Bob Barker, retired host of The Price Is Right and animal advocate, dead at 99

Bob Barker, the enduring, dapper activity present host who grew to become a household identify above a half-century of hosting Real truth or Consequences and The Cost Is Ideal, has died. He was 99.

Barker, who was also a longtime animal legal rights activist, died Saturday morning at his property in Los Angeles, publicist Roger Neal claimed.

“I am so proud of the trailblazing work Barker and I did with each other to expose the cruelty to animals in the enjoyment field and together with performing to enhance the plight of abused and exploited animals in the United States and internationally,” Nancy Burnet, his longtime close friend and the co-executor of his estate, said in a statement.

Barker’s animal advocacy noticed him make trips to Canada on event, like when advocating for the removal of elephants from captivity in zoos in Edmonton and Toronto. He also opposed the Calgary Stampede’s rodeo and publicly weighed in on pending legislation banning the breeding and acquisition of killer whales in Ontario.

He retired from his tv work in June 2007, telling his studio viewers: “I thank you, thank you, thank you for inviting me into your home for extra than 50 decades.”

From radio to Television set

Barker was working in radio in 1956 when producer Ralph Edwards invited him to audition as the new host of Real truth or Penalties, a match present in which viewers users had to do wacky stunts — the “consequence” — if they unsuccessful to solution a dilemma — the “fact,” which was normally the foolish punchline to a riddle no one particular was at any time meant to furnish. (Q: What did 1 eye say to another? A: Just involving us, some thing smells.)

In a 1996 job interview with The Connected Push, Barker recalled getting the news that he had been employed.

“I know exactly the place I was, I know just how I felt: I hung up the cellphone and claimed to my spouse, ‘Dorothy Jo, I obtained it!'”

Barker stayed with Fact or Repercussions for 18 years — including many decades in a syndicated variation.

An even extended gig

In the meantime, Barker began web hosting a resurrected edition of The Rate Is Suitable in 1972. (The unique host in the 1950s and ’60s was Invoice Cullen.)

It would turn out to be TV’s longest-jogging activity display and the past on a broadcast community of what in TV’s early days had numbered dozens.

“I have developed aged in your services,” the silver-haired, perennially tanned Barker joked on a prime-time television retrospective in the mid-1990s.

CBS stated in a assertion that daytime tv has misplaced one particular of its “most iconic stars.”

“We misplaced a beloved member of the CBS family now with the passing of Bob Barker. Throughout his 35 yrs as host of THE Selling price IS Appropriate, Bob produced innumerable people’s desires appear genuine and every person come to feel like a winner when they had been termed to ‘come on down.’ In addition to his legendary 50-yr profession in broadcasting, Bob will be remembered as a devoted animal rights activist.”

In all, Barker taped additional than 5,000 reveals through his job.

He stated he was retiring because “I am just achieving the age exactly where the constant hard work to be there and do the present physically is a great deal for me…. Improved [to leave] a yr much too quickly than a 12 months much too late.”

Comic Drew Carey was chosen to exchange him.

Barker was back again with Carey for one display broadcast following his retirement.

‘Guests in my home’

Barker was there to boost the publication of his memoir, Priceless Reminiscences, in which he summed up his pleasure from web hosting the clearly show as the option “to watch folks reveal themselves and to observe the excitement and humour unfold.”

“There hasn’t been a working day on established that I didn’t think of Bob Barker and thank him. I will have his memory in my heart permanently,” Carey wrote in a article on X, the social media site previously identified as Twitter.

Barker effectively understood the attraction of The Value Is Correct, in which audience members — invited to “Occur on down!” to the stage — competed for prizes by attempting to guess their retail benefit.

“All people can identify with costs, even the president of the United States. Viewers at dwelling turn into associated for the reason that they all have an feeling on the bids,” Barker at the time mentioned.

His very own attractiveness was clear: Barker played it straight — warm, gracious and witty — refusing to mock the recreation display format or his contestants.

“I want the contestants to really feel as nevertheless they are friends in my dwelling,” he claimed in 1996. “Potentially my emotion of regard for them arrives across to viewers, and that may well be just one of the factors why I have lasted.”

An old-faculty tactic

As a Television character, Barker retained a touch of the old college — for occasion, no wi-fi microphone for him.

Like the mic itself, the mic twine served him perfectly as a prop, insouciantly flicked and finessed. His occupation longevity, he said, was the end result of staying content material.

Barker also spent 20 yrs as host of the Overlook United states Pageant and the Skip Universe Pageant.

A longtime animal rights activist who day by day urged his viewers to “have your pets spayed or neutered” and properly lobbied to ban fur coats as prizes on The Cost Is Proper, he inevitably quit the Overlook United states Pageant in protest about the presentation of fur coats to the winners.

In 1997, Barker declined to be a presenter at the Daytime Emmy Awards ceremony because he said it snubbed sport displays by not airing awards in the group. He named recreation displays “the pillars of daytime Television.”

In 1994, the widowed Barker was sued for sexual harassment by Dian Parkinson, a Value is Correct model for 18 a long time. Barker admitted participating in “hanky panky” with Parkinson from 1989 to 1991, but he reported she initiated the relationship. Parkinson dropped the lawsuit in 1995, expressing it was hurting her overall health.

Barker turned embroiled in a dispute with another previous Price tag Is Ideal model, Holly Hallstrom, who claimed she was fired in 1995 because the show’s producers believed she was extra fat. Barker denied the allegations.

Neither uproar afflicted his goodwill from the audience.