Priceless Memories - Bob Barker [15]
I didn’t select my own contestants on Price. Originally, we had one of the producers do it, and eventually we had contestant coordinators do it. We probably had over the years half a dozen people doing it. But all of them knew I wanted people with whom I could have fun. Our contestant coordinators went out into the line outside before the show and talked to people. They made their selections following my guidelines, but I never knew who was going to be on the show and the people chosen to be contestants didn’t know either. They didn’t know until their name was called to “Come on down!” That’s how we got those wonderful reactions of joy.
Another facet of Price’s success is that the show always had a live feel. This was intentional, and it was a big part of the show’s energy and appeal. As I’ve said, my background was in live entertainment, on both radio and television, so that’s what I felt comfortable in and that’s the environment and attitude I wanted to foster. That’s what I had done all over Southern California on radio shows with Dorothy Jo and on Truth or Consequences.
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I always brought the shows out on time. In other words, I did them in time to match the allotted length of the show. This assured that the broadcast had a live feel, which everyone loved. Beyond that, I also wanted to decide what went on the air. I didn’t want somebody to edit the show and decide that this goes and this stays. I didn’t want someone else deciding what’s funny about the show. I know what’s funny. I did it. If you do it live to time, that’s it. What you see is what you get. So that’s what I did. If something went wrong, you covered, one way or the other. If you do it live to time, it also has that consistent natural feel, where the energy and the momentum never fade. It worked beautifully. Editing is expensive. I saved CBS millions of dollars in editing costs, and I think we maintained a more lively show. That’s a win-win situation.
Sometimes we had people fall down coming down the aisle. We left it in. They might fall flat on their faces or go into long stumbles until they eventually tripped over themselves in their excitement. And as many people who fell, we never had one get hurt beyond a bump. Of course, we had pages rushing right out there, helping them get on their feet and up to the stage, and I might make a remark like, “Been drinking again, huh?” or something like that, and we rolled on with the show.
We had situations where models would be pulling on refrigerator doors that didn’t open, on cabinets that were stuck, all kinds of gaffes, and we just kept going. The models would be up there tugging on oven doors or on handles or pulling on drawers that wouldn’t open, and we made the best of it, all the while getting laughs. I remember one time we had a refrigerator that was stocked with food and sitting on a dolly. They did not shoot the dolly, of course. They just shot the refrigerator and the model whose job it was to open the refrigerator door. When she opened it, the weight of the door was enough to cause the refrigerator to tilt on the dolly and everything in the refrigerator came crashing out on the floor. We left everything in just as it played. I told the audience: “Try to picture this refrigerator without all that stuff lying around it there on the floor. It really is a beautiful refrigerator, you know.” I told the announcer, “Go ahead, Johnny, please describe this mess.”
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