Bob Barker - # 310

 

Bob Barker, longtime host of 'The Price Is Right' and animal rights activist, dies at 99

He was number 310 the list.

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Bob Barker, the former longtime host of the TV game show "The Price Is Right" and an animal-rights activist, died Saturday morning, his publicist said. He was 99.

Barker died of natural causes at his home in the Hollywood Hills, his spokesman Roger Neal said.

"It is with profound sadness that we announce that the World's Greatest MC who ever lived, Bob Barker has left us," Neal said in a statement.

"The Price Is Right," which had a nine-year run in the '50s and '60s with Bill Cullen, returned in 1972 with Barker. He stayed for 35 years, passing the mic to comedian Drew Carey in 2007.

Barker was a winner of 19 Daytime Emmy Awards. Also received an Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1999 and was inducted into the Television Academy's Hall of Fame in 2004.

#BREAKINGNEWS - Game show legend Bob Barker died this morning at the age of 99. He was the longtime host of “The Price Is Right” and a longtime advocate of animal rights. May he R.I.P. ������(Photo courtesy: CBS/Fremantle) pic.twitter.com/G2Ip5JZTHE

— George Pennacchio (@abc7george) August 26, 2023

Barker contributed $5 million to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a marine wildlife and environmental protection group, to help end international whaling. The society named a ship in their fleet the "Bob Barker."

Has donated $3.1 million to his alma mater Drury University.

He hosted CBS's The Price Is Right from 1972 to 2007, making it the longest-running daytime game show in North American television history. He also hosted Truth or Consequences from 1956 to 1975.

Born in Darrington, Washington, in modest circumstances, Barker joined the United States Navy Reserve during World War II. He worked part-time in radio while attending college. In 1950, he moved to California to pursue a broadcasting career. He was given his own radio show, The Bob Barker Show, which ran for six years. He began his game show career in 1956, hosting Truth or Consequences. He subsequently hosted various game shows, and the Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants from 1967 to 1987, giving him the distinction of being the longest-serving host of those pageants.

Barker began hosting The Price Is Right in 1972. He became an advocate for animal rights and of animal rights activism, supporting groups such as the United Activists for Animal Rights and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. In 2007, he retired from hosting The Price Is Right after celebrating his 50-year career on television. In the years after his retirement, Barker continued to make occasional public appearances from 2009 to 2017.

Barker spent most of his youth on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in Mission, South Dakota. The U.S. Indian Census Rolls, 1885–1940, list Barker as an enrolled member of the Sioux tribe. His mother, Matilda ("Tillie") Valandra (née Matilda Kent Tarleton), was a school teacher; his father, Byron John Barker, was the foreman on the electrical high line through the state of Washington. As Barker's father was one-quarter Sioux, and his mother non-Native, Barker was one-eighth Sioux. Barker attended the grade school on the Rosebud Reservation where his mother was a teacher. He once said, "I've always bragged about being part Indian, because they are a people to be proud of. And the Sioux were the greatest warriors of them all."

Barker met his future wife, Dorothy Jo Gideon, at an Ella Fitzgerald concert while he was attending high school in Missouri; they began dating when he was 15. He attended Drury College (now Drury University) in Springfield, Missouri, on a basketball athletic scholarship. He was a member of the Epsilon Beta chapter of Sigma Nu fraternity at Drury. He joined the United States Navy Reserve in 1943 during World War II to train as a fighter pilot, but did not serve on active duty. During leave from the military, he married Dorothy Jo on January 12, 1945. After the war, he returned to Drury to finish his education, graduating summa cum laude with a degree in economics.

While attending college in Drury, Barker worked his first media job at KTTS-FM Radio in Springfield. He and his wife left Springfield and moved to Lake Worth Beach, Florida, and he was news editor and announcer at nearby WWPG 1340 AM in Palm Beach (now WPBR in Lantana). In 1950, he moved to California to advance his broadcasting career. He was given his own radio show, The Bob Barker Show, which ran for the next six years from Burbank. He was hosting an audience-participation radio show on KNX (AM) in Los Angeles when game show producer Ralph Edwards, who was looking for a new host to replace Jack Bailey on the daytime-television version of his long-running show, Truth or Consequences, happened to be listening and liked Barker's voice and style.

In early 1972, Mark Goodson and Bill Todman began shopping a modernized revival of The Price Is Right to stations, with Dennis James as host. CBS expressed interest in the series, on one condition: instead of James, Barker would be installed as host. After some initial resistance, Barker instead offered to host another upcoming CBS game show, Jack Barry's The Joker's Wild (which had difficulty finding a host and was scheduled to debut the same day as Price) to allow James to host Price, but CBS rejected this proposal.

On September 4, 1972, Barker began hosting the CBS revival of The Price Is Right.

On October 15, 1987, Barker did what other MCs almost never did then: renounced hair dye and began wearing his hair gray, which was its natural color by that time.

Barker announced on October 31, 2006, that he would retire from The Price Is Right in June 2007. He taped his final episode on June 6, 2007, with the show airing twice on June 15.

After his retirement, Barker made three return appearances to The Price is Right. He first appeared on the episode that aired on April 16, 2009, to promote his new autobiography, Priceless Memories. He appeared in the Showcase round at the end of the show. Barker made another guest appearance on the show to celebrate his 90th birthday, which aired on December 12, 2013. He announced a contestant for the first time ever on the show, along with one showcase. Barker's last appearance was a surprise appearance on April 1, 2015, for an April Fools' Day switch where he took Drew Carey's place at the show's intro. He hosted the first one bid and pricing game of that day before handing the hosting duties back to Carey and later appeared during the showcase.

In 1994, former model Dian Parkinson filed a lawsuit against Barker alleging sexual harassment following a three-year affair while working on The Price Is Right. Parkinson, who alleged that she was extorted by threats of firing, later dropped her lawsuit, claiming the stress from the ordeal was damaging her health.

In 1995, model Holly Hallstrom left The Price Is Right and later filed suit against Barker, alleging that the reason she was fired was not so much because of her 14-pound (6.4 kg) medication-mediated weight gain (as documented) but because, to Barker's displeasure, she refused to give false information to the media regarding Parkinson's suit, as she alleges Barker had requested she do. Barker countersued for slander, but Hallstrom prevailed, receiving a settlement in 2005.

In October 2007, Deborah Curling, a CBS employee assigned to The Price Is Right, filed a lawsuit against CBS, Bob Barker and The Price Is Right producers, claiming that she was forced to quit her job after testifying against Barker in a wrongful-termination lawsuit brought by a previous show producer. Curling claimed that she was demoted to an "intolerable work environment" backstage, which caused her to leave the job. Curling, who is black, also alleged that the show's producers, including Barker, created a hostile work environment in which black employees and contestants were discriminated against. A few months later, Barker was removed from the lawsuit, and in September 2009, the lawsuit was dismissed. Curling's attorney stated that he planned to appeal the dismissal of the lawsuit. In January 2012, the California Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal.

Barker was a vegetarian. In 1982, Barker began ending The Price Is Right episodes with the phrase: "This is Bob Barker reminding you to help control the pet population — have your pets spayed or neutered.

Film and other TV appearances

In 1996, Barker played himself in the Adam Sandler comedy Happy Gilmore. In one scene, Barker beats up Gilmore after an altercation arising from their teaming up in a Pro-Am Golf Tournament. In 2007, during a CBS prime-time special commemorating Barker's career, the fight scene from Happy Gilmore was shown, after which Sandler made a surprise appearance on stage to read a poem paying tribute to Barker. In 2015, during Comedy Central's "Night of Too Many Stars" benefit show for autism, Barker and Sandler reunited for a video featuring the two of them in a follow-up fight at the hospital, which ends with both of them dying and going to heaven.

Barker was a semi-regular panelist on the game shows Tattletales (1975–1976, with wife Dorothy Jo) and Match Game (1973–1980). Barker sat in Richard Dawson's former place during the first week of Dawson's permanent absence from Match Game.

Barker co-hosted CBS' coverage of the Rose Parade from Pasadena, California for several years during the 1970s and 1980s.

In the 1970s, he was the host of the annual/biennial Pillsbury Bake-Off (the bake-off occurred every two years starting in 1976). In 1978, he was the first host to have a male category champ.

Barker appeared on Bonanza, playing a character named Mort in the 1960 episode "Denver McKee".

Barker has appeared on various talk shows such as: Dinah!, Larry King Live, The Arsenio Hall Show, Crook & Chase, Donny & Marie, The Rosie O'Donnell Show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Wayne Brady Show, the Late Show with David Letterman, and The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.

Barker also made cameo appearances on The Nanny and The Bold and the Beautiful in 2002 and 2014.

About one year after retirement, Barker appeared in a public service announcement promoting the transition to digital television in the United States. The advertisement was produced under the first proposed date of February 16, 2009, for the transition.

On September 7, 2009, Barker was a special guest host for WWE Raw (called "The Price is Raw") in Rosemont, Illinois.[56] Aired during a period when nearly every episode of the weekly wrestling show featured a celebrity guest host, with mixed results, Barker's appearance has been ranked the best of nearly 80 hosts.

Barker agreed to be a rotating guest co-host on The Huckabee Show, a daily TV talk show hosted by Mike Huckabee. Barker first appeared on the show July 29, 2010.

Barker appeared in a commercial for State Farm Insurance's "Magic Jingle" campaign, where he made "a new car!" appear for a woman whose previous car was totaled by a giant concrete cylinder.

Barker filmed a TV advertisement endorsing David Jolly, a candidate for the Republican Party nomination for the 2014 Florida's 13th congressional district special election. Jolly won the nomination and ultimately won the seat.

Barker voiced the character Bob Barnacle, a snail business owner on "Sanctuary!", an episode of the Nickelodeon animated series SpongeBob SquarePants.