03-22-2017, 09:49 AM
RIP Chuck Barris.
![[Image: gong_show.jpg]](https://paxarcana.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/gong_show.jpg)
He died of natural causes at age 87. Barris was most famous as creator and host of the Gong Show. But, he also produced the Newlywed Game, the Dating Game, and a bunch of other cheesy programs.
As "The Gong Show" and Barris' other series were slipping, he sold his company for a reported $100 million in 1980 and decided to go into films.
Afterward, a distraught Barris checked into a New York hotel and wrote his autobiography, "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," in two months. In it, he claimed to have been a CIA assassin. Much later, the book was made into a movie directed by George Clooney.
The CIA dismissed Barris' outlandish claim, but Barris claimed the agency would never admit publicly that they'd hired him to travel around the world to kill enemies of the U.S. Sounds like he was doing some good drugs.
Barris then moved to the south of France with his third wife to escape the Hollywood rat-race. He had relocated back to New York some years before his death yesterday afternoon.
ref: http://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-c...in-n736841
He died of natural causes at age 87. Barris was most famous as creator and host of the Gong Show. But, he also produced the Newlywed Game, the Dating Game, and a bunch of other cheesy programs.
As "The Gong Show" and Barris' other series were slipping, he sold his company for a reported $100 million in 1980 and decided to go into films.
Afterward, a distraught Barris checked into a New York hotel and wrote his autobiography, "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," in two months. In it, he claimed to have been a CIA assassin. Much later, the book was made into a movie directed by George Clooney.
The CIA dismissed Barris' outlandish claim, but Barris claimed the agency would never admit publicly that they'd hired him to travel around the world to kill enemies of the U.S. Sounds like he was doing some good drugs.
Barris then moved to the south of France with his third wife to escape the Hollywood rat-race. He had relocated back to New York some years before his death yesterday afternoon.
ref: http://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-c...in-n736841