CHUCK BARRIS Biography - Other artists & entretainers

 
 

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CHUCK BARRIS

Name: Charles Hirsch Barris                                                             
Born: June 3, 1929                                                                     
                                                                                         
Chuck Barris (born Charles Hirsch Barris on June 3, 1929) is an American game           
show producer and presenter who was responsible for many of the best-known game         
shows of the 1960s and 1970s. He is also an author.                                     
                                                                                         
Barris was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania . He attended Drexel University,         
where he was a columnist at the student newspaper, The Triangle. He graduated in       
1953.                                                                                   
                                                                                         
Barris got his start in television as a page and later staffer at NBC in New           
York, and eventually worked backstage at the TV music show American Bandstand,         
originally as a standards-and-practices person for ABC. Barris soon became a           
music-industry figure. His most successful venture in this area was the writing         
of Freddy Cannon's hit, "Palisades Park", which reached #3 in mid-1962. In             
addition to this, Barris eventually wrote or co-wrote some of the music that           
appeared on his game shows (see Discography below for more information).[1]             
                                                                                         
Barris was promoted to the daytime programming division at ABC in Los Angeles           
and was put in charge of deciding which game shows ABC would air. Barris               
admitted to his bosses that the producers' pitches of game show concepts were           
worse than Barris' own ideas. They suggested that he quit his ABC programming           
job and become a producer himself.                                                     
                                                                                         
Barris first became successful during 1965 with his first game-show creation,           
The Dating Game on ABC, hosted by Jim Lange, in which three bachelors or               
bachelorettes competed for the favor of a contestant of the opposite gender, who       
was blocked from their view. The contestants' racy banter and its "flower power"       
set was a revolution for the game-show genre. The show would air for 18 years.         
                                                                                         
The next year, for the same network, Barris produced The Newlywed Game,                 
originally created by Nick Nicholson and Roger Muir. The combination of the             
newlywed couples' humorous candor and host Bob Eubanks' exuberant, sly                 
questioning made the show another hit for Barris — and to date, the longest-lasting   
of any developed by his company. It ran for 19 total years on first-run TV, both       
on network and syndicated television.