Priceless Memories - Bob Barker [21]
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One time I had a woman who was about five feet, four inches tall. She lost control after winning, got underneath my chin, and kept jumping up and down. I endured several teeth-jarring uppercuts to my chin—bam, bam, bam—before I broke free. That was one of the most painful experiences I remember. Another woman threw her arms around me, then jumped up and down, and hit me above the eye with her head. She really did a number on my eye. If it had been a fight, the referee would have stopped it for head butting. One woman paused on her way up to the stage, got into a crouch, and then rammed me. I mean she really rammed me, right in the solar plexus, with her head. No explanation. Others would stand beside me and pinch my arm, time after time, saying, “I’m so nervous, I’m so nervous.” Just standing in the line of fire, I received plenty of welts and bruises, believe me.
Samoan women seemed to be particularly hard on me. It actually became a running joke on the show, and I got lots of facetious mail about how the Samoan women loved me, but I’ll tell you how it all started. We had a lady from Samoa on Price as a contestant, and she got so excited when she won a car that she picked me up. I mean, she really hoisted me just like I was a little boy. She wasn’t tall, but she was strong and sturdy. She gave me such a squeeze that I could hardly breathe, but I smiled bravely through my pain.
About a year later, another woman from Samoa was a contestant on the show, and sure enough, she won a car. Immediately, this woman picked me up and threw me around like a little boy at a picnic. The audience loved it, of course, and I got kidded a lot, and I received tons of mail about how Samoan women really went for me.
Then, about another year later, yet another Samoan woman contestant came down to Contestants’ Row to play for a chance to come on up on the Price stage. I was a little leery of the Samoan enthusiasm by now. I stopped and said, “I’ve been having a problem with Samoan women picking me up and throwing me all over the stage. I want you to swear that if you get up here on this stage and win something, you are not going to pick me up.”
She said, “I swear I will not.” So lo and behold, she won her way up onstage, she won a car, and then she picked me up higher than either of the other women had and tossed me around.
I said, “I can never go to Samoa. My feet would never touch the sand!”
I did have a few of my own knockouts, however. I mentioned the reunion show we did on Truth or Consequences with the Italian woman and her American sister who fainted twice. I had a few women faint on The Price Is Right as well. I remember just stepping over one of them and saying, “Get me another contestant, please.” I’m kidding. I wouldn’t do a thing like that.
I always liked having fun with the contestants on Price. I never put them down, but I joked around with them and tried to have fun. When we introduced the wheel to the show, people were nervous about spinning it. Everyone who was familiar with the show had their own theories about spinning the wheel. But they were also nervous because they were on television and they had a chance at all of the prizes and the money, and the audience was cheering and applauding. It can be a little disorienting for contestants—so it was not so surprising that people would spin the wheel—and then they would fall down. They might fall backward, forward, whatever. There was one lady who wouldn’t let go of the wheel. She pulled down on the wheel and held on. She shot under the wheel on her stomach, across the hall, and ended up on The Young and the Restless. They thought she was an extra and paid her scale. At times when I have told that story, people have asked me, “Did that really happen?” and I had to confess, no, it was just another hallucination.
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As Price became more and more popular with many categories of viewers, one of our biggest fan bases was the college crowd. Eventually we had groups of college kids in the studio audience for practically