Month: March 2017

Chuck Barris, Wacky Host and Creator of ‘The Gong Show,’ Dies at 87

He also produced ‘The Dating Game’ and ‘The Newlywed Game,’ shadowed Dick Clark for a year and wrote ‘Confessions of a Dangerous Mind’ and the pop song “Palisades Park.”
Chuck Barris, the goofball host of The Gong Show who also was the manic mastermind behind two other spontaneous game-show classics, The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game, has died. He was 87.

Barris, who in his book, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind: An Unauthorized Biography, claimed to have been an assassin for the CIA — his implausible story became a fantastical 2002 movie directed by first-timer George Clooney and written by Charlie Kaufman — died Tuesday of natural causes at his home in Palisades, N.Y., his family announced through publicist Paul Shefrin.

The Philadelphia native also penned the 1962 pop song “Palisades Park,” a tribute to the old amusement park in New Jersey that was a hit for Freddy Cannon and figured high on Barris’ list of career achievements.

With his innovative shows, Barris changed the face of reality TV but was derided but critics who nicknamed him “The King of Schlock,” “The Baron of Bad Taste” and “The Ayatollah of Trasherola.”

On The Gong Show, which aired on NBC and in syndication in daytime and primetime from 1976-80, amateurs took to the stage to demonstrate their so-called talent in front of three celebrity judges. Quite often, they made fools of themselves.

Barris’ original idea had been to create a show that featured fine performers, but in his search for talent, he frequently encountered awful acts. “I came back and said, ‘Let’s change the show, have all bad acts and one or two good ones, and people can make a judgment,’ ” he said in a 2010 interview with The Archive of American Television.

When original host John Barbour didn’t work out after about a year, NBC execs insisted that the cuddly, curly-haired Barris come on as his replacement, so he donned a tuxedo and a floppy hat and introduced the acts.

Any of the three judges (a roster that included Jaye P. Morgan, Rex Reed, Rip Taylor, Jamie Farr, Arte Johnson and David Letterman) could send the bad performers packing by striking a large gong.

“Everybody could relate to somebody wearing a lampshade and dancing around,” Barris said. “Bad acts are inherent in everyone.”

Acts who appeared included The Unknown Comic (Murray Langston), Danny Elfman, Paul Reubens and Barris’ own mother, and at random moments, the host would call out Gene Gene the Dancing Machine (stagehand Gene Patton) to boogie for the audience to the tune of “Jumpin’ at the Woodside.”

On one particularly crazy show, Morgan unbuttoned her blouse to reveal her breasts to the cameras, and Barris said she never worked on The Gong Show again.

“The end of the show came because of me,” he said in the TV Archive chat. “I had a small nervous breakdown out there, doing strange things. When I see films of the last shows, I was walking around, busting up [studio] flats on the air. That was the behavior of a host who was bored to death.”

In October, ABC ordered a new version of The Gong Show to be executive produced by Will Arnett.

Barris first made his mark in the game show arena when he created The Dating Game, which bowed as an ABC daytime program in December 1965. Hosted by San Francisco radio personality Jim Lange, the program featured a bachelor or bachelorette asking three members of the opposite sex suggestive questions, then choosing one for a date.

ABC’s The Newlywed Game, produced by Barris and hosted by the cheeky Bob Eubanks, premiered in July 1966. Four couples who had been married for a year or less competed by matching answers to questions about their spouses’ likes and dislikes. Just like The Dating Game, it was a huge hit and played in primetime as well (both shows aired in tandem on Saturday nights for a time).

Barris often came off as a nut case, but he was an astute businessman. As a pioneer of first-run syndication, he sold The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game to stations after ABC canceled his shows, keeping them on the air.

He formed the public company Chuck Barris Productions in 1968 and sold his shares in the firm to producer Burt Sugarman in a 1986 deal that valued the company at about $86 million ($195 million today). The firm was eventually acquired by producers Peter Guber and Jon Peters and then by Sony.

Charles Hirsch Barris was born on June 3, 1929. The son of a dentist and a housewife, he graduated from Lower Merion High School and Drexel University, then landed a job in the foundry at U.S. Steel.

After working various odd jobs, including traveling around the country selling teleprompters, Barris moved to New York and became an NBC page. He went through a management training program and took a sales job, but then the network fired everyone in the department.

He then was hired by ABC, which offered him the dubious assignment of tailing Dick Clark, the young and popular host of TV’s American Bandstand, at Philadelphia station WFIL-TV. Barris’ task was to ascertain whether Clark was involved in the illegal practice of payola.

“It was so ridiculous. If I left at 6 o’clock, what’s to say he couldn’t be doing anything nefarious after 6 o’clock?” Barris said.

Still, he wrote daily memos detailing the goings-on at American Bandstand for about a year, and his notes were presented before a House of Representatives subcommittee in Washington. Ultimately, Clark was absolved of any wrongdoing.

Meanwhile, “Palisades Park” had reached No. 3 in June 1962 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. (Barris would also write the theme music for many of his game shows.)

As a result of his work shadowing Clark, ABC sent Barris to Los Angeles as its director of daytime television on the West Coast. When no one would return his phone calls, he set up shop in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. His innate sense of Hollywood tribal behavior worked: Now people were getting back to him.

His first show was Poker People, a failed pilot in which two celebrity panelists attempt to guess the professions of 16 guests just by their appearance. “It was a disaster,” he recalled. “I had brought prostitutes and policewoman on the show, and the policewomen wouldn’t work with the prostitutes.”

Shortly after attending a civil rights rally in Selma, Ala., Barris left ABC to become an independent producer. Living on his royalties from “Palisades Park,” Barris developed The Dating Game and sold the show to his former employers.

“When The Dating Game came out, women had to wait for a man to call,” Lange told the Los Angeles Times in a 2002 interview. “Having them make the choices [on the show] appealed to the female population, the target demographic.”

Future sportscaster Al Michaels was a member of his staff; Burt Reynolds, Michael Jackson and John Ritter were among the contestants; and it was Barris’ idea to have Lange and the contestants blow kisses to the cameras at the end of each show.

The Newlywed Game “was the easiest show to do,” he said in the TV Archive interview. “It only needed four couples, four questions and a washer/dryer.”

In the show’s most precious moment, Eubanks asked one wife,”Where specifically is the weirdest place that you personally have ever gotten the urge to make whoopee?”

“In the ass?” she answered. Her husband then turned over a card that revealed his response: “In the car.”

In 1980, Barris directed, co-wrote (with Robert Downey Sr.) and appeared in Universal’s The Gong Show Movie. An R-rated look at the game show, it was pulled from theaters after one weekend, he said.

Barris also presided over other game shows like The Game Game, How’s Your Mother-in-Law?, Dream Girl of ’67, The $1.98 Beauty Show, 3’s a Crowd — with the premise “Who knows a husband better, his wife or his secretary?” — The Family Game and The New Treasure Hunt.

In 1968, he produced Operation: Entertainment, a variety show that had a different host (George Carlin, Dick Cavett, Dick Shawn, et al) appearing at a different military base each week.

Barris read Erich Segal’s Love Story and figured he could write an even better romance novel. So he went to France and penned You and Me, Babe, based on his relationship with his first wife; and it was published in 1974 and became a best-seller.

After “the critics had harassed me for 15 years saying that I’d lowered the bar of civilization,” he said in a 2003 interview with A.V. Club, an angry Barris holed up in a New York hotel for two years and wrote Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.

The book was a dud upon its release but sold well when the film version, starring Sam Rockwell as Barris, was released.

Asked in the TV Archive interview if he really was an assassin, Barris replied: “I don’t answer that question, ever. I can just tell you that the No. 2 guy in the CIA said that I must have been standing too close to the gong when I said things like that.”

A sequel, Bad Grass Never Dies, came out in 2004.

His daughter, 36, died from an overdose of drugs and alcohol in 1998, and Barris wrote the moving Della: A Memoir of My Daughter, published in 2010.

He is survived by his wife of 16 years, the former Mary Clagett. In lieu of flowers, it is suggested that donations be made in his name to the New York Police Foundation.

Celebrities pay tribute to Chuck Berry

Chuck Berry, the legendary guitarist, singer, songwriter, and rock and roll pioneer, died Saturday in Missouri at age 90.

Many in the music industry who have been influenced by his work and sound — plus those from movies and TV — were quick to pay tribute to Berry via social media. The Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner and Kennedy Center honoree, who TIME magazine named one of the 10 Greatest Electric-Guitar Players in 2009, was hailed by many for his lasting legacy. “Chuck Berry was rock’s greatest practitioner, guitarist, and the greatest pure rock ‘n’ roll writer who ever lived,” tweeted Bruce Springsteen via his official account.

“I am so sad to hear of Chuck Berry’s passing. I want to thank him for all the inspirational music he gave to us,” said Mick Jagger in a statement. “He lit up our teenage years, and blew life into our dreams of being musicians and performers. His lyrics shone above others and threw a strange light on the American dream. Chuck, you were amazing, and your music is engraved inside us forever.”

Added Joan Jett,, “Hail hail rock ‘n’ roll. I’m glad I had a chance to know, love, and work with Chuck Berry during my life and career. Original Pure Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

“Thank you for the poetry, the passion and the potency,” wrote Keith Urban, while former American Idol judge and bassist Randy Jackson, who has played with everyone from Journey to Mariah Carey, extended his thanks to the “greatest rock and roll pioneer of all time.”

“A true pioneer, a brilliant writer, great guitar player, one of the Rock n Roll creators,” said Bob Seger in a statement. “How many people have played his riffs? His ‘Johnny B Goode’ is on the Voyager spacecraft heading for the stars — how many rockers can say that! Chuck had tremendous influence on my work and could not have been a nicer guy. One of the all-time greats.”

Even former President Bill Clinton also released a statement. “Hillary and I loved Chuck Berry for as long as we can remember. The man was inseparable from his music — both were utterly original and distinctly American,” he wrote. “He made our feet move and our hearts more joyful. And along the way he changed our country and the history of popular music. Chuck played at both my inaugurations and at the White House for my 25th Georgetown reunion, and he never slowed down, which is why his legend grew every time he stepped on stage. His life was a treasure and a triumph, and he’ll never be forgotten. Our hearts go out to his family and his countless friends and fans.”

Chuck Berry, the man who ‘started it all,’ dead at 90

Legendary musician Chuck Berry died at his home just west of St. Louis, Missouri on Saturday, according to police. He was 90 years old.

The St. Charles County Police Department confirmed Berry’s death on Facebook, saying police responded to a medical emergency at his home at approximately 12:40 p.m. local time.

Police say Berry was found unresponsive and he was pronounced dead at 1:26 p.m.

His family is requesting privacy, according to the police statement.

“Every riff and solo played by rock guitarists over the last 60 years contains DNA that can be traced right back to Chuck Berry,” Sweden’s esteemed Polar Music Prize Foundation stated emphatically when awarding Berry its rock music prize in 2014.

Berry burst onto the scene in the mid-1950s, cutting songs at Chess Records that are woven into the very fabric of what became known as rock ‘n’ roll: Maybellene, Roll Over Beethoven, Johnny B. Goode, School Days, Rock and Roll Music, Sweet Little Sixteen, and No Particular Place to Go.

Born Charles Edward Anderson Berry on Oct. 18, 1926, to middle-class parents in the black neighbourhood of The Ville in St. Louis, Mo., Berry would grow up to produce an infectious alchemy of blues, hillbilly music and Western swing.

He wrote story songs — often humorous — about working dead end jobs, or hitting the open road with a girl. They were crammed with geographic locations and innovative lyrics about fast cars, teen dances or consumerism.

“I concentrated on this fun and frolic, these novelties,” he told Rolling Stone in 2000. “I wrote about cars because half the people had cars or wanted them. I wrote about love, because everyone wants that.”

In his youth, Berry learned to play piano, saxophone and guitar. His father was deacon of a Baptist church and his mother was a school principal.

As a musician, he cut a dapper, lanky figure onstage with his conk hairstyle, wispy mustache and sideburns.

He thrilled crowds with nimble work on his Gibson guitar and his most famous move — crouching with his guitar and scooting backwards on one heel in what became known as the “duck walk.”

Rock history wouldn’t be the same if he had served the full 10-year term for an armed robbery spree committed with two friends in his late teens.

But he was let out in three, which left him free to bring his guitar to local clubs and meet, in succession, piano player Johnnie Johnson, bluesman Muddy Waters and Chicago label owner Leonard Chess.

They were the three most instrumental in getting Chess to record Maybellene (originally titled Ida Mae) and Wee Wee Hours in the summer of 1955.

The song was a hit for the 29-year-old Berry, and he soon built a star following among white teenagers, helping him escape an eked-out living in jobs that ranged from hairdresser, gas station attendant to assembly line worker.

If rock and deviance were related, Berry did his best to give the critics ammunition throughout his career, beginning with a Mann Act charge of transporting a minor over state lines in 1960. He said he was bringing her to a job in his club as a hat-check girl. Authorities said the 14-year-old was a prostitute.

While locked up for 18 months he wrote hits Nadine and You Never Can Tell, used memorably 30 years later in the Pulp Fiction film dance scene.

By the mid-1960s, his impact was felt mostly through those he influenced. The Beatles recorded Rock and Roll Music and Roll Over Beethoven, The Rolling Stones opted for Carol, and he (eventually) got himself a co-writing credit when Brian Wilson copped his melodies for Surfin’ U.S.A.

Berry fought fiercely for every penny owed, refusing to be a victim of the theft suffered by other early black rock and rhythm and blues artists.

He kept his overhead low, serving as his own manager and relied on pickup bands around the world instead of travelling with his own group. Berry demanded payment up front for his shows, preferably in cash.

The performance fee went up when he hit the top of the pop charts for the first time in 1972 with My Ding-A-Ling, an absurd novelty song he tried gamely to defend years later to Q magazine.

“A lot of people like that song,” he said. “And I LOVED that song because that little, weenie song made my wallet so fat and happy, ha-ha-ha.”

The “cash in the guitar case” ethos, though, often led to problems. With money in hand, more than a few shows were said to be performed half-heartedly or saw the enigmatic Berry leave the stage early.

More seriously, he spent a few months of 1979 in jail for tax evasion.

Berry’s last recording of original material came in 1979, but the mid-1980s saw a flurry of activity, with Keith Richards of the Stones often at the centre.

The Stones’ shaggy-haired rhythm guitarist inducted Berry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, sheepishly admitting, “It’s very difficult for me to talk about Chuck Berry because I lifted every lick he ever played.”

Richards was bandleader for tribute concerts to Berry that year in St. Louis, with Eric Clapton, Linda Ronstadt and Etta James among those performing.

The concert footage was the musical bed for a documentary, Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll in which Berry memorably clashed with Richards on camera, and reportedly on set with director Taylor Hackford.

In 1948, shortly after his release from prison on the armed robbery conviction, Berry married Themetta Suggs and they stayed married for the rest of his life.

But in an autobiography released in 1987, he appeared to revel in recounting various flings on the road. As long as you keep “the home fires burning,” he reasoned.

Berry had businesses and a nice spread in suburban Missouri, but trouble came home in July 1990. Acting on a tip that he was moving kilos worth of cocaine (never found), authorities instead allegedly discovered marijuana, hash and pornographic videotapes.

It was alleged that cameras had been installed in air ducts in the women’s washroom at his restaurant.

Berry said he was being framed by a disgruntled employee, but the end result was that he settled out of court a lawsuit filed on behalf of several women.

He might have forever been a pariah in today’s age of social media approbation, but just under three years later, Jack Lemmon was enthusiastically introducing him fronting an all-star band at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration ball as “the man who started it all.”

The last years of his life were marked by accolades like the Kennedy Center honours in 2000, and a touring schedule that belied his age.

Closer to home, he played several gigs every year at the Duck Room stage of the Blueberry Hill club in St. Louis.

Pop star Lorde stopped by the club in March 2014 and posed for pictures with Berry. She tweeted: “Watched chuck berry and his talented family and band play at the duck room tonight, the stars are in my eyes still.”

In 2016, on his 90th birthday, the musician announced the upcoming release of a new studio album — his first in more than 35 years.

Berry is survived by his wife, three daughters and a son.