of Soupy Sales?

Soupy (MU Class of '49) even earned a master's in journalism, my major. A "J-school" master's is usually a springboard into well-deserved obscurity, which, if that's where Soupy had lit, would have given the rest of us a chance. But, no, he had to leave Huntington, W.Va., and go out and be the funniest guy on daily TV during the 1960s. Is that fair?

Milton Supman was born in North Carolina, the son of a Jewish merchant who, among other transactions, sold linens to the anti-Semitic Klan. This kind of absurdity imparts a sense of humor, I suppose. After leaving MU, he developed it at several mid-market TV stations before hitting the big time.

There he hit big timers. Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Burt Lancaster--to get a signature Soupy Sales pie in the face was to have arrived. Had Soupy stayed on the air, today's TV show-slumming politicians might be angling for this "endorsement." Which might not be so a bad. A shaving-cream discus exploding in the face of an Al Gore or a Sarah Palin might vent the anger of snarly partisans--catharsis with a flaky crust--and spur civility.

Soupy was more than a pie man, though he himself caught some 20,000 in the phiz. His corny gags (splat!) and awful puns (smack!), all delivered with irrepressible and infectious joy, kept kids and adults chortling, as did his backup cast--White Fang and Black Tooth, Kodiak-size dogs invisible but for their frisky paws; Pookie the Lion, who expressed shock with the hand-puppet version of Munch's "The Scream"; and various other characters who knocked on Soupy's door with tales from the dumb side.

Soupy Sales died this month at 83, the greatest graduate of Marshall University, and--oh, snickers, is it?--a darned sight funnier than Thomas Jefferson, too.

--Paul Akers

Follow us on

Read more stories about Fredericksburg
Date published: 10/28/2009