Chuck Barris

Chuck Barris (born Charles Hirsch Barris in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on June 3, 1929) was a successful American game show producer during the 1960s and 1970s. He specialized in game shows that often pushed the envelope of taste and style, but succeeded because they mirrored the culture of those turbulent decades.

Early career

Barris' younger sister, mother, and father all died by the time he was a teenager. He attended Drexel University, where he was a columnist at the student newspaper, The Triangle and graduated in 1953.

Barris got his start in television as a page and later staffer at NBC in New York, and eventually worked backstage at the TV music show American Bandstand, originally as a standards-and-practices person for ABC. Barris soon became a music-industry figure, writing a top-ten hit song called Palisades Park in 1962, which was performed by Freddy Cannon. He eventually wrote or co-wrote some of the music that appeared on his game shows.

Barris first hit the jackpot in 1965 with his first game-show creation, The Dating Game on ABC, hosted by Jim Lange, in which three bachelors or bachelorettes competed for the favor of a contestant blocked from their view. The contestants' racy banter and its "flower power" set was a revolution for the usually-genteel game-show genre.

The next year, for the same network, Barris produced The Newlywed Game, originally created by Nick Nicholson and Roger Muir (who were often mentioned as such in the show's credits during the 1970s and 80s.) The combination of the newlywed couples' humorous candor and host Bob Eubanks' exuberant, sly questioning made the show another hit for Barris -- and to date, the longest-tenured of any developed by his company (its 19 total years on first-run TV, both network and syndication, are just one more than The Dating Game).

'Chuckie Baby'

The engaging but somewhat shy Barris rarely appeared on camera, though he once dashed onto the set of The New Treasure Hunt to sock emcee Geoff Edwards with a pie. But Barris became a public figure in a big way in 1976, when he produced and served as the host of the talent contest The Gong Show, which he packaged in partnership with TV producer Chris Bearde. The show's cult stature far outstripped the two years it spent on NBC (1976-78) and four years it ran in syndication (1976-80).

Barris's jokey, bumbling personality ("this is me saying 'bye'" was one of his favorite closing lines) was the antithesis of the smooth TV host (such as Gary Owens, who hosted the syndicated version in its first season). Dubbed "Chuckie Baby" by his fans, Barris was a perfect fit with the show's goofy, sometimes wild amateur performers and its panel of three judges (including regulars Jamie Farr, Jaye P. Morgan and Arte Johnson).

One of its most infamous incidents came on the NBC version in 1978, when he presented an onstage act consisting of two young women slowly and suggestively sucking Popsicles.

Comeback kid

Barris's TV fortunes ebbed and flowed with the decades. The Dating and Newlywed games went off the air in the mid-1970s, leaving Barris with only one show, the 1973-77 revival of Treasure Hunt (titled The New Treasure Hunt). But the success of The Gong Show in 1976 allowed him to revive the Dating and Newlywed games, as well as adding the Beauty Show" target="_blank" >^* to his syndication empire.

The empire crumbled again amid the burnout of another of his creations, the 1979-80 Three's A Crowd (in which three sets of wives and secretaries competed to see who knew more about their husband/boss). At the same time, Newlywed lost the sponsorships of Ford and Procter & Gamble and earned the resentment of Jackie Autry, whose husband and business partner Gene Autry owned the show's Los Angeles outlet and production base, KTLA. By September 1980, all the Barris games were off the air.

He revived Treasure Hunt again in 1981 in partnership with the original 1950s version's creator, Budd Granoff (who had become his business partner); however, unlike the 1970s version, Barris did not have direct involvement with the production of the show itself. This revival of the show lasted only one year.

Barris came back again in the mid-1980s. After a week-long trial of The Newlywed Game on ABC in 1984 (with Dating Game emcee Jim Lange), Barris produced a daily Newlywed Game (titled The New Newlywed Game) in syndication from 1985 to 1989, with old host Eubanks (and in 1989, comedian Paul Rodriguez). The Dating Game came back in syndication the next year for a three-year run hosted by Elaine Joyce. The Gong Show would also return for one season in 1988, this version hosted by "True" Don Bleu.

After the shows' runs ended, Barris sold his TV holdings to what is now Sony Pictures Television, which revived Dating and Newlywed from 1996 to 1999. Sony also revived Gong in 1998, this time as Extreme Gong, a Game Show Network original production. Another Barris show, 3's a Crowd, would be revived as All New 3's a Crowd, which, like Extreme Gong, was a GSN original.

Chuck Barris, 'hit man'

In his "unauthorized autobiography" Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Barris claimed to have also worked as a CIA hitman, with over 100 kills (the movie suggested only 33 kills.) As of yet, these claims have been neither proven nor disproven. In 2002 the book was made into a film, turned into a script by Charlie Kaufman and directed by George Clooney. Sam Rockwell starred as Barris. Barris has also written a sequel entitled, Bad Grass Never Dies.

His family

His daughter Della Barris, who often appeared on The Gong Show, died of a drug overdose in 1998 at age 35.

Other shows hosted or created by Chuck Barris

External links

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/030207.html

1929 births | Living people | American game show hosts | American television producers | Game show hosts