Chuck Barris — Creator | Biography, Movies & Career

Biography

Charles Hirsch Barris (June 3, 1929 – March 21, 2017) was an American game show creator, producer, and host. He was best known for hosting The Gong Show and creating The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game. He was also a songwriter who wrote "Palisades Park", recorded by Freddy Cannon and also recorded by Ramones. He also wrote or co-wrote some of the music that appeared on his game shows. He wrote an autobiography titled Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, which was made into the film of the same title starring Sam Rockwell and directed by George Clooney.

He formed his production company, Chuck Barris Productions, on June 14, 1965. His first success came in 1965 with The Dating Game, which aired on ABC. The show ran until 1980 and was twice revived, later in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1966, he began The Newlywed Game, originally created by Nick Nicholson and E. Roger Muir, also for ABC. The show is the longest lasting of any developed by his company, broadcast until 1985, for a total of 19 full years on both "first run" network TV and syndication.

He became a public figure in 1976 when he produced and served as the host of the talent show spoof The Gong Show, which he packaged in partnership with TV producer Chris Bearde. It ran only two seasons on NBC (1976–78) and four in syndication (1976–80). It has had four subsequent revivals, one under Barris' title (with Don Bleu) in 1988–1989, one on The Game Show Network in 2000 called Extreme Gong and another with current format owner Sony Pictures Television (with Dave Attell) in 2008. A fourth version, produced by Will Arnett and hosted by fictional British celebrity "Tommy Maitland" (Mike Myers), aired on ABC in 2017.

In 1980, he starred in and directed The Gong Show Movie. The film was a major failure at the box office.

In 1984, he wrote an autobiography, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. In the book, he states that he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as an assassin in the 1960s and 1970s in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. A 2002 feature film version depicts Barris killing 33 people. He wrote a sequel to the autobiography in 2004 called Bad Grass Never Dies. The CIA denied Barris ever worked for them in any capacity. After the release of the movie, CIA spokesman Paul Nowack said Barris' assertions that he worked for the CIA “[are] ridiculous. It's absolutely not true". In an interview on NBC's Today Show in 1984, Barris admitted to having made the story up.

His first wife was Lyn Levy, the niece of one of the founders of CBS. Their marriage lasted from 1957 to 1976, ending in divorce. They had a daughter, Della, who frequently appeared on The Gong Show, usually introducing her father. Della died of an alcohol and cocaine overdose in 1998 at the age of 36. At the time of her death, she was HIV positive. He published Della: A Memoir of My Daughter in 2010 about the death of his only child and her struggle with drug addiction.

In 1980, he married Robin Altman, 23 years his junior, and they divorced in 1999. The following year, he married Mary Clagett. He was diagnosed with lung cancer in the 1990s. After undergoing surgery to remove part of his lung, he contracted an infection and spent a month in intensive care. He died on March 21, 2017, of natural causes at the age of 87 at home in Palisades, NY, where he lived with his wife, Mary.

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