When announcer Johnny Olson belted out, “Come on down! You’re the next contestant on The Price is Right," I had little interest in the wide-eyed polyestered tourists running down the aisles with their hands over their heads like orangutans, their names on giant price tags pinned to their chests, taking their place on “contestant’s row” and guessing how much a sailboat costs in order to get on stage to win cars and vacations and dinette sets.
No, I tuned in exclusively for Bob Barker, the greatest of all game show hosts. Barker was so great that little kids across the country tuned in whenever possible to watch adults estimate the prices of items at a grocery store, a real-life chore and location that kids would otherwise avoid at all costs. But the monoculture was weird, and there I sat at 11 a.m. all summer long to watch Bob Barker, tanned and elegantly trim in his suits, holding his skinny microphone, letting ecstatic yokels hug him, and sweetly but firmly keeping the games moving.
What was your favorite? I liked 3 Strikes — something about pulling those smooth clackity round numbered discs out of the floppy bag. Or Switcheroo, with the red blocks that Barker would insert into the board. I learned to play poker watching The Price is Right’s Poker Game, in which contestants had to build a hand from the prices of, say, mopeds and cellarette cabinets. Dice Game, too — they had to roll the big red dice over the line in the felt for over/under odds. Or Hole in One, during which the contestant would hold Bob’s mic for him while he (almost always) sank an inspirational putt from the farthest line. Or the Shell Game, in which Barker would manipulate shells the size of construction helmets. Everyone loved Cliffhangers, the show’s most stressful game when the yodeling mountain climber approached step 25, an inch away from tumbling to his death. “Oh, I couldn’t bear to watch!” Barker would say.
Barker was a beacon of patience, even when contestants didn’t spin the big wheel hard enough for it to go all the way around, a firm rule. (The key, of course, was to execute a full to-the-floor power squat during the spin.) I liked the Showcase Showdown least, only because Barker had less interaction with contestants, dominated as the segment was with descriptions of living room sets and four-night stays in London.
Yet I watched on because we all found comfort in Bob Barker—that steady patter, the avuncular smile, the teasing admonishments, the kind laughter, the sorghum-smooth vocal timbre, the graceful improvisational banter, the Jack Benny-style deadpans. He wanted everyone to win and demonstrated grandfatherly sympathy when they didn’t. Nobody threw to commercials like Bob Barker, with a point and an arm swing and a clever segue based on what had just happened on stage when the gal from Flagstaff misjudged the price of a bowling ball on Punch-a-Bunch.
Bob never dweebed out — no corny jokes, no pratfalls, no blaring outcries, no mugging for the camera — which separated him from every host who followed him. I could never get through an episode after he left. And his hair was always a marvel, a shiny lacquered chocolate casque with the most impressive left part in show business.
But then one day in 1987, he suddenly showed up white-headed after swearing off hair dye because the products were tested on animals. “If you don't like it, I can chant an old Sioux Indian chant and it'll be dark again,” he joked. (Barker was a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe as a kid, growing up on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota.)
Yes, Barker loved the barkers. And all other animals. It was another endearing thing about him. He was a vegetarian. He quit hosting Miss USA and Miss Universe in protest of the pageants’ use of fur coats. He paid for one of the ships used to harass Japanese whaling boats, as seen on Whale Wars (it was later renamed the Bob Barker).For many of us, Bob’s daily sign-off about spaying and neutering was the first we’d ever heard of the need for such a thing.
So kids across the country relied on Bob Barker as key company during sick days home from school, but I felt an extra special connection with him as a kid from southwest Missouri. After all, Bob Barker was one of ours. He attended Central High School in Springfield and went on to Drury University where he played basketball for the Panthers. Now and then, a contestant would make it to the stage from Springfield, and Bob would take time to chum it up with a fellow Missourian about Springfield being the “Queen City of the Ozarks” and the county seat of Greene County. I turned red with pride.
Or maybe I was blushing over Barker’s Beauties. Perhaps I was supposed to be learning if the price of a set of hair rollers was higher or lower than $38, but I was busy learning deeper lessons courtesy of Janice Pennington, Dian Parkinson and Holly Hallstrom, the three models who not only glided around the set revealing the correct price of items but also revealed a few other things of even more value to me. The Hee Haw girls, those Midwest farmers’ daughters, always made me feel all right, but I wished they all could be Barker’s California girls.
I recall once in high school, my father calling me to insist that I go out and get a job, complaining that I was lying around all summer watching The Price is Right. I countered by telling him that by watching Bob Barker every day, I was picking up smart shopping tips, which offset the need to go out and earn money. Surprisingly, my dad didn’t buy it. He just didn’t realize that you couldn’t hang a price on Bob Barker. Bob was a winner every time.
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