Soupy Sales, a hit with the critics

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Not only was Soupy Sales a TV star, he was a hit with the critics.

Sales, who died Thursday at 83, elevated pie-throwing into an art on his shows.

“Soupy transformed this simple bit of slapstick into satire by exaggerating it beyond anything Mack Sennett ever staged,” L.A. Times television writer Don Page wrote in 1965. Writing in the New York Post the same year, Gerald Nachman called the program a “phantasmagoria of Dada.”

Here’s Soupy with Alice Cooper, of all people, from a 1979 show. And yes, the bit includes a pie.

Anyone have Soupy Sales memories to share?

-- Keith Thursby