Chuck Barris sure had a life. He wrote a #1 pop hit, created many game shows throughout the 60’s and 70’s that introduced us to the kind of TV we looked down on but yet, couldn’t stop watching. And, depending on who you believe, was a government assassin during the Cold War.
Chuck Barris died on Tuesday at 87. Barris started his career writing the hit 60’s song “Palisades Park” and used that to produce game shows. Starting with The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game, Barris took normal people and had them be themselves in order to win a date or a refrigerator, sometimes to hilarious results.
As you can tell, a lot of the answers might sound like it would be no big deal today but it was pretty salacious back in the day. Many blamed/credited Barris for coming up with and popularizing “trash TV” but at the same time, that was what people wanted. And Barris gave people that.
It was around this time where Barris was supposedly contacted by the CIA and he became an assassin during the Cold War. In his book Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Barris would work on his shows by day and became an assassin by night. The CIA has said Barris never worked for them and while the CIA is known for keeping secrets, they’re probably right. Either way, it resulted in a great story and a great movie of the same title that is highly recommended.
Then in the 70’s, Barris got in front of the camera and hosted The Gong Show. This was a variety show where mostly terrible performers would dance or sing or do magic. Pretty much anything and if they weren’t “gonged” by the three celebrity judges, they had a chance to win very specific prizes of $516.32 and $712.05.
While it was meant to be all in good fun and not really meant to discover the next great talent, there are things within The Gong Show that has been incorporated in America’s Got Talent which actually do set out to find talented people throughout the country.
After TV, Barris became an author and wrote such books as Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Chuck Barris knew what the people wanted and instituted many things that’s being done today. Depending on what you think of lowbrow TV, that might be a bad thing but it’s undeniable that Chuck Barris had an eye for what the people wanted, whether they wanted to admit it or not.
