PassedAway

When I was a kid, I remember watching Soupy Sales. He had a children's show, The Soupy Sales Show, on channel five in the New York area and he was a wacky, funny guy. He had bizarre creatures around him, puppets named Pookie and White Fang and Black Tooth. Soupy did outrageous things and often ended up with a pie in the face. In a lot of ways, there might have been no PeeWee Herman if there hadn't been a Soupy Sales. In my memory, I always liked Soup and liked his show. On Thursday, Soupy Sales died at the age of 83.

In addition to The Soupy Sales Show, Soupy was a comedian. He played clubs and did shtick, and all through the 1960s and 1970s he was a regular on game shows, including What's My Line, To Tell the Truth, Match Game and Hollywood Squares.

Wow, it's been a bad week for TV veterans.  First Curt Gowdy passed away, then Don Knotts and Darren McGavin. Now comes word that Dennis Weaver, who acted in various roles on television for over fifty years, passed away Friday at the age of 81, apparently due to complications from cancer.

Weaver's best known roles were as Chester Goode on the long-running Western Gunsmoke and as a New Mexican cowboy lawman transplanted to New York City in the Seventies mystery series McCloud.