Sales, Soupy – ‘Milton Supman’- ‘Milton Heinz’

WXYZ: Moved from Cleveland’s WJW-TV (Channel8) in 1953 to work at WXYZ.

Deceased. Talent, The Soupy Sales Show.

References:

• See also: Clyde Adler
• DetroitKidShow.com
• Wkipedia
• Blogs: Ken Levine
• World Heritage Encyclopedia

• Ken Hissong with Soup Sales

  

  Picture courtesy of Ken Hissong. Picture taken while Ken was working for a Public Relations firm in 1999 while doing a promotion for Great Lakes Crossing. Thanks Ken!

• Erik Smith Reports on Three Legends of WXYZ Television

  WXYZ was a stage that started many careers. Erik Smith in 1991 reports on Soupy Sales, Johnny Ginger and Marv Welch. – circa 1991 prior to a show a Pine Knob, Clarkston.  Robbie Timmons did the lead-in to the story.

• Clyde Adler (White Fang) with Soupy Sales

  

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Recommended Reading

From Soupy to Nuts! A History of Detroit Television

Back in the 1940s–before coaxial cable from the East Coast reached Detroit–television was as local as Vernors, Sanders Hot Fudge and Hudson’s. There was room for clowns, bowlers, philosophers, journalists, adventurers, movie mavens, wrestlers and magicians.

The people who put these shows on were drunks, geniuses, thugs, heroes, artists, craftsmen, hustlers, and poets. Some were all of these things at times. A few were all these things before lunch.

As the medium grew, thousands of Detroiters visited Channel 4 to see Milky the Clown, danced on Channel 62’s The Scene or tuned in to watch bombastic anchorman Bill Bonds. With the evaporation of distinct local television, a piece of Detroit’s character disappeared.

From Soupy to Nuts! is a snapshot of Detroit TV history–from Sonny Eliot, Bozo the Clown, Bill Kennedy, Lou Gordon and Gil Maddox to Al Ackerman, Sir Graves Ghastly, Dick the Bruiser and Mr. Belvedere.

Recommended Reading

Soupy Sales and the Detroit Experience: Manufacturing a Television Personality

When Soupy Sales left Detroit in 1960 after seven years on WXYZ TV, he was the highest-paid local television personality and one of the most well-known and loved celebrities in town. His daytime television programs in the early morning and noontime had an enormous and devoted following. The latter, Lunch with Soupy Sales, was nationally syndicated on ABC on Saturday, starting in the fall of 1959. His late evening program, Soupy’s On, featured everything from renowned jazz artists to pop singers to satirical skits. While he would achieve more celebrity status in Los Angeles and New York during the 1960s, the template for the puppet characters, comedy routines, and zany sketches had been set in Detroit.

This study of the content and context of Soupy’s time on WXYZ TV provides important insights into key threads of popular culture in the 1950s, including the role of television and its impact on the family and children, the influence of Cold War and consumerist ideology, Jewish-inflected humor, and jazz, especially as a component of the Detroit socio-cultural history in this period. All of these seemingly disparate topics, however, lead back to identifying the manufacturing of a television personality at a particular moment in time and in a specific location.

Beyond the network of Soupy fans, anyone interested in how a television personality achieves local and national prominence should consider reading this book. Also, those who want to understand the role of the media and popular culture in the 1950s will be enlightened, and even entertained, by this exploration of Soupy Sales’ Detroit experience.