SOUPY SALES RIP

I am of a generation that just missed the glory days of THE SOUPY SALES SHOW….The Soupy Sales I saw growing up in the 70’s and 80’s was a brilliant ad libber to be sure but confined to game shows and afternoon talk shows.

It wasn’t until I got older that I discovered what an edgy, dangerous comic Sales had been….His famous Children’s show of the 50’s and 60’s was, like The Three Stooges in the past and Spongebob Squarepants now, as much for adults as it was for kids….In addition to the famous incident when Sales, angry about working New Year’s Eve, asked children to take the green paper with pictures of presidents out of their parents wallets and send it to him and he would send a postcard from Puerto Rico, Sales was also famous for adult double entendres which might or might not go above the head of kids (Sales later denied the double entendre story and said it was an urban myth).

Watching videos of him at his heyday one sees an unpredictable energetic comic….A big influence I think on Pee Wee Herman and also on David Letterman, Tom Green, and others who try to do things outside the box.

There’s a lot of good Soupy Sales stuff on YouTube I’m happy to report….