31 Facts About Chuck Barris

Charles Hirsch Barris was an American game show creator, producer, and host, author, and songwriter.

Chuck Barris made unsubstantiated claims that in parallel to his career on television, he was an active international assassin for the CIA in the 1960s and the 1970s, including in his 1984 memoir Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, which was adapted into a 2002 film of the same name by director George Clooney and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, starring Sam Rockwell as Chuck Barris, and in which his alleged CIA career is mostly portrayed in an absurdist manner.

Chuck Barris was born to a Jewish family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on June 3,1929, the son of Edith and Nathaniel Chuck Barris, a dentist.

Chuck Barris was raised in Lower Merion Township and attended Lower Merion High School.

Chuck Barris's uncle was singer, songwriter and actor Harry Barris.

Chuck Barris graduated in 1953 from Drexel University where he was a columnist for the student newspaper, The Triangle.

Chuck Barris got his start in television as a page and later was part of the staff at NBC in New York City.

Chuck Barris produced pop music for records and television, and wrote "Palisades Park," which was recorded by Freddy Cannon and peaked at No 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks to become the biggest hit of Cannon's career.

Chuck Barris wrote or co-wrote some of the music that appeared on his game shows.

Chuck Barris was promoted to the daytime programming division at ABC in Los Angeles and was responsible for determining which game shows the network would air.

In 1966, Barris launched The Newlywed Game, originally created by Nick Nicholson and E Roger Muir, for ABC.

Chuck Barris created several other short-lived game shows for ABC in the 1960s and for syndication in the 1970s, all of which revolved around a common theme: the game play normally derived its interest from the excitement, vulnerability, embarrassment, or anger of the contestants or participants in the game.

Chuck Barris made several attempts through the years at non-game formats, such as ABC's Operation: Entertainment, a variety show staged at military bases akin to USO shows; a CBS revival of Your Hit Parade; and The Bobby Vinton Show, a Canada-based syndicated variety show for singer Bobby Vinton.

Somewhat shy, Chuck Barris disliked appearing on camera, though he once dashed onto the set of The New Treasure Hunt to throw a pie at emcee Geoff Edwards.

Barbour was dropped as host at the last minute; to save the show, Chuck Barris took the advice of an NBC executive who suggested that he should host it himself.

Chuck Barris joined in with the eccentricity of the format, using unusual props, dressing in colorful and somewhat unusual clothing and wearing strange hats, pulled down and nearly covering his eyes.

Chuck Barris became yet another performer of the show, and for many viewers, a cult hero.

One of its most infamous incidents came on the NBC version in 1978, when Chuck Barris presented an onstage act consisting of two teenage girls slowly and suggestively sucking popsicles.

In 1980, Chuck Barris directed and starred in The Gong Show Movie, which performed so poorly both critically and financially, it was pulled from theaters shortly after release.

Chuck Barris continued strongly until the mid-1970s, when ABC canceled the Dating and Newlywed games.

Chuck Barris hosted a prime-time variety hour for NBC from February to April 1978 called The Chuck Barris Rah-Rah Show, essentially a non-competitive knock-off of Gong.

Unlike with the 1970s version of Treasure Hunt, Chuck Barris did not have direct involvement with the production of the show itself.

In 1987, Chuck Barris sold his shares of Chuck Barris Industriesto Burt Sugarman and returned to France, no longer directly involved in his company.

On September 7,1989, Chuck Barris Industries was renamed the Guber-Peters Entertainment Company.

In 2010, Chuck Barris published Della: A Memoir of My Daughter, about the death of his only child, who died in 1998 after a long struggle with drug addiction.

In 1984, Chuck Barris wrote an autobiography, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.

Chuck Barris wrote a sequel to Confessions of a Dangerous Mind in 2004 called Bad Grass Never Dies.

The CIA denied Chuck Barris ever worked for them in any capacity.

Chuck Barris died on March 21,2017, of natural causes at the age of 87 at his home in Palisades, New York, where he lived with Clagett.

Chuck Barris composed music which he released on the following 45 rpm records.

Songs with an asterisk are songs not composed by Chuck Barris, yet featured on the recordings:.