Today is the anniversary of the birth of Milton Supman, who entered this world on January 8, 1928 and was probably, upon delivery, hit in the face with a shaving cream pie. You know him — if you know him at all — as Soupy Sales, a beloved entertainer for many years. Soupy had many TV shows over those years but the three main ones are probably his stint on KABC in Los Angeles (1960-1962), a similar show on WNEW in New York (1964-1966) and a slightly-modernized version of the same show that was taped in Los Angeles (1978-1979) and syndicated. The L.A. and N.Y. shows had some limited syndication as well.
I was an enormous — let me put that in caps and boldface — ENORMOUS fan of the L.A. show. I didn't get to see much of the N.Y. show because it was barely run in Los Angeles. And I actually got to hang out on the set of the syndicated show which was not very good (I thought) and not very successful. Still, being on the set of Soupy's show was a great thrill and one day, Clyde Adler — who was the rarely-seen-on-camera puppeteer and foil for Soupy — gave me the honor of lobbing a pie into Mr. Sales' kisser.
Soupy's estate owns or controls some or all of those shows — and the ones they don't control are, I believe, because no decent prints of them exist. But what they do have is run on the Jewish Life TV Network, a channel which you may or may not be able to get on whatever service you use to get television shows. And this weekend, they're running an All-Soupy, All-the-Time marathon of those programss…and no, I don't know what they have to do with Jewish Life or the values that other shows on that channel promote.
I also don't know if they're running KABC shows, WNEW shows or the seventies syndicated series, though I suspect it's all or mostly the latter. If you watch and if you see an episode of the syndicated version in which Soupy is dressed in a tux as a conductor conducting "The 1812" Overture played by off-camera musicians — i.e., they played a record — pay careful attention. Every time the orchestra hits a note that's supposed to represent a cannon blast, Soupy will be hit in the face by a pie. And one of those pies was thrown by me.