![](\"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Soupy-Sales-Famous-Stripper-Surprise-Backstory-Let-me-let-you-in-on-a-little.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
\nSoupy Sales Famous ‘Stripper Surprise’ Backstory<\/p>\n
\nSoupy Sales Famous ‘Stripper Surprise’ Backstory<\/p>\n
Let me let you in on a little secret. Lunch with Soupy Sales, Detroit\u2019s most popular TV kid\u2019s show, wasn\u2019t really a kid\u2019s show at all. Oh sure, Soupy always reminded the kiddies to take their vitaminnies and eat Silvercup Bread, \u201cthe best bread in Dee-troit,\u201d but the show always relied on more adult oriented humor. In a 1958 Detroit Times article Sales even admitted, \u201cThere\u2019s really no message to this show. It\u2019s actually a kid\u2019s show for adults.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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\u2019s hamburger. When Soupy lifted the top of the bun to put ketchup on his burger he\u2019d see the dirty note, which would invariably break him up.<\/p>\n
The most well known gag from the show ranks as one of the classic outtakes in TV history, thanks to Dick Clark\u2019s Bloopers and Practical Jokes TV show. So without further ado, I give you the true story of the famous \u201cNaked Lady Behind The Door.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s shoes being pulled by fishing line, running from a pair of men\u2019s shoes. Blackout, cut to commercial.<\/p>\n
The studio that day was filled with curious onlookers who were in on the joke. Soupy knew that something was up, but he wasn\u2019t quite sure what. The show started precisely at noon, and ran smoothly. At about 12:27 Soupy, as rehearsed, heard a woman\u2019s scream. He ran to the door, opened it, and instead of a pair of women\u2019s shoes saw a nude woman wearing nothing but a smile. Soupy stole a quick glance at the master monitor, hoping that the curvaceous cutie\u2019s image wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n