Soupy Sales Famous ‘Stripper Surprise’ Backstory
Soupy Sales Famous ‘Stripper Surprise’ Backstory
Let me let you in on a little secret. Lunch with Soupy Sales, Detroit’s most popular TV kid’s show, wasn’t really a kid’s show at all. Oh sure, Soupy always reminded the kiddies to take their vitaminnies and eat Silvercup Bread, “the best bread in Dee-troit,” but the show always relied on more adult oriented humor. In a 1958 Detroit Times article Sales even admitted, “There’s really no message to this show. It’s actually a kid’s show for adults.”
Soupy and his straight man, puppeteer Clyde Adler, were basically a modern day vaudeville team. The show never had a live studio audience, except for a very vocal stage crew. Soupy always tried to crack up the crew, and they were more than happy to reciprocate. For example, Soupy’s orange juice was on more than one occasion spiked with 100 proof vodka, courtesy of the stagehands. Another crew prank involved the placing of dirty notes between the buns of Soupy’s hamburger. When Soupy lifted the top of the bun to put ketchup on his burger he’d see the dirty note, which would invariably break him up.
The most well known gag from the show ranks as one of the classic outtakes in TV history, thanks to Dick Clark’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes TV show. So without further ado, I give you the true story of the famous “Naked Lady Behind The Door.”
There never was a written script for the show; Soupy and Clyde would just work out what they were going to do, giving the director a bare-bones outline for camera angles and sound cues. The bit was for the audio man to play a recording of a woman screaming. Soupy would then run to the door, open it, and look down to see a pair of women’s shoes being pulled by fishing line, running from a pair of men’s shoes. Blackout, cut to commercial.
The studio that day was filled with curious onlookers who were in on the joke. Soupy knew that something was up, but he wasn’t quite sure what. The show started precisely at noon, and ran smoothly. At about 12:27 Soupy, as rehearsed, heard a woman’s scream. He ran to the door, opened it, and instead of a pair of women’s shoes saw a nude woman wearing nothing but a smile. Soupy stole a quick glance at the master monitor, hoping that the curvaceous cutie’s image wasn’t being broadcast live over the airwaves. Sure enough, to his horror the monitor showed exactly what Soupy had feared- a smiling nude woman. The engineers were clever enough to patch a different camera angle into the monitor, making Soupy think that thousands of Detroit kiddies were at home eating their lunches in front of the TV while getting a lesson in female anatomy. In reality, what the kids saw was a speechless Soupy standing next to an open door, nothing more. Soupy saw what he thought was his career passing before his eyes.
Since the show was broadcast live, no video footage exists. The gag was recreated once more in Los Angeles in 1962, but because the show had gone completely to videotape by then, any flubs could be easily edited out, making the practical joke less effective and here is the video.
Stripper From 1962 Soupy Sales Prank ?? WHO Please Somebody From LA ?
Has anyone ever found out who the stripper was behind the door? After all these years, it seems like she shopuld get some credit.
I watched Soupy Sails for lunch, never saw anything negative
Too bad there is no spell check on Facebook. I meant RCA TK-60’s, the T.A.M.I. show is on DVD, here is a link to it on amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/T-M-I-Show-Collectors/dp/B0030ATZIA/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1340993132&sr=1-1&keywords=tami+show+dvd
I hit enter a little too quickly-Steve has had an amazing career, here is a link to him on IMDB with his credits http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004596/#Director take a look.
What you may not know is that Steve Binder was the director for Soupy in 1962 at KABC in LA at the ripe old age of 22. He went on to be an industry heavy weight director. From Soupy he went on to direct the Steve Allen Show from Hollywood, the show that was maybe the best late night show on TV. In 1968 he directed the famous Elvis Come back special-Elvis ’68 at age 28. He also did The T.A.M.I. Show and Hullabaloo. the T.A.M.I show featured an process called ElectroVision, RAC TK-60’s that had been modified to double the standard 525 line standard to give, guess what, HDTV resolution. Since there was no way to record the signal on tape, the production was recorded on 35mm Kinescope and released in 16:9 film format to motion picture theaters. the progam cah be had on DVD and is worth tracking down a copy.
This clip is a kinescope of the spliced master apparently. I have a 2″ dub of the uncensored videotape version. It was one of the first “screenings” the guys in the tape room wanted to show me upon arriving in Hollywood 35 years ago.
I’ve seen the uncensored version of this about 100 times. I had no idea that it was a re-creation.