New York City’s Paramount Theatre was a movie theatre as well as the scene of musical performances in its heyday of the 1930’s-40’s. Bobby-soxers lined up for hours to swoon for Sinatra when he played there in the ‘40s (hey….people used to talk like that). The building, built in 1926 in New York’s Times Square, was the flagship for Paramount Pictures. The 3600-seat Paramount Theatre was built to premiere the company’s movies. By 1964, the once-grand building was closed.

In 1965, television comedian Soupy Sales enjoyed enormous success. It was the Golden Age of TV kid show hosts, and Soupy’s New York-based daily live show for kids got national attention as he attracted fans of all ages. Soupy’s mix of comedy and music often featured in-studio performers like The Shangri-las, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, and jazz greats like Jackie Cain and Roy Kral. Channel 5’s low budget and his personal record collection combined as Soupy introduced his audience to “Mumbles” by Oscar Peterson with Clark Terry (theme song for Pookie the Lion puppet) and “Comin’ Home Baby” by Herbie Mann (theme for “Gunninger the Mentalist” skits).

In 1965, Soupy Sales was booked into the Paramount Theatre for “The Soupy Sales Easter Show.” In his autobiography (“Soupy Sez”), Soupy recalls: “My appearance at the Paramount was probably my greatest thrill in show business, because the Paramount Theater had been closed and they opened it up for the Easter holiday and the Jewish holiday, and everybody thought they were nuts for doing it. It was really wild.” In 2007, Soupy continues to say, “nobody expected it to happen like it did.”

Along with a movie, the musical bill for “The Soupy Sales Easter Show” included: the Hollies (with Graham Nash), Shirley Ellis (“The Name Game”), The Exciters (“Tell Him”), The Detergents (“Leader of the Laundromat”), The Hullabaloos (“I’m Gonna Love You Too”), the King Curtis Orchestra, the Hullabaloo dancers, and Little Richard and his obscure guitar player, Jimi Hendrix. (From “Soupy Sez”) “The show lasted more than three hours, and we were doing five shows a day, which was insane. So, the promoter of the show said to us…’cut down your act to ten minutes, because we’ve got so many acts in the show.’ And then he turned to me and said ‘Soupy, you can do fifteen, eighteen minutes, whatever you like.’” The promoter knew what kids knew—that the big draw was seeing Soupy Sales perform live. Little Richard took issue with the cut in his time, and left the lineup saying “I’ll get even with Soupy.”

Newspaper accounts of the time show photos of thousands of young people lined up outside the theater, holding “We love you Soupy” banners and wearing Soupy Sales pins. “A surprise to most people, although it wasn’t to me, was that we broke the attendance record that Frank Sinatra had set a generation earlier. The headlines read: SOUPY SALES AND THRONGS OF TEENAGE FANS REVIVE THE PARAMOUNT! People had been waiting around since something like two in the morning, just to get in. The size of the crowd was so overwhelming that Time magazine reported, ‘the crush broke the glass on the cashier’s box.’ We made something like $295,000 in ten days. They were carrying the money out in bushel baskets and cardboard boxes. There were mounted police all over the place. We thought there was a riot.”