R.I.P Soupy Sales

Soupy Sales, a comedian from the golden era of television, died October 22.

The rubber-faced comedian, whose anything-for-a-chuckle career was built on 20,000 pies to the face and 5,000 live TV appearances across a half-century of laughs, died at Calvary Hospice in the Bronx, New York

During the early 1960s, the comic's pie-throwing schtick became his trademark, and celebrities, from Frank Sinatra to Alice Cooper, lined up to take one on the chin alongside Sales.

"The Soupy Sales Show," with co-star puppets White Fang (the meanest dog in the United States) and Black Tooth (the nicest dog in the United States) made Sales one of the best-known faces in the nation, said his former manager and longtime friend, Dave Usher.

"If President Eisenhower would have walked down the street, no one would have recognized him as much as Soupy," said Usher.

Sales is survived by his wife, Trudy, and two sons, Hunt and Tony, a pair of musicians who backed David Bowie in the band Tin Machine.

Soupy Sales was 83.

Read the New York Times story.