Longtime game show host and animal rights activist Bob Barker has died. He was 99.
The former “The Price is Right” host Barker died peacefully at home of natural causes on Saturday morning in L.A. his rep Roger Neal confirmed to The Daily News. “It is with profound sadness that we announce that the World’s Greatest MC who ever lived, Bob Barker, has left us,” Neal said.
Barker’s longtime friend Nancy Burnet, who has overseen his care for the past several years, is co-executor of the daytime TV icon’s estate.
“I am so proud of the trailblazing work Barker and I did together to expose the cruelty to animals in the entertainment industry and including working to improve the plight of abused and exploited animals in the United States and internationally,” Burnet said in a statement. ” We were great friends over these 40 years. He will be missed.”
For 35 years, Barker invited studio audience guests to “Come on down!” for a chance to win items ranging from automobiles to vacation packages. In 182 — a decade after taking over the program — he began closing each show by reminding viewers to help control the pet population by having their dogs and cats spayed and neutered.
Prior to moving to CBS’s “The Price is Right,” Barker spent nearly 20 years hosting the game show “Truth or Consequences.”
He wrote of both experiences in his 2009 memoir “Priceless Memories.”
Barker returned three times to host “The Price is Right” after his June 2007 retirement. His final appearance was for an April Fool’s Day segment in 2015, after which he passed the reins back to comedian Drew Carey, who preceded Barker.
Barker was born in Washington state and raised on a South Dakota reservation. He married Dorothy Jo Gideon in 1945. They stayed together until her death in 1981. They married while Barker was on leave from the U.S. Navy in 1945.
December 12 would have marked a century of life for Barker, who made his film debut punching Adam Sandler’s character in the 1996 golf film “Happy Gilmore,” which earned him an MTV Movie Award.
“I’m old, but I’m tough,” he told Entertainment Tonight while talking about that scene.
He said he studied martial arts with film star Chuck Norris for eight years, who always outfought him.
“But I got Adam!” he joked.
He also made cameos as himself on several TV shows including “The Bold and the Beautiful” and “The Nanny.”
A former “Price is Right” model sued the show’s star in 1994, accusing him of sexual misconduct while they were colleagues. Barker claimed he was in a consensual relationship with Playboy model turned “Barker’s Beauty” Dian Parkinson from 1989 to 1991, but denied wrongdoing. The pair worked together for 18 years.
Barker, a vegetarian, will be remembered for his animal activism, which PETA thanked him for in 2018 by naming a rescued horse in his honor.
“We love this man, but what do you give someone who has everything and gives his all to animals? The answer is a rescued horse named in his honor,” PETA President Ingrid Newkirk said in a statement on Barker’s 10 year anniversary of his involvement with the animal rights group.
He’s donated money and recorded an ad supporting PETA’s efforts.
In 1988, he announced his withdrawal from the Miss Universe beauty pageant he’d hosted for more than 20 years because officials insisted on rewarding fur coats to participants.
“I cannot do them (the pageants) as long as they give away fur coats,” he protested. “This involves morality.″
The pageant tweeted him a happy birthday wish in 2021. He started working with the pageant in 1967.
Barker had several health scares throughout his long life. They included a partially blocked left carotid artery, a stroke, prostate surgery and skin cancer, according to Distractify. He also required stitches after a 2015 fall outside his Los Angeles home.
Readers rated Barker TV’s second-greatest game show host in a 2023 poll, where he trailed only former “Jeopardy” host Alex Trebek. Other polls reversed the order. Trebek lost his battle with pancreatic cancer in 2020 at 80 years old.
Barker announced his impending exit from “The Price is Right” in good humor in 2006, while correctly predicting he still had several good years in him.
“I will be 83 years old on December 12,” he told viewers, “And I’ve decided to retire while I’m still young.”
