Chuck Barris, The Gong Show creator, songwriter and novelist who once tried to add to his already eclectic resume by claiming that he once was a CIA assassin, died Tuesday at his home in Palisades, N.Y. He was 87.
Barris' death was announced by a spokesman, Paul Shefrin.
In 1965, Barris came up with The Dating Game, in which a bachelorette or bachelor would choose a date from among three unseen members of the opposite sex after asking them questions. He followed that the next year with The Newlywed Game, which put just-married couples' compatibility to the test. Both shows stayed on the air into the mid-1970s and spawned sequels.
Barris then came up with the concept that catapulted him to a new level of fame: The Gong Show, which premiered on NBC in June 1976. It featured a series of mostly amateur performers and a panel of three celebrity judges. Barris was the brash, irritating host.
The performers, often terrible, would be allowed to go on until one of the judges sounded a gong, ending the spectacle. Those who weren't gonged were rated by the judges on a scale of 1-10, vying for prizes of $516.32 on the show's daytime version and $712.05 on the prime-time edition.
The show ran on NBC until 1978 and then in syndication. While critics complained about its crassness and cruelty, the daytime version at one point attracted 78 percent of viewers ages 18-49.
"In my opinion, a good game show review is the kiss of death," Barris said in an interview in 2001. "If for some strange reason the critic liked it, the public won't. A really bad review means the show will be on for years."
Barris gradually turned to writing. He already had written one book, You and Me, Babe (1974). His second, however, gave Barris a fresh burst of notoriety. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (1984) was a supposed autobiography in which he claimed that while traveling in his role as a television producer in the 1960s he also was a CIA assassin. When asked, Barris gave elliptical answers that neither confirmed nor denied the claim. The CIA was more direct: Various spokesmen said Barris had had nothing to do with the agency.
He is survived by his wife, the former Mary Clagett.
A Section on 03/23/2017