Legendary comedian Soupy Sales died on Thursday at the age of 83. Sales is best known for his slapstick children’s show Lunch with Soupy Sales and subsequent related shows, which ran from 1953 to 1979. Sales was infamously hit with more than 20,000 pies during his career.
Later in his career, Soupy Sales appeared on TV game shows such as To Tell the Truth, Hollywood Squares, Pyramid and What’s My Line. In the 80’s, Sales hosted a radio show on WNBC-AM in New York, but was suddenly yanked off the air in the middle of a show after complaining his contract had not been renewed. He never returned. Sales has been referenced repeatedly in TV and film and music, including nods on The Jetsons, Friends and Juno and mentions in songs by The Lemonheads and metal band Post Mortem.
Sales died on Thursday at a New York hospital. He had been seriously ill for several years. He is survived by his second wife, dancer Trudy Carson, and two sons – rock bassist Tony Sales and drummer Hunt Sales. Both brothers played with David Bowie in the band Tin Machine and worked with Iggy Pop on his album Lust for Life.
“We have lost a comedy American icon,” friend and manager Paul Dver said, according to CNN. “I feel the personal loss, and I also feel the magic that he had around him being gone. That’s a much more severe loss than a loss of a friend.”