Priceless Memories - Bob Barker [8]
It was toward the end of the show, and we couldn’t revive her. I had to sign off with two or three members of the staff still over her trying to wake her up. We decided to have the sisters back the next day so we could show our audience that the “victim” of the reunion had recovered. So the next day, I opened the show standing onstage with the sister from the Valley—the one who fainted—and I tell the audience: “You remember yesterday… Well, see, she’s okay, we revived her and everything is fine. Let’s bring out her sister again.” And when the sister from Italy walks onstage —boom— the Valley sister faints again. This time we just hauled her off. No more explanations!
The reunions were such a popular feature of the show that they spawned This Is Your Life, which ran on NBC for eight years. Charlie Lyon, an associate producer as well as our announcer, orchestrated all the reunions. His brother was a diplomat in the State Department, and I could see why. Charlie had the same genes. He was a perfect gentleman. We called him the Rembrandt of Reunions because he arranged so many of them so well.
• • •
My wife, Dorothy Jo, was a frequent and popular visitor to the show. Sometimes her appearance was my idea; more often the writers would suggest it. Whenever they were in a dry spell and it was getting down to the time they had to come up with something, they’d say, “Let’s do a Dorothy Jo act.” I’d say fine, and we’d bring her back to save the day.
I will never forget our first Dorothy Jo consequence. It set the pace for all of those that followed. I selected two ladies from the studio audience whose assignment would be to question three women and choose the one who was Mrs. Bob Barker.
After sending these two ladies backstage, I chose two more ladies from the studio audience who would join Dorothy Jo and claim to be my wife. For these roles, I selected two ladies who impressed me as being clever, witty, and able to think fast in an ad-lib situation. One of these phony wives from the audience proved to be fast on her feet beyond my wildest expectations. Responding to questions during the playing of the game, she accused me of continually complaining about her cooking, spending every free moment on the golf course, and drinking so many martinis that I couldn’t carry on a conversation after eight thirty in the evening.
Of course, the audience loved every word of it. The studio rocked with laughter. But, as usual, Dorothy Jo had the last laugh. She looked up at me and sweetly said, “Honey, this lady has you pegged right down the line.”
The two interrogators correctly chose Dorothy Jo as Mrs. Bob Barker.
My mother was on Truth or Consequences occasionally. In fact, the producers even played a prank on me with my mother. When my mother was still living in Missouri, they had her flown out here to surprise me. I had selected a lady from the audience and I expected her to be brought around on a turntable. But when the turntable came around, there was my own mother smiling at me! I was blown away. Totally surprised. I behaved like a typical contestant. I turned my back on the camera and did everything wrong. I’ll never forget it. They had really surprised me.
We even had my basset hound on the show. Early in my career, I had been mistakenly called Mr. Baker so many times that I named my pet basset hound Mr. Baker. He would come on the show just to say hello, and the audience loved him. Still to this day, I’ll be in a pet store or somewhere like that, and someone will say, “Oh, I used to watch you on Truth or Consequences, and I