Chuck Barris - Biography

Last Editor: Sheanapooh14				Chuck Barris Biography -   Name : Chuck Barris Profession : Producer

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Chuck Barris Detailed Biography -

Chuck Barris, born on June 3, 1929, was a successful American game show producer during the 1960s and 1970s. He specialized in game shows that often pushed the envelope of taste and style, but succeeded because they mirrored the culture of those turbulent decades. Born Charles Hirsch Barris in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he had a younger sister and a mother and father who passed away by the time he was a teenager. He attended Drexel University, where he was a columnist at the student newspaper, The Triangle and graduated in 1953. Barris got his start in television as a page and later staffer at NBC in New York, and eventually worked backstage at the TV music show American Bandstand, originally as a standards-and-practices person for ABC. Barris soon became a music-industry figure, writing a top-ten hit song called Palisades Park in 1962, which was performed by Freddy Cannon. (He eventually wrote or co-wrote some of the music that appeared on his game shows.) Barris first hit the jackpot in 1965 with his first game-show creation, The Dating Game on ABC, hosted by Jim Lange, in which three bachelors or bachelorettes competed for the favor of a contestant blocked from their view. The contestants' racy banter and its "flower power" set was a revolution for the usually-genteel game-show genre. The next year, for the same network, Barris produced The Newlywed Game, originally created by Nick Nicholson and Roger Muir (who were often mentioned as such in the show's credits during the 1970s and 80s.) The combination of the newlywed couples' humorous candor and host Bob Eubanks' exuberant, sly questioning made the show another hit for Barris -- and to date, the longest-tenured of any developed by his company (its 19 total years on first-run TV, both network and syndication, are just one more than The Dating Game). The engaging but somewhat shy Barris rarely appeared on camera, though he once dashed onto the set of Treasure Hunt to sock emcee Geoff Edwards with a pie. But Barris became a public figure in a big way in 1976, when he produced and served as the host of the talent contest The Gong Show, which he packaged in partnership with TV producer Chris Bearde. The show's cult stature far outstripped the two years the show spent on NBC (1976-78) and four years it ran in syndication (1976-80). Barris's jokey, bumbling personality ("this is me saying 'bye'" was one of his favorite closing lines) was the antithesis of the smooth TV host (such as Gary Owens, who hosted the syndicated version in its first season). Dubbed Chuckie Baby by his fans, Barris was a perfect fit with the show's goofy, sometimes wild amateur performers and its panel of three judges (including regulars Jamie Farr, Jaye P. Morgan and Arte Johnson). One of its most infamous incidents came on the NBC version in 1978, when he presented an onstage act consisting of two young women slowly and suggestively sucking Popsicles.