Neal Rubin's Blog

My lunch with Soupy Sales, a good and funny man

A decade or so ago, a magazine asked me to do stand-up comedy and then write about it.

Okay, I said. So I started putting together some material, writing jokes and jotting down observations and condensing a few of the stories that always knock 'em dead at parties, and before long I had quite a bit of stuff.

What I didn't have, I realized, was an act. But I had someone I could call for advice:

Soupy Sales.

Soupy, who died Thursday in New York at 83, would ring me sometimes if he needed to promote an appearance in Detroit. Or I'd ring him if I needed someone to be spontaneously funny on most any subject imaginable.

This time, fortuitously, he was in Detroit, booked for two or three shows at a supper club along Lake St. Clair. I found him in his hotel room and asked if he had a minute to chat.

"What are you doing for lunch?" he said.

We wound up in a burgundy booth at the old Excalibur in Southfield. He offered advice. He offered jokes. He spent probably three hours with me, partly because he loved comedy but mostly because he was a nice guy.

He was invaluable, and I'm not going to kid anybody: It was an enormous treat to realize I was lingering over lunch with the Soupy Sales.

The last few times I called him, I could tell he'd slowed down. When he was on, he could shoot out jokes like a comedy Gatling gun. Now I'd have to help him with the punchlines of his old stand-bys.

We hadn't talked for a few years. I didn't want to intrude when he clearly wasn't feeling well. But every time we made contact, he ended with the same request: "Tell Detroit I said hello."

This is where it all started for him. He never forgot that, any more than Detroit ever forgot him.