Soupy’s Sailing Back to S.D. : Funnyman: Soupy Sales is bringing his wacky brand of early TV comedy to Belly Up.

Performing in San Diego County is a homecoming of sorts for Soupy Sales.

Several years ago he performed at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, and, during his Navy stint in World War II, he did time at Camp Elliot, the old Marine artillery range in Tierrasanta.

“I also have property down there,” Sales said in a phone interview from his Los Angeles hotel.

“The Holiday Inn is holding two of my suitcases.”

Ouch.

Such quips could be a hint of things to come for those who plan to catch his show Wednesday night at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach: Be assured, he hasn’t changed after all these years.

During the peak of his popularity in the 1960s, Soupy Sales boasted a nationwide television audience in the millions. And as many adults as pubescent and pre-pubescent baby boomers loyally tuned in his dinner-hour show to feast on the corny jokes, the wacky skits and the silly bits with White Fang (“the world’s biggest and meanest dog”), Black Tooth (“the world’s biggest and sweetest dog”) and Pookie, the puppet lion who showed up at Soupy’s window every day to sing and exchange barbs.

Of course, it wasn’t all fun and games on the show’s patently cheap (only $10,000 to do a show, Soupy said) set: There was the blackboard with the daily Words of Wisdom (“Be true to your teeth and they won’t be false to you”).

Life magazine chronicled the Soupy phenomenon. So did Look and Time. Sales turned out a series of hit comedy albums. He did the Ed Sullivan show. And, at the height of the Watusi, the jerk and the swim, he even created his own silly song-dance called the Mouse.

“The Soupy Sales Show” was, as Sales himself puts it, “a monstrous hit.”

Even Frank Sinatra asked to be invited on so he could be creamed with one of Sales’ trademark pies.

Doing a guest shot on the show quickly became the “in” thing in Hollywood as other stars followed Sinatra’s lead. On came Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Tony Curtis, Mickey Rooney, Burt Lancaster--and Robert Cummings, who was, Sales said, “the only guy to send me a bill for 75 cents to get his clothes cleaned.” And it wasn’t a joke, he added. “The man was furious.”

Wednesday’s Belly Up show is part of Sales’ Southern California tour. He started at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano on Sunday, is at the Strand in Redondo Beach tonight and will be at the Palomino in North Hollywood on Thursday. This mini-tour marks the first time Sales, who was also interviewed at his Manhattan home for this article, has performed live in Southern California since 1976, when he was on stage at the Comedy Store in Hollywood.

That’s not to say he hasn’t been performing. During the past 15 years, he has been doing shows at comedy clubs all over the East Coast as well as at the Dunes in Las Vegas and Harrah’s in Atlantic City. He even occasionally fills in for morning radio-show hosts.

It’s not hard to guess who shows up for a Soupy Sales show.

“My biggest audiences come from people who grew up watching me,” said the ever-ebullient comedian, who, when asked to define his appeal said, “I’m very approachable. It’s like people feel like they know me. I guess I’ve been around such a long time, and people have grown up and seen me on shows that they like.”

Sales, 66, was born in Franklinton, N.C., because, he joked, “I wanted to be near my mother.” He earned a degree in journalism from Marshall University in Huntington, W. Va., in 1949 and began his radio career while a student.

Today, Sales bemoans the lack of comedy variety shows on television but enjoys working in comedy clubs.

“It’s the only creative outlet I’ve got now to perform,” he said. “To perform stand-up comedy in a club, that’s the most exciting profession in the world. You’re like Spartacus going into battle because every show is a different audience. And you’re not hiding behind anything; you’re yourself out there and being judged on your own merits.”

Although Sales said there are no pies in his fast-paced, high-energy stage show, he does talk about his old TV show.

“I do a segment on what a typical show would be, with the Words of Wisdom and the Soupy Shuffle,” he said. “People like it, and it takes them back to it.”

The rest of the act, he said, is “a potpourri of different things. There’s music in it and some parodies. There are some good stories, and I talk about some current stuff.”

He has, for example, been following reports of the recent search for Amelia Earhart’s airplane.

“They found part of her shoe and part of the plane in the South Pacific,” he said. “Unfortunately her luggage turned up in Cleveland.”

Laughing, Sales added: “And I have Words of Wisdom for ya. My Words of Wisdom for today are, ‘Never buy a TV set from a man on the street who’s out of breath.’ ”

Sales is not sure how to explain the popularity of his old TV show. Maybe, he said, it was because he worked so close to the camera.

“I just think there was a great relationship between the audience and myself,” he said. “I did the show for the people at home, not the people in the (studio) audience, because we didn’t have an audience.”

And, he said, “It was an honest show--what you saw was what you got. I was the little guy. I was beaten by the guy at the door, the puppets beat me, the dogs beat me. It was very physical, and you never knew what was going to happen.”

Sales denies ever doing a bit, during an extremely conservative TV era, that ended with him making an obscene hand gesture on camera, as was rumored at one time.

“I’m not an idiot; I wasn’t about to go on and do something like that and end my career,” he said, adding that he also never told the many off-color jokes that have been attributed to him. Over the years, he said, those rumors just sort of had a life of their own.

But he did admit to being suspended by TV station WNEW for an ad-libbed routine in 1965.

It was the end of the show on New Year’s Day, and he had a minute to fill, so he walked up to the camera and proceeded to instruct his younger viewers to tiptoe into their parents’ bedrooms and find their wallets. He then told them to “get all the green pieces of paper with the pictures of guys in beards” and mail them to Soupy Sales at the TV station.

He ended the bit by saying, “And you know what I’m going to send you? A postcard from Puerto Rico.”

It was vintage Soupy Sales.

But, he said, the station received thousands of dollars in the mail, and he was suspended for two weeks.

As Sales sees it, “That’s the most brilliant minute of ad-lib in television history because it proved how powerful the medium is.”

But it’s the pies in the face for which Soupy Sales is best known.

Although he had always been a big fan of pie-throwing in the movies, he said, he wasn’t able to use pies until after he moved to Cleveland in 1950 to do a TV record-pantomime show that included sketches.

He received his first pie in the face while playing an Indian in a brief spoof of the 1950 James Stewart Western “Broken Arrow.” The station’s cooking show host baked that first gooey missile. Although Sales would later use a shaving cream filling, the secret has always been the crust.

“A pie has to hit you and explode into a thousand pieces so you see the person’s face and see it take away his dignity,” said the master, who claims to have been hit in the face with around 20,000 pies.

“I used to look like Cary Grant.”

Times staff writer Glenn Doggrell contributed to this article.