Death
In 1981, Barry, along with then-producer Ron Greenberg began grooming Jim Peck as his successor for The Joker's Wild. Peck had periodically stood-in for Barry from 1981 to 1984, and Barry had planned to retire from hosting in September 1984 and bring Peck in as his successor.
On May 2, 1984, less than a month after completing Joker's seventh syndicated season and returning from a visit to his daughter in Europe, Barry suffered a massive cardiac arrest during a morning jog in Central Park. A lifelong smoker, he died at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. Barry's body was flown back to Southern California, and is now buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California.
Though Barry had intended Jim Peck to succeed him as Joker's host, Bill Cullen became the new host and continued in that role until September 1986, when the syndicated version ended. However, Peck did host a few more weeks' worth of episodes in Cullen's place before the show's end.
Read more about this topic: Jack Barry (television Personality)
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens write your glorious name.
Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.”
—Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599)
“There is no sorrow more grievous than the death of one’s spirit.”
—Chinese proverb.
Zhaungzi.
“There is something antique, even, in his style of treating his subject, reminding us that Heroes and Demi-gods, Fates and Furies, still exist; the common man is nothing to him, but after death the hero is apotheosized and has a place in heaven, as in the religion of the Greeks.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)