Priceless Memories - Bob Barker [18]
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The show had a wide appeal from the beginning, a complete cross section of the country. And I have to say, in all the years I did Price, our audiences and contestants always displayed good manners. They were excited and they could be zany and unpredictable, but our guests always stayed within the boundaries of good taste. We didn’t have to bleep out profanities like some shows had to do. I think in general all of our guests knew they were on a family show and acted accordingly. I wanted Price to appeal to people of all ages and colors and nationalities. I wanted it to be a show that you could sit down with your mother and watch and not be embarrassed by anything we said or did. And you could.
Our show was different from the others in a lot of ways. Not only did we leave all the unscripted moments in and have packed houses for the tapings of the show, we had contestants that you did not see on other shows. We had ninety-year-olds. I had a winner, a showcase winner, who was ninety-five years old. You never see a ninety-five-year-old on other shows. The fellow was great. I had many people in their seventies and eighties. We had tall, short, fat, thin, old, young, black, white, and brown. We wanted a diverse group. Our country is becoming more and more a melting pot, and we wanted Price to reflect that. I believe that is one reason why the show was so successful from the start and for so many years. We had contestants on Price who would not get on any other show, and they were wonderful contestants.
I liked working with elderly people, even when I was very young. I always had great fun with them. They say things that are priceless, if you’ll excuse the expression. One day, I had this older lady come down in Contestants’ Row, and she said, “I dreamed about you last night.”
I said, “Really? What did you dream? What were we doing in your dream?”
She said, “You were chasing me around the hayloft.” You couldn’t write things like that.
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During those early years of The Price Is Right, we established an enjoyable but professional style and an atmosphere of enthusiasm and fun that would become a trademark of the show for many years. That enthusiasm and joy cannot be faked and it built momentum for the show the longer it ran, but it was all begun in those early successful years. We established loyalty. Later on we would have three generations of family members in the audience who had been watching the show for decades. “Loyal friend and true” became a popular slogan for the show. Somewhere along the line, I had said that to someone on the show and the catchphrase just took off. I received boxes of letters from viewers and audience members who said they were “loyal friends and true,” and we had people in the audience with that slogan printed on their T-shirts. It became another symbol of the family atmosphere that surrounded the show.
Most other shows sought out twenty- to forty-year-old contestants who were physically attractive. I think they were missing some great contestants by not broadening their scope to have all types on the air. We had a lot of twenty- to forty-year-olds, too, and plenty of people who were physically attractive, but I insisted on a cross section. I wanted elderly people, I wanted eighteen-year-olds, and we got them.
We had a lot of kids who had just turned eighteen on the day of the show they attended. You had to be eighteen to be in the audience, and they came to the show on their birthdays to celebrate. Winning a car on The Price Is Right made it one memorable birthday. After I retired, I got letters from people who said they wished I had stayed on a little longer because they were just about to turn eighteen, and they had been looking forward to coming on the show for years. That kind of loyalty means a lot to me.
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People frequently ask me what sort of folks make the best contestants for The Price Is Right, and by and large I have to say women make better contestants than men. I have had great contestants of all kinds, and many