Soupy Sales, the KKK, Mister Rogers and me
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- October
- 23
Two quirky notes about Soupy Sales, the pie-throwing comedian and early TV star who died yesterday:
1. The AP notes that Sales was born Milton Supman in 1926, in Franklinton, N.C., where his was the only Jewish family in town. His parents owned a dry-goods store and apparently sold sheets to the Ku Klux Klan.
Yikes.
2. TV writer Verne Gay notes that when Fred Rogers—Mister Rogers—graduated from a (Presbyterian) seminary and saw a TV for the first time in his parents’ home, the first thing he saw was Sales and someone else throwing pies at each other.
Mister Rogers was so turned off that he decided to start his own TV show as a non-pie-throwing alternative.
*****
One final, completely unrelated note: When I was a kid, my parents somehow came up with a Soupy Sales doll (remember, he was a big star back in the day). I cried whenever I saw the doll. I still remember the fuzzy black hair on its head.
I think I found a picture of it:
This entry was posted
on Friday, October 23rd, 2009 at 11:18 am by Gary Stern.
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The world of religion, we don't have to tell you, is vast. The purpose of this blog is for Stern to note, flag and comment on some of the more interesting religious developments on the scene – weighty and quirky, somber and laughable, far away and just down the road. He won't interpret Scripture, take sides in conflicts or judge anyone. But he will take advantage of the journalist's license to observe.
