Bob Barker, whose warmth and wit as host of “The Price Is Right” for nearly four decades lured legions of confused Americans to a stage promising luxury vacations and new cars, died Saturday at his home in the Hollywood Hills section of Los Angeles. He is 99.
His death was announced by a spokesman, Roger Neal.
Mr. Barker, also a longtime and well-known advocate for animal rights, was a fixture of daytime television for half a century — first as host of “Truth or Consequences,” from 1956 to 1974, and, most famously, beginning in 1972, with “The Price Is Right,” the longest-running game show on American television.
He began his 35-year tenure as host of “The New Price Is Right,” as it was then known, when it made its debut on CBS as a revamped and jazzed-up version of the original “The Price Is Right, ” that was on the air from 1956 to 1965. (“New” was soon dropped from the name.) He also hosted a weekly syndicated evening version from 1977 until it was canceled in 1980.
Nearly a decade before he retired in 2007, Mr. Barker estimated that during his tenure, more than 40,000 participants responded to the announcer’s familiar call to “get down!” and collected about $200 million in small and large prizes, from beach towels to Buicks, by guessing the prices of various items.
Mr. won Barker 14 Daytime Emmy Awards as host of “The Price Is Right” and four more as an executive producer (as well as a lifetime achievement Emmy in 1999). He once said that the show lasted as long as it did because “all our games are based on prices, and everyone can recognize that.” He added, however, that he personally did not know the price of anything, and that if he ever became a participant in such a show he would be “a complete failure.”
Mr. is known Barker for his longtime dedication to the cause of animal rights. He resigned as master of ceremonies for the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants in 1988 because they gave away fur coats as prizes. He also protested the mistreatment of animals by their trainers on the sets of various films and television shows. He ends each episode of “The Price Is Right” by saying: “Help control the pet population. Have your pet spayed or neutered.”
Robert William Barker was born on December 12, 1923, in Darrington, Wash. His father, Byron, was a power line foreman who in 1929 died of complications from injuries he had sustained in a fall from a pole several years earlier. Shortly thereafter, his mother, Matilda (Tarleton) Barker, taught in Mission, SD, on the Rosebud Indian Reservation.
“Cowboys tied their horses to the rails,” Mr. Barker in those years. “It’s like I grew up in the Old West.”
When Mr. was 13 years old Barker, his mother married Louis Valandra, a tire salesman, and they moved to Springfield, Mo. He received a basketball scholarship to Drury College in Springfield but dropped out to enlist as a Naval Aviation cadet when World War II broke out.
He was waiting for a combat assignment when the war ended, and he was discharged as a lieutenant junior grade. He returned to Drury, majored in economics and graduated summa cum laude in 1947.
Even before he got his degree, Mr. Barker’s first job was in radio, at KTTS in Springfield, where he was a disc jockey, a news writer, a sportscaster and a producer. After college, he worked at WWPG in Palm Beach, Fla., and KWIK in Burbank, Calif.
In 1945, he married Dorothy Jo Gideon, his high school sweetheart, who once explained the secret of their marriage this way: “I love Bob Barker. And Bob Barker loved Bob Barker.” She died in 1981, and Mr. Barker never remarried.
Mr. left Barker is his half-brother, Kent Valandra. The longtime friend of Mr. Barker Nancy Burnet, a fellow animal rights activist who oversees her care — and about whom she wrote in her autobiography, “Our relationship continued for 25 years, despite everything. Most are in.” – is an executor of his estate.
The big break of Mr. Barker arrived in 1956 when producer Ralph Edwards heard him at KNX, a Los Angeles radio station, and asked him to audition for “Truth or Consequences,” a long-running game show (it began on the radio in 1940 ) where contestants were required to perform wild stunts. He got the job, and he and Mr. Edwards became lifelong friends.
Mr. Barker was still host of “Truth or Consequences” when he was offered “The Price Is Right” in 1972, and for two years those jobs overlapped. For a long time after that he was one of the busiest people on television, with duties that also included hosting the Rose Bowl parade and the Pillsbury Bake-Off throughout much of the 1970s and ’80s.
He also occasionally appears in films, almost always as a comically exaggerated version of himself. His most memorable appearance was in the 1996 comedy “Happy Gilmore,” in which he gleefully sparred with the title character, a boorish hockey player turned golfer played by Adam Sandler.
For many viewers, “The Price Is Right” is, as one critic put it, among television’s last “islands of goodness.” That image was challenged in 1994 when Dian Parkinson, who had been a model in the show for nearly 20 years — one of the so-called Barker’s Beauties, whose main role was to present the prizes — sued Mr. Barker for sexual harassment.
Ms. Parkinson, who left the show last year, said she had sex with Mr. Barker because he thought he would lose his job if he didn’t. In response, Mr. Barker admitted that he and Ms. Parkinson had been in a relationship for several years, starting in 1989, but insisted it was consensual.
“He told me I was always so tight it was time for me to have some hanky-panky in my life,” he said, “and he volunteered at hanky-panky.” Ms. withdrew Parkinson filed suit in 1995 because, he said, he lacked the emotional stamina and money to pursue it.
Mr. announced Barker retired in October 2006. “I’ll be 83 on December 12,” he said at the time, “and I decided to retire while I’m young.”
His final episode as host of “The Price Is Right” was taped on June 6, 2007, and aired twice on June 15: first in its regular daytime slot and again in prime time.
After an extensive search, comedian Drew Carey was selected as Mr. Barker in July 2007. In an interview with The Times, Mr. Carey is Mr. Barker was a “legend” and was praised for the “empathy” he showed to the contestants.
“He wants them to win. You can hug him,” said Mr. Carey. “He went to your grandfather from being your father and your uncle.”
Mr. returned. Barker on the show as a guest in 2009 to promote his autobiography, “Priceless Memories,” and again in 2013, to celebrate his 90th birthday, and 2015, as an unannounced guest host, an April Fool’s Day gag . He promised to come back when he was 100.
“People ask me, ‘What do you miss most about “The Price is Right”?’ And I say, ‘The money,’” said Mr. Barker in a 2013 interview with Parade magazine. “But that’s not entirely true. I miss people too.”
Richard Severo, a Times reporter from 1968 to 2006, died in June. Peter Keepnews and Chris Cameron contributed reporting.
