Priceless Memories

by Bob Barker; Digby Diehl

  My mother couldn’t believe it. She was baffled that the pageant would rather lose me as a host than drop fur coats as a prize. Dear old mom. I’m glad that I helped raise awareness of animal cruelty in the production of fur products, and I’m glad that fur fashion has declined significantly in this country and around the world.

  Of course, I continued to be active and vocal about animal rights issues long after those beauty pageant days. But I think that those two years were crucial moments in terms of raising public awareness. I realized that resigning from the pageants would be a sacrifice, but I really had no choice. The financial loss in no way compares to the importance of the issue with me.

  The year I resigned, I was asked by protest groups to picket outside the pageant, but I did not want to do that. What concerned me was the possibility that I would be perceived as vindictive—involved in a feud with the officials of the pageant, which simply was not true. I did not want something I saw as a positive to come off as a negative.

  • • •

  In November of 1988, I led the first of two protest marches down Fifth Avenue in New York of about two thousand animal rights activists. Nancy Burnet, of United Activists for Animal Rights, marched right there beside me. The marches were held on Fur Free Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving, which is the traditional kickoff day for holiday shopping. (Now they are held on Fridays near the Thanksgiving holiday.)

  These marches and protests took place all across the country, from New York to Beverly Hills, and were huge in drawing attention to fur boycotts. Our rallies were successful beyond our wildest expectations. The nationwide protests got tremendous media attention.

  The rallies I attended were organized by Trans-Species Unlimited, and its director Steve Siegel called me “the most vocal spokesman for the antifur movement in the world.” Steve may have exaggerated a bit, but I liked it. There were signs that read “Shame,” “Vanity,” “Fur Is Murder,” and “If You Don’t Buy Them, They Won’t Kill Them.”

  The protesters picketed in front of department stores and heckled customers wearing fur coats. There were some heated exchanges. By 1989, there were rallies and protests in over ninety cities across the country on Fur Free Friday. There were coffins filled with furs, there were coats splashed with red paint to symbolize blood, and there were demonstrations in front of department stores from Boston to Denver and from New York and Pennsylvania to Orange County, California. People wore simulated leg traps. The people behind this cause were and are a very passionate group. They carried tape recorders broadcasting the cries of wounded animals. In Europe, I recall, activists spit on people who wore fur coats. It was a turning point, no question.

  Over 120 different animal rights groups participated in the marches around the country, and while we focused on fur, the marches and demonstrations were drawing attention to animal cruelty on many levels, including the clubbing of seals, the mistreatment of animals in captivity, and the horrors conducted in the name of medical research. The antifur movement is dear to my heart, but our protests had a ripple effect across all animal rights issues.

  As the movement grew and I participated in the marches, I received stacks of mail. We were making a difference. Fur sales dropped. People stopped buying them. We wanted to make people feel embarrassed and humiliated to be seen wearing fur, and we succeeded.

  My association with the beauty pageants was a positive one. Though it came to an end because of my concern for animals, that does not mean I did not love the experience with the pageants. I traveled all over the world. I worked with wonderfully dedicated professionals, and beautiful young ladies from many countries of the world. It was a pleasure and an honor to be involved with Miss USA and Miss Universe for so many years.

  12

  Touching Bases from Happy Gilmore to the Rose Parade

  I spent more than fifty years on television, but I appeared in only one film and that was Happy Gilmore. It was released in 1996, and I appear in the movie for only a few minutes, but that brief appearance proved to be hugely popular, especially with young men. I did The Price Is Right for more than ten years after that movie, and to the last day, I never taped a show that someone in the audience did not bring up Happy Gilmore and my role in the picture. I had no idea how popular that film—and that fight—would become.

  Happy Gilmore was a comedy starring Adam Sandler. He was not only the star of the picture, he was also a writer and one of the producers. He wrote that bit in the movie for me, without ever telling me or talking with me about it. He just wrote it. In the scene, Adam Sandler’s character, Happy Gilmore, gets into a fight with me on a golf course. It is all played for laughs as he wrote it. When Adam had a finished script, he sent it to my public relations representative, Henri Bollinger, and asked if I would do it.

  I read the script, and when I discovered that I won the fight, I knew I wanted to do it. I had studied karate for eight years with Chuck Norris before he became a movie star. For eight years, Chuck had beaten me up twice a week, and at long last I had an opportunity to win a fight. I didn’t wait for opportunity to knock twice. I said, “Yes!”

  We went up to Canada to shoot the movie on a golf course outside of Vancouver. It rained at least part of every day, and there I was, out there in the wet grass, wrestling with Adam. The weather was so wet that we had to shoot whenever we could. I remember thinking: “Here I am, seventy-three years old, rolling around in the wet grass with this young man, and I am bound to catch pneumonia.” But I didn’t even catch a cold. We shot the scene in about three days. I thought it was fun, a thoroughly enjoyable experience, but I had no idea it would gain cult status with a huge number of moviegoers.

  Dennis Dugan, the director, said they had a stuntman who would do as much of the fighting as I thought necessary. I didn’t say so to Dennis, but I thought: “Oh, no. I’ve come all the way up here to Canada to win a fight. Not to watch a stuntman win it.” To Dennis, I said, “I know how to fight. I’ll do it myself.” Dennis said OK, but he looked genuinely surprised—after all, I was seventy-three years old.

  Adam did all his fighting, too. When I knocked him into that pond, it was Adam himself who went in. The only time we used stuntmen was for the long roll down the hill, and one of the stuntmen hurt his back doing it. Frequently people, particularly young men, ask me if I could beat up Adam Sandler in real life. I say, “Are you kidding? Adam Sandler couldn’t whip Regis Philbin.” Interestingly, I’ve tried Pat Sajak and Alex Trebek in that line, but Regis always gets the biggest laugh. Why?

  I also went to the premiere with Adam Sandler. We pulled up to the theater at Universal Studios in a golf cart, which was appropriate because our brawl occurred on a golf course. It was at the premiere that I got the first inkling of what the public’s reaction to our fight would be. After the screening, there was a big party at Universal, and people were pounding me on the back, congratulating me, and telling me how much they enjoyed seeing me punch out Adam.

  If you saw Happy Gilmore, you will recall that at one stage in the fight, Adam clobbers me and then says, “The price is wrong, bitch.” At the end of the fight, I finish off Adam and walk away saying, “Now you’ve had enough.” Then I pause and turn to say: “Bitch.” That line became the line so far as our The Price Is Right audiences were concerned.

  After the movie was released, I never taped a show that someone in the audience didn’t bring up Happy Gilmore. And, within minutes, members of the audience were asking me to do the line. Of course, I refused. I told them that line was acting of the highest order. I don’t talk that way in real life—which made the audience only more demanding. “Do the line! Do the line!” they shouted from every corner of the studio. Sometimes the entire audience would begin chanting: “Do the line.”

  I would finally say, “Well, I am going to ask our associate producer Kathy Greco.” Kathy would always be sitting at a desk near the set, and I would tell them: “If she says I can say the line, then I will say it. But if she says no, then I can’t say i
t.”

  And so they would start yelling at her, “Come on, Kathy. Come on, Kathy!”

  “Now leave her alone,” I would say, but they would yell and scream and plead with her.

  Finally, I would say, “Kathy, these people want me to say, ‘Now you’ve had enough…. Bitch,’ but I don’t think I should.”

  And the audience would explode in laughter and screaming.

  Or I would get a signal from the stage manager, who would tell me we had thirty seconds before we went on the air, and the audience would be begging me to say the phrase. I would say, “No, I am sorry, we do not have enough time. I do not have the time to say it.”

  Then I would get another signal from the stage manager, ten seconds, nine seconds, and at the last moment right before we went on, I would say, “I don’t have enough time to say, ‘Now you’ve had enough…. Bitch.’ ”

  And the audience would roar with laughter as we went on air.

  Adam Sandler is a talented man, and he was a pleasure to work with on the film. Later on, in 2007 when CBS did a prime-time special for my fiftieth anniversary on television, he came on the show and we had a lot of fun together. We showed a clip from Happy Gilmore, and he wrote a poem about me that was hilarious. He read the poem on the show, and it got great laughs.

  Shortly after my retirement, I was inducted into the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame committee requested that we provide a tape, a sort of This Is Your Life, Bob Barker for the occasion, and Adam Sandler took time from what I know to be a very busy schedule to narrate the tape.

  Adam’s career has been a thing to behold since Happy Gilmore. But if his kindnesses to me are any indication, he remains the same sincere, thoughtful young man I had the pleasure of working with in Canada more than ten years ago.

  • • •

  Over the years, I made other television appearances besides Truth and Price. Nothing dramatic, usually as myself, but I did log quite a few appearances on a variety of talk shows, game shows, and a few sitcoms. I did an episode of Bonanza in 1960. I remember I stole a girl from Little Joe. Not many men can make that claim!

  Dorothy Jo and I appeared together on a few game shows that had married couples on them. We did Tattletales several times. That was a show where wives and husbands would predict their spouses’ reactions to various questions. They kept inviting us back because they thought Dorothy Jo was hilarious. I resented it. Tattletales was hosted by Bert Convy, a nice man who died too young.

  I was also on Match Game quite a bit—there were tons of laughs on that show. Richard Dawson was a panelist with whom I was so impressed that later on I hired him as the host of a local television show I produced called Lucky Pair. I tried to sell it in syndication, but I was never able to cut it. It was a good show, too, based on an idea of my mother’s.

  Lucky Pair was a board game played by two contestants. The contestant who completed the most pairs won the game. To complete a pair you had to match two squares on the board. A contestant chose a number on the board, the square turned around, and perhaps it might reveal “1492.” The contestant would say, “Columbus discovered America,” and complete a pair. But suppose a square revealed “Civil War general” and the contestant said, “Robert E. Lee,” and the square turned back into place. That was not the answer we were looking for—the pair was not completed.

  Now, the contestant should try to remember the number of the “Civil War general” square in case he discovers the square that reads “General James Longstreet.” Think about it for a moment. Lucky Pair offered endless possibilities that were a lot of fun.

  Geoff Edwards was the first host of Lucky Pair. We auditioned a dozen hosts for the job, and I told the folks at CBS that Geoff was the man. But there were several doubters. I talked them into giving Geoff a chance, and in a couple of weeks, everyone wanted to take credit for hiring him. He was that good.

  He left Lucky Pair when he got an opportunity to do a network show with his wife. That’s when we hired Richard Dawson. I’ve hired two hosts, Geoff and Richard. I’d say I’m batting a thousand.

  • • •

  In the 1970s, I was a frequent guest on The Dinah Shore Show. Dinah taped right down the hall from Price for years. When a guest dropped out, they called me. As a result, I was on her show more than any other guest. They even talked with me about cohosting with Dinah, but Sol, my agent, nixed that. He thought I’d be spreading myself too thin.

  Craig Ferguson, the late-night talk show host at CBS, has had me on his show a couple of times. He keeps telling his audience that I am a vampire. I don’t know how he found out.

  I’ve been on The Late Show with David Letterman. I’ve done Conan O’Brien’s show. I did Rosie O’Donnell’s show. Every time I went to New York, I was on her show. We had a lot of fun. She always said when I retired, she wanted to replace me, and when I retired, she did talk to the producers. But I think she wanted to move the show to New York. That was not going to happen.

  I did the Ellen DeGeneres Show. She is a charming host. I received the Emmy for Best Host the year that I retired, and Ellen followed me to the podium. She said she intended to add more controversy to her own show, and she was going to start that very night by saying, “I think Bob Barker is a quitter.”

  • • •

  In 1996, I did a couple of episodes of a sitcom called Something So Right, which starred Mel Harris. I played her father, and Shirley Jones played her mother. Shirley and I were separated but still involved. It was a funny show.

  Not only had I never been in a sitcom, but in all honesty, I had not watched sitcoms enough to really get the feel of them. So here I was, cast in Something So Right, and worried that I was about to do something so wrong. We started rehearsals, and it did not take Shirley Jones long to realize that I did not know what I was doing. But she helped me tremendously. Between takes and segment rehearsals, she and I would sit down and she would go over my lines with me. She taught me that in sitcoms, everything moves fast. The speech is fast. You say a line. I say a line. He says a line, and boom, boom, boom. I just tried to keep up to speed with the rest of the cast.

  But it went well, and they had me back. I did two of those shows with Shirley, and she was such a gracious lady. I will always be very grateful to her. She was my dialogue coach, and to have an Academy Award winner as your dialogue coach is the way to go. The very talented producers, Judd Pillot and John Peaslee, were a joy to work with, too.

  • • •

  Having Shirley Jones as my dialogue coach was like having Chuck Norris as my karate instructor, which incidentally, is what I had also. Chuck was a guest on Truth or Consequences. He was a karate champion, and he came on and did a demonstration on the show. Not only had I never done karate, I had never seen it. But I was so impressed by Chuck that I started taking lessons. Chuck and I became friends, and I introduced him to a fellow I knew at Metromedia television, hoping to get him started with a television show. It did not work out, but we continued to be friends, and of course he went on to huge success.

  After Chuck’s first appearance on the show, he came back and did another demonstration. This time I chose three contestants, three women out of the audience, and told them they were going to learn some karate from Chuck Norris. It was a joke on the whole audience. I chose young women who looked fit. We had a mat, and Chuck said, “OK, lady number one, come over here and I’ll show you how to throw a punch.” He did that and then maybe a kick or two, and then he showed her how to throw him down. Then lady number two went through these basic things, and he showed her how to defend herself. Now when he starts with lady number three—she kicks him, hits him, and throws him up over her shoulder. He’s flopping all over the place, and she’s really in command. The audience was screaming. Lady number three was actually Chuck’s wife. We had planted her in the audience, and she knew some karate. It was a hilarious spot to see this woman pummeling the karate champion.

  It was the beginning of a lifetime friendsh
ip with Chuck Norris. He became my first karate teacher. He used to come over to my house and give me lessons. We worked out on the lawn at first, but later on I stopped putting my car in the garage, and I had the garage floor all padded and made it a karate studio. I had a big mirror put in so I could see my chops and kicks, and he and I worked together for eight years.

  Chuck taught what might be described as the Chuck Norris version of the Tang Soo Do karate style. Tang Soo Do is basically foot fighting, but Chuck taught hand techniques aplenty. I became a red belt, which is just below black belt. Chuck always wanted to test me for black belt, but I declined. I have so much respect for the black belt rank that I would rather be a pretty good red belt than a marginal black belt.

  When Chuck’s movie career took off, I started studying with Pat Johnson, who was a fighter on one of Chuck’s karate teams and a stuntman. He and I worked together for several years. I started late in life, but I thoroughly enjoyed karate. You have to be stretched out, really loose. Chuck got me into a regular exercise schedule, and that was so important. I was in karate for twenty-one years, and I still exercise regularly, thanks to my friends Chuck and Pat.

  That reminds me of a story regarding Chuck Norris and his brother, Aaron. It involved my mother, too. Chuck was over at my house, and we were sparring. He kicked me in the side. It hurt, and it continued to hurt. A few days later his brother, Aaron, came over. We were sparring, and he punched me in the other side with his fist. That hurt, too, and continued to hurt. Finally, I went to the doctor. I told him I was struck here and here and I was still hurting. After he looked at some X-rays the doctor said, “I’m not surprised you are still hurting. You have two cracked ribs here, and another two cracked ribs here, and I would expect both places to hurt.”