Gong Show creator ruled game-show world
NEW YORK Chuck Barris, whose game show empire included The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game and that infamous factory of cheese, The Gong Show, died at 87.
Barris died of natural causes on Tuesday at his home in Palisades, N.Y., publicist Paul Shefrin said 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 by the show’s writers 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, introduced as “an accomplished artist and sculptress” with a dream to open her own gallery.
After the show became a hit on both daytime and nighttime TV, the Barris machine accelerated. New products included The Newlywed Game, The Parent Game and The Family Game.
At one point Barris was supplying the television networks with 27 hours of entertainment a week, mostly in five-days-a-week daytime game shows.
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 oversized gong, the show’s equivalent of vaudeville’s hook. The victims would then be mercilessly berated by the manic Barris and a crew of second-tier celebrities.
As The Gong Show and his other series were slipping, Barris sold his company for a reported $100 million in 1980 and went into films.
He directed and starred in The Gong Show Movie, a terrible failure that stayed in theatres only a week. A distraught Barris wrote his autobiography, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, claiming to have been a CIA assassin.
The book (and the 2002 film based on it) were widely dismissed by disbelievers.