New York was blessed with some very gifted kids show hosts back in the day, well before cable television came to the home district. Chuck McCann. Sandy Becker. "Officer" Joe Bolton.
And, then, there is Soupy Sales.
Soupy brought his act from Ohio to New York in the mid-60's, and landed at WNEW (now WNYW). Yes, the puppet characters, such as Pookie the Lion, who will be prominently featured in the following sampler, came with him, but at WNEW, Soupy was working with a new puppeteer, Frank Nastasi, rather than Clyde Adler, who would reunite with Sales 13 years later for a revival, based in Los Angeles, and later syndicated.
In between, Soupy finally landed a Saturday morning gig as a game show host, emceeing ABC's Junior Almost Anything Goes, but it was at a time when local affiliates blacked out network programming at noon (ET) in favor of more profitable syndicated programming.
One unfortunate hallmark of Soupy's run at WNEW was the infamous New Year's Day stunt where he asked his young audience to send him money from their parents' wallets. Yes, he did get in hot water over that.
As we've already seen, Soupy spent the 70's well versed in game shows, usually on What's My Line? and the various incarnations of The ------ Pyramid with Dick Clark.
Let's go back to 1965.
In recent years, reruns have aired on Jewish Life TV (check listings) of both of Soupy's shows from the 60's & 70's.
Rating: A.
6 comments:
My parents remembered the NY version of Soupy's show! They definitely remembered the money incident (Whatever happened to the money collected?), and my dad remembered another infamous incident - that of a naked woman who was on set. In that case, the crew was playing a prank on Soupy, so when he opened a door, there was a naked woman standing there! It was carefully framed so the naked woman was not seen on camera to the viewing audience, but Soupy was definitely surprised!
I think the money might've been returned.
I first saw Soupy Sales back in 1955, when the ABC network used his show as a summer replacement for Kukla, Fran, & Ollie - weekday evenings before John Daly's network newscast.
At that time, Soupy was doing his daily show for the ABC-owned station in Detroit (he'd left Cleveland some years before).
Not long after this, ABC put Lunch with Soupy Sales on Saturday afternoon on the network (he was still doing a daily show in Detroit); around the turn of the '60s, Soupy moved operations to Los Angeles, where ABC briefly put him on in prime time.
This was when major stars began appearing on the show to get pies in the face; it was quite the fashion for a bit, but ABC was affiliate poor back then, and Soupy ultimately lost his ABC gigs.
This was when Soupy made the move to New York, and the rest is history.
Not to get off track here, Mike, but when did Kukla, Fran, & Ollie leave ABC for CBS?
Anyway, I will try to find some Lunch w/Soupy if YouTube has them. The New Soupy Sales Show is on the way soon.
Follow along, if you dare:
ABC cancelled Kukla, Fran, And Ollie in 1957.
Four years later, KFO got a daily five-minute gig on NBC, which didn't last very long: many affiliates bypassed the show in order to start syndie offerings on the hour.
Burr Tillstrom & Co. did a number of local gigs in and around Chicago for some years thereafter, including commercials.
The CBS job you're referring to didn't happen until 1967.
Ok, so there was a 10 year gap between ABC & CBS. Thank you.
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