One of the true legends of the game show biz is hanging up his skinny microphone. The magazine Desert Living asked me to write up a retrospective.
You should know, June 15 is your last chance to enjoy the brilliance of Bob Barker, an icon of morning television whose command of The Price is Right stage will be missed.
Calling in sick from work with the cheap beer flu will never be the same.
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“Come on Down!” (One Last Time): The 35th season of the game show TV Guide ranked as “the greatest of all time” is coming to a close on June 15 and it brings to mind the melancholy words of Happy Gilmore, “the price is wrong, bitch.” You see, at the age of 83, after 6,731 shows (so sayeth the uber-TPIR fanboy at Golden-road.net) and more than 50 years on the air, Bob Barker is dropping his Plinko chips for the final time…“And the actual retail price IS?” will never be the same. His stellar career began in 1956* as the host of Truth or Consequences, but it was the debut of a half-hour version of The Price is Right on September 4, 1972 that truly captured the heart/wallet of a cost-conscious consumerist nation. It is the longest-running game show in American television history and has doled out a whopping $250,000,000+ to some 55,000 lucky contestants throughout Barker’s long, distinguished career of assisting college students and Midwestern grandmothers as they carefully consider the question of whether a bottle of Formula 409 costs more than a can of Van Camps’ Beanee Weenee. (409! 409! 409!)
*Technically, Bob Barker’s is the second coming of TPIR, an earlier version ran from 1956-65 with some poser named Bill Cullen.
Price-ing Guide: A bit of trivia for your final-episode margarita viewing party: (1) An Eastern Oregon University softball player, Sheena Lindholm, won the highest prize total ever, $183,688. 2) Two urban legends are that the wheel broke free and that an old lady rolled up underneath it, good thing since it weighs 1,500 lbs. (3) TPIR has given away an airplane and all prize cars are American-made. (4) In October 1987, Barker stunned network muckety-mucks, the studio audience and legions of viewers when he broke a television taboo by ditching the hair dye and going (gasp) grey. (5) The closest anyone came to guessing the showcase amount was off by $1, nobody has nailed it.
I’ll Show You My Showcase, If You Show My Yours…: More than one of “Barker’s Beauties” have been plucked from the pages of Playboy (go ahead and scout the talent at TPIRmodels.com) and consider that the pricing games throughout the ages have included the porno-worthy “That’s Too Much!,” “Shower Game,” “Barker’s Marker$” and “Golden Road.” In 1977, the tube top on a jiggly woman named Yolanda famously couldn’t contain her, um, excitement. And in 1993, The Price is Right model Dian Parkinson sued Bob Barker for sexual harassment. He copped to the feel saying that there was consensual hanky-panky; she dropped the charges two years later. Perhaps it’s not just your pet that needs to be spayed or neutered.
No hard feelings, though, Mr. Barker, after all you are a member of the TV Hall of Fame. Your soothing presence got us all through so many sick days, hangovers and stretches of unemployment that we all owe you a debt of gratitude, a debt that we promise we’ll pay without going over. You’ve reached the game show summit, so yodel with glee like the winners of “Cliff Hangers.”
Happy trails, Bob.
(Illustration by Julia Rothman.)
(Desert Living, Mar/Apr 2007)
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