Gong Show creator Chuck Barris dies at 87
NEW YORK — Chuck Barris, whose game show empire included The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game and that infamous factory of cheese, The Gong Show, has died. He was 87.
Barris died of natural causes Tuesday at his home in Palisades, New York, according to publicist Paul Shefrin, who announced the death on behalf of Barris’ family.
Barris made game-show history right off the bat, in 1966, with The Dating Game, hosted by Jim Lange. The gimmick: A young female questions three males, hidden from her view, to determine which would be the best date. Sometimes, the process was switched, with a male questioning three females. But in all cases, the questions were designed to elicit sexy answers.
Celebrities and future celebrities who appeared as contestants included Michael Jackson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steve Martin and a pre-Charlie’s Angels Farrah Fawcett.
After the show became a hit, the Barris machine accelerated. New products included The Newlywed Game, The Parent Game, The Family Game and even The Game Game.
At one point, Barris was supplying the television networks with 27 hours of entertainment a week.
The grinning, curly-haired Barris became a familiar face as creator and host of The Gong Show, which aired from 1976 to 1980.
The program featured performers who had peculiar talents and, often, no talent at all. When the latter appeared on the show, Barris would strike an oversize gong. The victims would then be mercilessly berated by the manic Barris.
As The Gong Show and Barris’ other series were slipping, he sold his company for a reported $100 million US in 1980.
He wrote his autobiography, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, in which he claimed to have been a CIA assassin.
The book (and the 2002 film based on it, directed by George Clooney) were widely dismissed.
Barris was unmoved. “Have you ever heard the CIA acknowledge someone was an assassin?” he once asked.
He moved to a villa in the south of France in the 1980s with his girlfriend and future second wife, Robin Altman.
Charles Barris was born in Philadelphia in 1929. After graduating from the Drexel Institute of Technology in 1953, he took a series of jobs, then found work at ABC, where his bosses let him open a Hollywood office, from which he launched his empire.
Barris’s first marriage, to Lynn Levy, ended in divorce. Their daughter, Della, died of a drug overdose in 1998. He married his third wife, Mary, in 2000.