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Today there is a nice appreciation of Soupy Sales in the LATimes.

Soupy Sales, hip and elemental

Do you see? The LATimes finally has a decent looking web site with pictures although the one they have of Soupy is way off who he was. Never mind. This one is more the mood.

I have read a lot of reaction to this guy. I loved him and, it turns out, so did a lot of other people of a certain age.

One thing that I read reminded me of the urban legend that Soupy hid dirty jokes in his schtick to kids. He knew the adults were watching.

This may be true but it would only be part of the story.

His whole thing was aimed at adults and people and kids and everyone. It was high energy stuff with a lot of words.

In this piece, he reminds me that Soup always had the crew laughing. There was no audience other than the floor people. And they would go nuts sometimes.

Even Soupy could not contain himself. He laughed at his own jokes. Everything was delivered in full chortle.

In the photo his huge dog White Fang prepares to deliver a pie in the face. We never saw anything other than White Fang's paw. Part of what was funny about him.

They did not have a script. They worked live. They had "ideas" and most of his stuff was a riff on these "ideas". Amazing. Look at what we lost when they started taping and when they got afraid of what could go out on the air.

They will show the most tawdry crap today on tape but a spontaneous human performance, no.

There is "late night" but that is taped too. Most of it.

Remember that Soupy Sales performed mostly in the day time in the early years. Without a net. Wonderful.

Labels: fun, life, television