Priceless Memories Read online

  PRICELESS MEMORIES

  BOB BARKER

  WITH DIGBY DIEHL

  New York Boston Nashville

  Begin Reading

  Table of Contents

  Photo Credits

  Photo Insert

  Copyright Page

  For my wife, Dorothy Jo,

  and my mother, both of whom

  loved me and supported me

  all the days of their lives

  PREFACE

  A Phone Call from Ralph Edwards

  If you are fifty years old or younger, I have been on national television your entire life, and I would like to begin this book by telling you how I got there. Hollywood mythology is full of overnight success stories. The urban legend of the discovery of Lana Turner in Schwab’s Drugstore is the best-known example, but the entertainment business doesn’t really work that way. Before producers are ready to risk a lot of money on you, they demand proof of your ability, your experience, and your professionalism.

  In other words, it takes many years of hard work to become an overnight success. On the other hand, I received one unforgettable phone call from Ralph Edwards that truly made possible everything else that happened to me in a long and fortunate life.

  • • •

  My overnight success began in 1956, nearly seven years after my wife, Dorothy Jo, and I had moved to Hollywood in pursuit of “audience participation host” opportunities for me. At the time, I was doing a weekly radio program on the local CBS station for Southern California Edison. It was called The Bob Barker Show. I named it myself. Dorothy Jo produced the show. Southern California Edison was (and is) the electric power company for almost all of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. At the time, Edison maintained what they called Electric Living Centers all over their service area. Essentially, the centers were appliance store showrooms with theater seating—and a microphone.

  On the stage were all sorts of ranges, refrigerators, freezers, washers, dryers—anything and everything that used electricity. These were the gleaming modern furnishings of the dream kitchen of the mid-1950s, and the Edison centers offered regular demos in the hope that people would go out and buy new electric appliances for their homes. Edison didn’t necessarily care whether you bought Westinghouse or Hotpoint or Maytag, as long as it plugged in. My show featured homemakers who attended these demonstrations and wanted to be on the radio. Dorothy Jo and I would visit two different cities a day, doing a show in each city. We logged a lot of miles traveling out to the rapidly growing suburbs of Los Angeles, including Pomona, San Bernardino, Oxnard, and Ventura—sometimes as far away as Lancaster—to visit these Edison Electric Living Centers and broadcast on KNX radio.

  One day shortly after Thanksgiving in 1956, Ralph Edwards was driving his daughters—who were little girls in those days—to an ice-skating lesson. To say that it was my good fortune that he turned on his car radio, and tuned in to The Bob Barker Show, is an understatement.

  Ralph Edwards was already a broadcasting legend. Beginning as a radio announcer, he went on to become the producer of This Is Your Life and a long list of other shows, including, of course, Truth or Consequences. Truth or Consequences was Ralph’s own creation and was based on a game he played on the family farm as a kid.

  I had been a big fan of Ralph Edwards. I used to listen to him when he hosted Truth or Consequences on the radio, which he began doing in 1940. He painted such a vivid picture of what was happening that you didn’t have to see it, describing things with such flair and detail that you enjoyed every moment of it.

  In 1950, they brought Truth or Consequences to television, and Ralph hosted that version as well until 1954, when Jack “Queen for a Day” Bailey took over. When we came to California, Dorothy Jo and I used to go to watch Truth or Consequences live. Ralph built and maintained a tremendous level of excitement. He was almost frenetic in the way he bounded around the stage on Truth—not at all as he appeared on This Is Your Life.

  Occasionally, after playing a joke on a contestant, Ralph would look into the camera and say to the viewers: “Aren’t we devils?” People all over the country picked up on it and were saying, “Aren’t we devils?” It was the same thing that was to happen with “Come on down” a couple of decades later.

  By late 1956, Dorothy Jo and I had a small advertising agency on the Sunset Strip from which we serviced advertisers for The Bob Barker Show. And when I say “small,” I really mean small. Dorothy Jo and I were it, which meant that when I was out meeting with a client, she was the only one in the office.

  “Ralph Edwards called you,” she said casually as I walked in the door.

  This was nothing to be casual about. “You mean the famous Ralph Edwards?” I asked.

  “I guess so,” Dorothy Jo replied. “They said ‘Ralph Edwards Productions.’ ”

  I started getting excited. “What did he want?” I asked.

  “The lady who called said he wants to talk to you.”

  “Give me that number!”

  I sat down immediately and dialed the number.

  Ralph came on the line quickly. He said, “I’m calling you because I have a show called Truth or Consequences that’s going back on TV as a daytime program. I’d like to talk with you about the possibility of you hosting it.”

  I could hardly believe my ears, but I managed to say, “Yes, sir.”

  “I was wondering when it would be convenient for you to see me,” Ralph said.

  I knew that Ralph Edwards Productions was located on Hollywood Boulevard at the corner of Cherokee. I said, “I’ll be right over. I can be in your office in fifteen minutes.” Perhaps a bit too eager, I started to get up and head for the door—even before I hung up the phone. The cord pulled me up short.

  With a smile in his voice, Ralph assured me that it wouldn’t be necessary to be there in fifteen minutes. “Bob,” he said, “how about tomorrow or the next day?”

  I promptly said, “Let’s make it tomorrow.”

  Ralph chuckled as we set up the time for our meeting.

  Ralph Edwards Productions had what looked to me like a complete floor, offices in every direction. I told a young lady at a desk near the elevator that I was Bob Barker and that I had an appointment with Mr. Edwards. She asked me, “Ralph or Paul Edwards?”

  “Ralph Edwards,” I answered.

  She picked up a phone, spoke softly for a moment, and said, “Mr. Edwards is expecting you, Mr. Barker. His office is at the end of this hall.” She gestured down a long hall.

  As I walked down the hall, it seemed as if there were one, two, or sometimes three people busily working away in offices on both sides of the hall.

  I thought, “This is one busy place.” In the years to come, I learned how right I was.

  When I reached Ralph’s office, the door was standing open and he was seated at his desk, writing. As I came through the door, he quickly rose and stepped around his huge desk, extending his hand. He said, “Young man, I like the way you do your radio show.” As we shook hands, he closed his office door behind me, indicated a chair for me near his desk, and sat down in his own chair.

  Of course, Ralph’s opening remark that he liked my work on radio did wonders to put me at ease, which was probably exactly what it was intended to do.

  Ralph looked even younger—he was forty-two—than he had looked when Dorothy Jo and I had attended his show.

  He was wearing a light brown, perfectly fitted single-breasted suit; a white shirt; and a dark brown and yellow tie. I thought he looked every inch the television star and producer that, indeed, he was. His office was spacious and beautifully furnished in brown and beige.

  It was just the two of us as Ralph and I sat and talked. He asked some questions about my bac
kground and about my experience doing audience participation shows. Apparently, my years of interviewing regular folks in the Edison Electric Living Centers struck him as good preparation for Truth or Consequences.

  “What did you do before you came to California?” Ralph asked. I told him how I had gotten my start at KTTS in Springfield, Missouri, while I was in college.

  “That’s exactly how I started in radio when I was at the University of California at Berkeley,” Ralph said, and I got the impression that he was pleased we had that in common.

  Ralph wanted to know if I was married, and I told him that I had married my high school sweetheart and that my wife produced my radio shows.

  “Splendid,” he said. “I think we may be onto something here. I’ll be in touch.”

  Incidentally, Paul Edwards was Ralph’s older brother. I ended up doing Truth or Consequences for Ralph for eighteen years, and not once did Ralph and I argue about money. Paul always handled that.

  A few days after my first meeting with Ralph, he called me and said, “I’d like to have you come in and meet some of the people you’d be working with if you did Truth or Consequences.” I went back and had a pleasant meeting with them. At the end of the meeting, Ralph said, “I’ll be in touch.”

  When I left I had no idea whether they liked me or not, but shortly thereafter Ralph called and invited me to another meeting. He wanted me to meet some of his representatives and a few others. At that time, MCA had both a talent and a production arm, and they represented Ralph. This time when I got there, I was looking at a roomful of people. Long before the movie Men in Black, MCA agents were often described by journalists and industry pundits as “the men in the black suits.” When I arrived, I found that their nickname was richly deserved. All three of the men from MCA were clad in practically identical black suits. Also present were executives from NBC, as well as a couple of people from Ralph’s production company. And, of course, Ralph himself. We sat and talked some more. At the end of the meeting, Ralph gave me a cheery smile and, like the previous meetings, said, “I’ll be in touch.”

  By this time I was beginning to think, “Barker, can you tolerate many more of these meetings? Can you last through this?” In reality, only a short time had passed since our initial conversation, but the days between meetings seemed to stretch on interminably. I never knew when I’d hear from him again, or if I would hear from him again.

  It was right around my birthday, December 12, when he finally called once more. Although the show was to be televised on NBC, Ralph, who had connections with all of the networks, asked me to come down to what is still the oldest CBS television station in the country, on Sunset Boulevard in what is known as Gower Gulch. At the time, it was the nerve center for all of CBS—nationally, locally, and everything else, I guess.

  Ralph wanted me to do an audition before a live studio audience. We went over the script, and he told me what he wanted me to do. The show was a segment of Truth or Consequences. “Would you like to have somebody do the warm-up for you?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, “I want to do it myself.”

  “Bob, would you like to have someone select your contestants?”

  “Thanks, Ralph, but no,” I responded. “I want to do that, too.”

  After a warm introduction by a CBS staff announcer, I went onstage. As I went out into the studio audience to select my contestants, I tried not to look at Dorothy Jo. She was seated in the audience and leading the applause, laughing at every word I said, and turning to others who had no idea she was my wife and saying, “Isn’t he wonderful?”

  I chose my contestants, and we did the show just like a live radio show. As many of you will recall, the basic idea of Truth or Consequences was simple. A contestant was asked a less than erudite question, such as “In the days of the Old West, what did it mean when a gunfighter had notches in his gun handle?” The correct answer was “termites.” For having failed to answer the question, the contestant had to pay the consequences, which would be a (hopefully) hilarious stunt. The basic idea of the show was simple enough, but the consequences could get complicated, as I shall describe later.

  After you have done this for a few years, you know when it’s going well, and I knew this afternoon had gone well. I got laughs, and the “consequences” worked.

  When I came off the stage, Ralph was waiting in the wings, smiling. I could tell he was pleased. “That went nicely,” he said warmly. “If you don’t do Truth or Consequences for me, I’ll have other shows that you might do, but so far as Truth or Consequences is concerned… I’ll be in touch.”

  This was not what I was hoping to hear. I didn’t want to do another show some time in the future. I wanted to do Truth or Consequences right now! Some time in the future might never come. I tried to smile my best smile as I said, “Thank you, Mr. Edwards.”

  I went home worried and frustrated. There seemed to be no end to the number of hoops I would be asked to jump through. Worse yet, Ralph called a few days later and informed me that what we both thought was a successful audition was not really a “television audition” at all, since no one had actually seen me on camera. He asked if I would come down to the old El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, where they were producing The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show, so they could check out my on-camera appearance during a break. I had no idea who they were, but they held my future in their hands.

  Joe Landis was one of the pioneering directors of the early days of television, and he was doing Tennessee Ernie’s show. As soon as I arrived, they hustled me into makeup and put me in front of a camera to say a few lines with Joe during breaks in the Tennessee Ernie Ford Show rehearsal. Ralph was in the booth with a bunch of other people—and they were all looking intently at me. I was about to find out whether I had a face made for radio. Finally, Ralph came out of the booth and said the dreaded words: “I’ll be in touch.”

  I went home despondent. Dorothy Jo commiserated and tried to console me. I began to wonder if “I’ll be in touch” was one of those Hollywood phrases that was a euphemism for something more ominous. Can’t these people make up their minds?

  A few days later, I got the answer. On December 21, 1956, at exactly five minutes past noon, Ralph Edwards called me and told me I was to be the host of Truth or Consequences. That was and is and will always be the most important telephone call of my professional career. It changed my whole life. That first national show paved the way for the wonderful half century I have had on television.

  At the time, I certainly did not feel like an overnight success, especially after the ordeal of the last few weeks, but that was the way many in the industry saw it. Moreover, when I tell that story, some people shrug and say, “If Ralph Edwards hadn’t called, someone else would have.”

  Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I would have spent my entire life going to Ventura and Oxnard doing the Southern California Edison shows. But Ralph did call, and I signed a contract shortly thereafter. Ralph made all the difference in my life.

  • • •

  Ten days later, we went on the air with our first show. It was New Year’s Eve, December 31, 1956. I will always be grateful to Ralph for his support and kind words on that show. After reminding the audience that Truth or Consequences was “the granddaddy of audience participation shows,” he graciously introduced me as “a young man… with one of the brightest futures in television,” and over the years he did his best to make that prediction come true.

  As I look at it today, that first show is a sweet period piece, a slice of the 1950s right down to the Studebaker prize and the savings bond promotion. With Ralph’s glowing introduction of me and the excitement of our special guest, former heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, we got the show off to a rousing start, and the contestants did the rest.

  But that phone call was everything to me. It came after a long string of “I’ll be in touch” promises, but it was also the beginning of a bond with Ralph Edwards that lasted a lifetime. He became not only my champion but my mentor and my
dear friend. He and his wife, Barbara, became close with Dorothy Jo and me, and really took us under their wing. Every year on December 21, Ralph and I had lunch together, and at five minutes after noon, we drank a toast to our long and enduring friendship. Ralph passed away in 2005, but on that date, at that time, I always pause to thank him.

  1

  Truth or Consequences, My First National Show

  The Truth or Consequences job that Ralph Edwards gave me was definitely my big break, and it was the foundation of all the wonderful things that came later. Was I lucky? Yes. After all, I had been doing radio shows for years, but I had no television experience. Did I work hard to make the most of the opportunity that Ralph gave me? You bet I did. And I benefited a great deal from Ralph and the very talented staff involved with that show. I was confident that I could do the job. After all, I had done audience participation for so long I was comfortable with the show’s format. Also, I knew Ralph Edwards had confidence in me. I had respect for his judgment, so I thought to myself, “You can do this, Barker,” and I went out and did it.

  However, I didn’t make Truth or Consequences. If anything, Truth or Consequences made Bob Barker. At least it made me nationally known and launched my career. It also made me some pretty good money. It’s important to remember that the show had already been around for sixteen years—ten on radio and six on television—prior to my arrival. Ralph Edwards was brilliant, a broadcasting legend, and he created the show. Jack Bailey, who was famous as host of Queen for a Day, had in fact hosted the show at night for two years just before I got the nod.

  I was stepping into an ideal position in four ways. First, the show had a long, successful track record. Second, I was working with incredible talent. They included not only Ralph, but also producer Ed Bailey—who had worked with Ralph for years; announcer/associate producer Charlie Lyon, who left his job as NBC’s chief announcer in Chicago to join Ralph’s production company; and the unpredictable Milt Larsen, one of our writers, who later went on to start the Magic Castle club in Hollywood. Third, as I look back on this time period—1956 and into the ’60s—it was the absolute heyday of television. The advertising industry was booming. The country was prospering, and as the national television audience grew, the major networks were in a perfect position to ride the wave of prosperity and viewership. There was an excitement about television, about broadcasting, about advertising and new products and new technology. We were in Hollywood, the center of entertainment, and this was shaping up to be the golden age of television programming. Finally, Ralph thought that the show played to my strengths. He pointed out that I’d had years of experience ad-libbing and working with audiences. I could choose my own contestants. I could do my own warm-up. He told me that he was sure I would be completely comfortable doing Truth or Consequences. Ralph said, “T or C is a good fit for you and you are a good fit for the show.” All of this was music to my ears.