Soupy Sales was not the kind of household name in Pittsburgh as he was in Detroit during the 1950s, when he hosted two television programs on WXYZ.
But thanks to syndication, Fran Shor was smitten by Sales’ good-humored antics, which he shared in the hallways of his junior high school.
“I was just at the right age to be susceptible to his zany humor,” recalls Shor, 77. “We started a kind of fan club to him where we would go around and throw our arms out like White Fang and make those silly noises, and people would look at us like, ‘Are they crazy?!’ It was like a little cult.”
Shor, a retired history professor from Wayne State University who now resides with his wife Barbara in Royal Oak, has turned his passion for Sales into a new book, “Soupy Sales and the Detroit Experience: Manufacturing a Television Personality,” newly published by Cambridge Scholars in the U.K. Combining warm nostalgia and immersive academic analysis in its 142 pages, Shor’s book takes a broad look at the late entertainer’s time in Detroit from 1953-60, when Sales (born Milton Supman in North Carolina) hosted two shows — the daytime “Lunch With Soupy Sales” and the evening “Soupy’s On” — for WXYZ before leaving for Los Angeles.
It’s a contextual biography, examining Sales’ accomplishments within the “domestic ideology” and gender politics of the time and digging into the roots of his schtick, as well as his acumen for promotion and his contributions in providing a platform for jazz artists via the “Soupy’s On” show.
“Few know about the early days in Soupy’s career, and the soil into which the seeds of his comic sensibilities were planted,” notes Charles Salzber, who co-authored Sales’ 2001 memoir “Soupy Sez: My Life and Zany Times.” Shor, he says, “does a terrific job of chronicling Soupy’s early days in television, especially those important Detroit years…where he created some of his most memorable characters. Shor makes a compelling case for placing Sales squarely in the pantheon of other legendary TV comedians like Pinky Lee and Milton Berle.”
Shor, who retired from Wayne State in 2014 after 40 years, began working on the Sales book during 2019, after writing and collecting essays about war, racism and white supremacy. “I thought, ‘Oh man, I really need some kind of relief from these very difficult, heavy topics. What would give me a little bit of pleasure in researching?'” he recalls. “And I thought back to when I had first seen Soupy Sales — not as a Detroiter. The humor was something I wanted to reconnect with.” The historian in him found a great deal more, of course.
“I wanted to get into the history of the popular culture of that time, especially in Detroit. That was an interesting subject, too,” explains Shor, who received his doctorate in 1972 from the University of Minnesota and came to Detroit two years later as part of the Wayne State’s Weekend Studies Program for working adults. He has three daughters; the middle, Miriam Shor, is a University of Michigan alumnus and actress with credits in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” “Then Came You,” “Younger,” and the “The Americans.”
“All of it was to some extent a diversion for me,” continues Shor, who currently serves on the boards of Peace Action of Michigan and the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights. “Television studies is not my area of expertise, but I thought this would be a great subject and it would tie-in in a multi-disciplinary way with understanding what was going on with the popular culture and the world of the time.”
Shor’s research included interviews with the son of Sales’ on-air cohort Rube Weiss and Motown Funk Brother Joe Messina, who played in Sales’ house band, among others. He also had some communication with Sales’ widow Trudy via the estate executor and spoke with the widow of Clyde Adler, his Detroit floor manager and a puppeteer who helped create characters such as White Fang, Black Tooth and Pookie the Lion. Recordings of the WXYZ shows were hard to find, but Shor dug into archival interviews and other writings for crucial information.
There were many revelations throughout the process, he says, particularly in learning about Sales’ extensive jazz ties as the “Soupy’s On” show, airing at 11 p.m., would host appearances by a who’s-who of musicians including Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Stan Getz and many more. “Detroit was a happening scene for jazz in the 1950s,” Shor says. “They would come through town and play at Baker’s (Keyboard Lounge) or any number of these venues…Miles Davis appeared on (‘Soupy’s On’) five or six times, or if Billie Holiday was in town or any number of artists, they’d go play on Soupy’s show. I don’t think anybody who wasn’t a Detroiter or hadn’t watched the (‘Soupy’s On’) program would know how extensive that was.”
After his time in Detroit Sales hosted several television shows and a syndicated radio program, and he was a frequent guest on TV game and talk shows. He also appeared in several films. Shor says he came out of the book with memories rekindled and, more importantly, a greater perspective of Sales’ life and times.
“It was really interesting — fascinating,” he said. “I guess I appreciated him more for how dedicated and maybe over-zealous, in some respects, he was for honing his public persona. Soupy did a lot of what I call comedic confabulation…exaggerations or some things that are made up to create, as Oliver Sachs said, a narrative truth that’s not necessarily a historical truth. Soupy did a lot of that. To be able to pierce that and see what those connections are was a real revelation in doing this.”
