Chuck_Barris

Chuck Barris

Chuck Barris (born Charles Hirsch Barris on June 3, 1929) is an American game show producer and presenter who was responsible for many of the best-known game shows of the 1960s and 1970s. He is also an author. Barris is a survivor of lung cancer.

Early career

Barris was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He attended Drexel University where he was a columnist at the student newspaper The Triangle. He 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. His most successful venture in this area was the writing of Freddy Cannon's hit "Palisades Park" which reached #3 in mid-1962. In addition to this Barris eventually wrote or co-wrote some of the music that appeared on his game shows (see Discography below for more information).

Barris was promoted to the daytime programming division at ABC in Los Angeles and was put in charge of deciding which game shows ABC would air. Barris admitted to his bosses that the producers' pitches of game show concepts were worse than Barris' own ideas. They suggested that he quit his ABC programming job and become a producer himself.

Barris first became successful during 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 of the opposite sex blocked from their view. The contestants' racy banter and its "flower power" set was a revolution for the game show genre. The show would air for 15 years.

The next year Barris produced The Newlywed Game, originally created by Nick Nicholson and Roger Muir, for the same network. 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 lasting of any developed by his company, running for 19 full years on 'first run' TV, network and syndicated.

"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 spoof 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 the four years it ran in syndication (1976–1980).

The planned host of the NBC show was John Barbour, who did not understand the show's concept and considered it a straight talent show as opposed to Barris' parody concept. An NBC executive suggested that Barris host the show himself.

Barris' jokey, bumbling personality, his accentuated hand-clapping between sentences (which eventually had the studio audience joining in with him), and his catch-phrases (he would usually go into commercial break with, "We'll be right back with more STUFF...", and "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). In addition, there was a growing "cast of characters" including an NBC electrician who played "Father Ed," a priest who would get flustered when his cue cards were deliberately turned upside-down; Canadian comedian Murray Langston, who as "The Unknown Comic" wore a paper bag over his head (with cut-outs for his eyes, mouth, and even a box of Kleenex) and dressed in a tacky polyester jacket and open-buttoned shirt, told deliberately awful jokes (example: "Did you hear about the missionary who got barfed up when cannibals tried to eat him? Just goes to show you can't keep a good man down!!"), and "Gene Gene the Dancing Machine" (Gene Patton), arguably the most popular member of the "cast," another NBC stagehand who would show up and dance whenever the band played the song, "Jumpin' at the Woodside." Siv Aberg, a one-time Miss Sweden, was also on hand, acting more or less as the show's "hostess".

One Gong Show episode consisted of every act appearing singing the song "Feelings", which was popular at the time. 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. Another incident resulted in Jaye P. Morgan's firing from NBC broadcasts of the show, when she exposed her breasts on-camera while Gene-Gene was performing.**

Comeback

The Dating and Newlywed games went off the air in the mid-1970s, leaving Barris with only one show, the 1973–1977 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 $1.98 Beauty Show to his syndication empire. He also hosted a short lived prime-time variety hour for NBC from February to April 1978, called The Chuck Barris Rah-Rah Show.

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. During the winter of 1980, he brought back another game show that was not an original of his, Camouflage, in which contestants answered questions for the chance to locate a "hidden object" (such as a toaster) concealed within a cartoon-type drawing. It lasted only a short time in syndication, and by September 1980 all the Barris games were off the air.

Barris revived Treasure Hunt again in 1981 in partnership with the original 1950s version's producer, Budd Granoff, who had become his business partner (the show itself was created by its original host, Jan Murray). Unlike the 1970s version of Treasure Hunt, Barris did not have direct involvement with the production of the show itself. This revival 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 returned to syndication the next year for a three-year run (the first year hosted by Elaine Joyce, and the next two hosted by Jeff MacGregor). The Gong Show would also return for one season in 1988, now 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, Three's a Crowd, would be revived as All New Three's a Crowd, which, like Extreme Gong, was a GSN original. A few years after Extreme Gong ended, Sony planned to revive the show again under its classic name and format for The WB Television Network, but this version never made it to air. Sony and MTV Networks' Comedy Central collaborated on a fourth Gong revival in 2008 that made it on-air.

One more attempt at reviving an old game show that was not his own originally resulted in an unsold pilot of the 1950s-era game Dollar a Second, hosted by Bob Eubanks. It had at least one showing on GSN, and has since become part of the collector/trader's circuit. Another unsold pilot was called Comedy Courtroom. Chuck Barris no.1

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

In his "unauthorized autobiography" Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, originally published in 1984, Barris claimed to have worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as an assassin in the 1960s and the 1970s. In interviews, when asked about whether he was really a CIA operative, he tends neither to confirm nor deny it. In 2002, a film adaptation of the book was made. Directed by George Clooney and starring Sam Rockwell, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind depicted Barris as being responsible for 33 killings. In 2004, Barris wrote a sequel to the book called Bad Grass Never Dies. The CIA has denied claims that Barris ever worked for them, in any capacity. The agency remained silent for many years regarding Barris' claims to be a hit man, but after the release of the movie, CIA spokesman Paul Nowack said of Barris' assertions that he did wet work for the spy agency, "It's ridiculous. It's absolutely not true.

Family

Barris married Lyn Levy, niece of one of the founders of CBS, which caused her family to disinherit her. His 1974 novel, You and Me, Babe, is loosely based on this marriage. Their daughter Della Barris, who often appeared on The Gong Show, died of a drug overdose in 1998 at age 35. He married twice more, to "Red" Robin Altman, and later to Mary Barris. His uncle was singer/songwriter/actor Harry Barris. He now lives outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States.

Shows

$1.98 Beauty Show
The Bobby Vinton Show
Camouflage
The Chuck Barris Rah-Rah Show
Cop-Out (unsold pilot)
The Dating Game
Dream Girl of '67
Family Game
The Game Game
The Gong Show
How's Your Mother-In-Law
The Newlywed Game
Operation Entertainment
The Parent Game
People Pickers (Sold pilot)
Rah Rah Show
Three's a Crowd
Treasure Hunt/The New Treasure Hunt
Your Hit Parade (CBS, 1974)

Discography

Barris composed music and released them on the following 45 rpm records. Songs with an asterisk (*) are songs not composed by Barris, yet featured on the recordings:

Too Rich / I Know A Child (Capital Records)
Baja California / *Donnie (Dot Records)
Why Me Oh Lord / Sometimes It Just Doesn't Pay To Get Up (MCA Records)

Barris also composed the following songs (with performer, who performed the music first, listed on each). The first two songs were released on "Swan" 45rpm records, and the third released on a "Decca" LP record:

Summertime Guy (Eddie Rambeau; an instrumental version of this song was used as the theme for The Newlywed Game)
Palisades Park (Freddy Cannon)
Love Sickness (Milton Delugg)

Barris released an LP of television game show music called "Chuck Barris Presents Themes From TV Game Shows" (Friends Records). All tracks are instrumentals and are arranged by Tom Scott, Mike Barone, and Dale Oehler. The tracks for the LP, as listed from the back of the LP jacket, are as follows:

Side 1