Early Career
Barris was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He attended Drexel University where he was a columnist at the student newspaper The Triangle. He graduated in 1953.
Barris got his start in television as a page and later staffer at NBC in New York City, and eventually worked backstage at the TV music show American Bandstand (then filmed in Philadelphia), originally as a standards-and-practices person for ABC. Barris soon became a music industry figure. He produced pop music on records and TV, but his most successful venture was writing "Palisades Park". Recorded by Freddy Cannon, it peaked at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 on 12 March 1962, the biggest hit of Cannon's career. Barris also co-wrote or wrote some of the music that appeared on his game shows.
Barris was promoted to the daytime programming division at ABC in Los Angeles and was put in charge of deciding which game shows ABC would air. Barris told his bosses that the producer/packagers' pitches of game show concepts were worse than Barris' own ideas. They suggested that he quit his ABC programming job and become a producer.
Barris first became successful during 1965 with his first game show creation, The Dating Game, on ABC. On this show, which was hosted by Jim Lange, three bachelors (or "bachelorettes") competed for the favor of a contestant of the opposite sex blocked from their view. The contestants' sexy banter and its "flower power"-motif studio set were a revolution for the game show genre. The show would air for eleven of the next fifteen years and be revived twice in the 1980s and 1990s.
The next year Barris began The Newlywed Game, originally created by Nick Nicholson and E. Roger Muir, also for ABC. The combination of the newlywed couples' humorous candor and host Bob Eubanks's sly questioning made the show another hit for Barris. The show is the longest lasting of any developed by his company, running for a total of 19 full years on 'first run' TV, network and syndicated. Game Show Network airs a current version with Sherri Shepherd. Interviewed on the NPR program "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" on August 1, 2009, Barris said that the Newlywed Game was the easiest program he had developed: "All I needed was four couples, eight questions, and a washer-dryer."
Barris created several other short-lived game shows for ABC in the 1960s and for syndication in the 1970s, all of which revolved around a common theme: the game play normally derived its interest (and oftentimes, humor) from the excitement, vulnerability, embarrassment, or anger of the contestants or participants in the game. Barris also made several attempts through the years at non-game formats, such as ABC's Operation Entertainment, a variety show staged at military bases akin to USO shows; a CBS revival of Your Hit Parade; and The Bobby Vinton Show, a Canadian-based syndicated variety show for singer Bobby Vinton (produced in conjunction with Chris Bearde and Allan Blye). The latter was his most successful program other than a game show.
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