Bob Barker, the unflappable, snowy-haired host of the game show “The Price is Right” and a game and television emcee for more than half a century, died Saturday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 99. Barker’s publicist Roger Neal confirmed, “It is with profound sadness that we announce that the World’s Greatest MC who ever lived, Bob Barker, has left us.” No cause of death was disclosed.
Tall, deeply tanned and almost impossibly fit, the man born Robert William Barker on December 23, 1923 in Darrington, Washington, Barker was a Naval aviation cadet veteran of World War II who got his start in showbiz in radio in the late 1940s and then as host of “The Bob Barker Show” in 1950. His big break came in 1956 when he was hired to host the TV adaptation of the radio game show “Truth or Consequences” on NBC. The series was nationally syndicated in 1966, and Barker remained its host until the plug was pulled in 1975.
It was back in 1972 that Barker began hosting a new version of “The Price is Right” – the show that would become his legacy – in 1972 on CBS. He would remain its host until announcing his retirement in 2007. The show features a vast array of quirky games centered on a contestant’s ability to guess the price of various merchandise, from luggage to soup to elite vacations to toasters to cars. In 12975, it became the first hour-long game show on TV. In 1990, it set the record for the longest-running daytime game show in history – and Barker was just getting warmed up. He stuck around presiding over the show for 35 years.
Asked at the time he stepped down why he was leaving “The Price is Right,” Barker told reporters, “In December, I became 83 years old, and I want to retire while I’m still young.”
Barker won 18 Daytime Emmy Awards and a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999, also being elected to the TV Academy Hall of Fame in 2004. He was also inducted into the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2008. But perhaps Barker’s greatest passion – even more than being a television personality – was animal rights, which became the cause of Barker’s life from middle-age into his later decades. He had been a vegetarian since 1981 and contributed his time, money and brand to a host on animal charities.
While serving as “Price is Right” host, Barker would say that the most challenging part of his job was protecting himself from overzealous contestants after they were summoned by the announcer to “Come on down!”. He suffered broken toes when a hopping contestant landed on his foot and tooth damage when a short contestant locked him in a bear hug and bopped up and down beneath his chin.
“I once had a Samoan woman pick me up as if I were a child and just throw me around,” he told the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 2007. “Frankly, I was terrified, but I thought, ‘Well that will never happen again.’ Believe it or not, the next year another Samoan came to Contestants Row, got on stage, picked me up and threw me around. Now another year or so passes, and a third Samoan shows up. I had her raise her right hand and swear that if she got on stage, she would not pay a hand on me. Well, she got on stage. She won a car and picked me up higher than either one of the other two had.”
In addition to his game show work, Barker was also the longtime host of the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the Rose Parade in Pasadena, the Pillsbury Bake-Off and a variety of beauty pageants including Miss USA and Miss Universe. In fact, he severed ties with the latter groups when they declined his request that they remove fur coats from prize packages. He later started a foundation to push the spaying and neutering of domesticated animals. That crusade led to his signature sign-off on “The Price is Right”: “This is Bob Barker reminding you to help control the pet population – have your pets spayed or neutered.”
Barker was married once, to the former Dorothy Jo Gideon. They were married in 1945 and stayed married until her death in 1981.
During his 35 years at “Price is Right,” Barker and the producers were sued by several of the show’s merchandise models. The most public of those suits was brought in 1994 by Dian Parkinson, a model with the show for 18 years who alleged that she had been coerced into a sexual relationship with Barker and that in order to get away from him she had to quit her job. A judge dismissed the wrongful termination claim but permitted Parkinson to proceed with claims of sexual harassment and emotional distress.
“She told me that I had been so straitlaced that t was time I had a little hanky-panky in my life, and she volunteered the hanky-panky,” Barker claimed at the time in denying the harassment charges. “It was a case of two middle-aged consenting adults having sex.”
Parkinson would withdraw her suit in 1995, saying she lacked the “power and resources” to continue forward with the suit and that it was harming her health. Several other cases against Barker and the producers over the years were settled out of court.
Barker had no children and leaves no heirs.
