However, Barron proved ill at ease in the moderator's seat, so both Fred Davis and panelist Alex Barris rotated as guest hosts in the early part of the fall before Davis was chosen to take over as host full-time ( a position he retained for the rest of the show's run ), though Barris continued to appear as a guest panelist occasionally.

In his book, Barris says that at the height of the show's popularity in the late 1950s, the individual panelists became major celebrities in Canada.

Barris got his start in television as a page and later staffer at NBC in New York City, and eventually worked backstage at the TV music show American Bandstand ( then filmed in Philadelphia ), originally as a standards-and-practices person for ABC.

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 also 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 Canadian-based syndicated variety show for singer Bobby Vinton ( produced in conjunction with Chris Bearde and Allan Blye ).

The somewhat shy Barris rarely appeared on camera, though he once dashed onto the set of The New Treasure Hunt to throw a pie at emcee Geoff Edwards.

As with some of Barris ' other projects ( including The Newlywed Game ), it was at one point possible to see The Gong Show twice daily, a relatively uncommon feat in the years prior to cable TV's expansion into the commercial market.

In a 2010 interview on NBC's The Today Show, Barris said he disagreed with the " tough love " philosophy of dealing with addicted children, and that he regretted having allowed Della to leave home at age 16.

* Chuck Barris Interview at Archive of American Television

O ' Donnell continued to announce through the end of the Paul Rodriguez-hosted season, then left Barris to return to his position at Wheel of Fortune.

Minutes before the song was to be presented on American Bandstand in 1962, ABC informed Rambeau that he couldn't sing the song ( because Chuck Barris was an ABC employee at the time ), and he performed the B-side of the record instead.

* Original Batmobile at Barris ' own website

In April 2010, the special George Barris design edition of the 2010 Chevrolet Camaro Spirit was introduced to the public for the first time at a VIP media event at Community Chevrolet, one of the largest Chevrolet dealerships in the nation.

* George Barris Interview at Archive of American Television

Earlier, Barris spent almost a decade at General Electric Company in a variety of management positions, including Vice President and General Manager at GE Information Services.

George Barris did in fact take the last photograph of Marilyn Monroe on July 13, 1962.

Mark Goodson – Bill Todman Productions ( and to a lesser extent, Barry-Enright Productions and Chuck Barris Productions ) had the foresight to preserve many of their games for later reruns ; for years, these shows dominated the Game Show Network ( GSN ) line-up.

In his second book about the program, Alex Barris tells an anecdote about what guest panelist Bennett Cerf said to challenger Jesse Owens about Adolf Hitler during a 1958 episode ; this is one of the episodes that does not survive.

Charles Hirsch " Chuck " Barris ( born June 3, 1929 ) is an American game show creator, producer, and host ; a film director ; and a presenter best known for hosting The Gong Show and creating The Dating Game.

Barris ' jokey, bumbling personality ; his accentuated hand-clapping between sentences ( which eventually had the studio audience joining in with him ); and his catchphrases ( he would usually go into commercial break with, " We'll be right back with more er ... STUFF ...", occasionally paired with shifting his head to reveal the ubiquitous sign behind the stage reading simply " STUFF ," and " This is me saying ' bye '" was one of his favorite closing lines ) were the antithesis of the smooth TV host ( such as Gary Owens, who hosted the syndicated version in its first season ).

However, his second memoir, The Game Show King: A Confession ( 1993 ), makes no mention of the CIA — or, for that matter, his previous book ; and a CIA spokesman has categorically denied that Barris ever worked for them in any capacity.

The next day, Sony also announced that it reached an agreement with Guber-Peters Entertainment Company, Inc. ( NASDAQ: GPEC ; formerly Barris Industries, Inc .) to acquire the company for $ 200 million when Sony hired Peter Guber and Jon Peters to head CPE.

Barris has built many novelty vehicles for other celebrities ; these include golf carts for Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Ann-Margret, Glen Campbell, and Elton John ; and 25 modified Mini Mokes for a record company contest involving the Beach Boys.

Barris is currently on the Board of Directors of eight companies ; Broadview Networks Holdings, Inc., Echo Global Logistics, Inc., Groupon, Hillcrest Laboratories, Inc., InnerWorkings, Inc., Jobfox, Inc., MediaBank, SnagFilms and Vonage Holdings Corp. Barris is often featured on the Forbes Midas list and was ranked # 8 on the list in 2011.

In order to fulfill that goal, he became a student of legendary hot-rodders ( custom car builders ) George Barris, John Buttera and Darryl Starbird.

* 1929 – Chuck Barris, American game show host, director, and producer

Other subjects included game show producer Chuck Barris, Who Wants To Be a Millionaire ?, a " Top Ten " countdown of game show hosts, memorable game show moments, women who have featured prominently on game shows, celebrities and how they impacted game shows, and an insider's guide to winning on a TV game show.

Barris told his bosses that the producer / packagers ' pitches of game show concepts were worse than Barris ' own ideas.

Barris first became successful during 1965 with his first game show creation, The Dating Game, on ABC.

The combination of the newlywed couples ' humorous candor and host Bob Eubanks's sly questioning made the show another hit for Barris.

Barris joined in with the eccentricity of the format, using unusual props, dressing in colorful and somewhat unusual clothing ( such as the occasional hat pulled over his head, if not his eyes ), he became yet another performer of the show, and for many, quite a cult hero.

This left Barris with only one show, his weekly syndicated effort The New Treasure Hunt.

During the winter of 1980, Barris attempted to rebuild by bringing back another game show that was not an original of his, Camouflage, in which contestants answered questions for the chance to locate a " hidden object " ( such as a toaster ) concealed within a cartoon-type drawing.

After a year's inactivity, Barris revived Treasure Hunt again in 1981 in partnership with the original 1950s version's producer, Budd Granoff, who had become his business partner ( the show itself was created by its original host, Jan Murray ).

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

In 1973, Barris released an LP of television game show music, Chuck Barris Presents Themes From TV Game Shows ( Friends Records ).

Sony then hired two producers, Peter Guber and Jon Peters, to serve as co-heads of production when Sony also acquired Guber-Peters Entertainment ( the former game show production company, Barris Industries ) for $ 200 million on September 29, 1989.

He also hosted a short lived primetime variety hour for NBC from February to April 1978, called The Chuck Barris Rah-Rah Show, essentially a noncompetitive knock-off of Gong.

Other television cars built by Barris Kustom Industries include the The Munster Koach and casket turned dragster ( the Drag-U-La ) for The Munsters, an Oldsmobile Toronado turned into a roadster used in the first season of Mannix, a 1921 Oldsmobile touring car turned into a truck for The Beverly Hillbillies, the fictional " 1928 Porter " for the NBC comedy My Mother the Car, Updated KITTs for later seasons of Knight Rider and replicas of 1914 Stutz Bearcats for Bearcats !.

Chuck Barris created the series and was executive producer while Johnny Jacobs announced.

Barris became a public figure in 1976, when he produced and served as the host of the talent contest spoof The Gong Show, which he packaged in partnership with TV producer Chris Bearde.

After a week-long trial of The Newlywed Game on ABC in 1984 ( with Dating Game emcee Jim Lange ), Barris produced the daily Newlywed Game ( titled The New Newlywed Game ) in syndication from 1985 to 1989, with original host Eubanks ( and in 1988, comedian Paul Rodriguez ).

Scott Beach, who was Barris ' first choice for host, was the announcer in the very early episodes of The Newlywed Game.

Kaufman also penned the screenplay for Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, a biopic based on the " unauthorized autobiography " of Chuck Barris, the creator of such popular game shows as The Dating Game and host of The Gong Show.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was based on game show host Chuck Barris ' widely debunked, yet still popular, memoir of the same name, in which he claimed to be a CIA agent, and Kafka incorporated both the life of author Franz Kafka and the surreal aspects of his fiction.

In 1966, he received a phone call from Chuck Barris to host a new game show, The Newlywed Game, which premiered on ABC that same year.

The previous fall, Chuck Barris hired Edwards to host the weekly revival of the 1950s game show Treasure Hunt, entitled The New Treasure Hunt.

After appearances as a bumbling actor in 1999's science fiction satire Galaxy Quest, in the 1999 Shakespeare adaptation A Midsummer Night's Dream as Flute, and as gregarious villain Eric Knox in Charlie's Angels ( 2000 ), Rockwell won the biggest leading role of his career as The Gong Show host Chuck Barris in George Clooney's 2002 directorial debut, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.

He also hosted a short-lived send-up of beauty pageants called The $ 1. 98 Beauty Show created by Gong Show producer / host Chuck Barris, in 1978.

* Peter, Paul & Mary's version of the song is used in the film Confessions of a Dangerous Mind during a sequence in which " Gong Show " host Chuck Barris ( Sam Rockwell ) has an on-air nervous breakdown due to his years as a CIA assassin, and visualizes the entire audience as dead bodies.