Soupy’s On Again : The immortal pie thrower has cooked up a madcap comedy act and is taking it on the road.

Soupy Sales used to be the funniest guy on TV. He’ll be the funniest guy in Port Hueneme Saturday night when he appears at the Dorill B. Wright Cultural Center at 8 p.m.

In 1960, John Kennedy was everybody’s hero, people were doing the Twist, the Russians were very armed and dangerous, Beaver Cleaver was sniveling about girls having even been invented, and television was mostly cop and cowboy shows. Yet the “The Soupy Sales Show” was No. 1 in Los Angeles.

Sales received more fan mail than all of ABC’s other shows combined. It was a hip kids’ show made for adults.

Aired five days a week, the show always began with Sales doing his own little dance, the Soupy Shuffle, and usually ended with him getting a pie in the face. In between, there was a nonstop collection of weirdos, nutty neighbors and guest stars blowing Sales’ mind--and vice versa.

This was before the county dog killers and pet police were much of an issue, because Sales had some wild pets. White Fang, the mean dog, and Black Tooth, the nice dog, were both so big, all we ever saw on screen were giant paws. Other hand puppets included Pookie the Lion and Hippie the Hippopotamus. All the characters had weird voices frequently imitated by teen-age America. It was live TV, and whatever happened, happened.

One time, Soupy asked the kids out there in TV Land to get into their parents’ wallets and send him all the green paper they could find bearing pictures of old men.

Soupy began his TV career in the early ‘50s in Detroit. The show ran until the mid-’60s. In addition to his own show, Sales has been on, seemingly, everyone else’s show. Game shows, talk shows, variety shows and all sorts of dramas, from “The Real McCoys” and “The Love Boat” to “Route 66” and a zillion others. For seven years, Sales was a panelist on “What’s My Line?”

Besides all that, Sales has been making albums and movies and doing a nightclub act. The guy has no off switch.

In a recent phone interview from his New York City home, Sales seemed upbeat enough to sell a raincoat to a cactus.

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I was reading your bio, which weighs more than White Fang after he ate Roseanne Barr. Busy is the operative word here. Do you ever take a day off?

I’m on the road about two weeks of every month. That’s all I have to do now. I make a great living. Say, what do you think of Ross Perot? He says he’s a man of the country. I think his country is Oz.

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You’ve made videos, movies, done television, recorded albums, written books, played every nightclub in America--which do you prefer?

I have to do them all, because I opened a Tall Man’s Shop in Tokyo and went broke. Then I tried a day-old bread store in Beverly Hills. That didn’t work out either.

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How often do you come to California?

Well, I come out there a lot because my two boys live there. They’re both in David Bowie’s band, Tin Machine. I used to live in California in the ‘60s. California is one of the few places where people dress up for Halloween. It’s the only day Sinead O’Connor looks normal.

In New York, people don’t walk around wearing masks. If you walked into a Christian Science Reading room wearing a mask, they’d shoot you down in a heartbeat. Also, when a trick-or-treater knocks at your door, you have to look through the peephole, then unbolt all the latches, let the guard dog go, and by then, it’s Christmas.

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Who’s the funniest person you’ve ever seen?

That would have to be Jonathan Winters.

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Is laughter the best medicine?

Oh, I think it is, it really is. On the show-biz ladder, comedy may only be the fifth rung, but it’s the most popular.

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How did you get started in all this?

Oh God, do you have a couple of years? I got into it because there’s no heavy lifting, and I wanted to get my mother out of prison.

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What is your pie of preference?

They’re shaving cream pies with a pie crust. I’ve been hit by almost 20,000 of them.

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Why was “The Soupy Sales Show” so popular?

Because I was funny. Back in those days, it was a very hip show. If you wore a top hat and funny shoes then, you were on a kids’ show, whatever, as long as you were working. I was just like a traffic cop with all this stuff happening all around me. What you see is what you get. I heard Pee-Wee Herman was spending $350,000 a week. Give me a break! And “Saturday Night Live,” even with Belushi, Murray and Chevy Chase and all that money, it still wasn’t that funny. Ernie Kovacs had a lot of money, but he only had to do it once a week.

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Where are the puppets now?

They’re sitting in a box waiting to go on the road.

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You had one of the first hippies on your show.

Oh, Hippie my hippopotamus. It was Pookie turned inside out.

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Remember all the weird sponsors you used to have like Fizz-Nicks?

Oh, yeah, they had all sorts of gimmicks. I remember Jiffy Pop, which blew up like an atom bomb on your stove, and those straw things, Flav-R-Straws. Back then there were variety shows, real entertainment. I just don’t think the love affair with television is there anymore. That’s why people go to comedy clubs and concerts. After “Roseanne” on Tuesday, what have you got? There just aren’t any more shows where the next morning people will ask, “Hey, did you see so-and-so last night?”

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Did you really tell the kids to get the green paper out of Mommy and Daddy’s wallet and send it all to you?

That’s just one of those myths that just keeps growing and growing. It’s like people remember where they were during Pearl Harbor or when President Kennedy was killed. If I had’ve gotten all that money, I’d own your paper and wouldn’t be talking to you now to hustle up some ticket sales for my show.

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You worked on a million television shows, but “The Real McCoys”? Tell me a Walter Brennan story.

Walter Brennan, strangely enough, wasn’t on that episode because he didn’t like the script. Later, when he saw it, he thought it was one of the funniest episodes ever. I was this traveling hip musician. I was on “The Beverly Hillbillies” too. Those shows were funny. They were written funny.

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What about “Route 66”?

You know who came to see me last time I played Solana Beach? Martin Milner--he lives down there. That was a great show because it was all filmed on location. One time we were shooting a scene in this hotel in St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest city in the country. They were using all townspeople for extras, but they weren’t getting paid and they wanted to leave, but the producer wouldn’t let them outside. Then he bought champagne for everyone, and there was a giant pie fight.

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Comedy starts on time, but rock ‘n’ roll is always late. Why?

Comedy always starts on time because on radio or television, everything is done on a half-hour schedule. Rock ‘n’ roll, I don’t know, but half a million bucks to make a record, sounds like they need some new engineers to me.

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What was your strangest gig?

I worked in this club in Mansfield, Ohio, called the Ringside. The stage was just like a boxing ring with the four posts, the ropes and everything. I worked with this stripper. When she would strip down, the customers would throw silver dollars into the ring, and it was my job to pick them up. She’d make about 25, 30 bucks every time she did it. One night I did my stand-up routine; nobody laughed. They didn’t want to hear a comedian, they wanted to see the stripper.

Anyway, she starts dancing and I was picking up her money when this guy came up and says, “Hey, quit taking her money.” So I told him I was working for her. Then once he sees her up close, he says, “Hey, you’re not so good-looking. My wife’s better than you.” So I said, “Then should we all go to your house and look at your wife?” That’s the last thing I remember. He knocked me out, and I woke up in the dressing room.

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Who goes to Soupy Sales shows?

Usually people between the ages of 25 and 70--I have a following. They spend a lot of money and they drink a lot. The younger people who go to comedy clubs don’t know who I am.

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If the marketing strategy from hell that made zillions off Batman and the Ninja Turtles was happening in 1960, you’d be a zillionaire by now.

Well, I had lunch boxes that now go for $1,000. They gave me one. Every album I ever made is a collector’s item now, and they cost $100. I don’t sell T-shirts or stuff like that at my shows now--I’m past that point. But I do sign autographs and let people take my picture.

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What’s next?

I’m working on some television shows for network and syndication. I can’t disclose any more right now.