When Bob Barker entered the The Price Is Right sound stage in 1987 and unveiled his head full of silver hair, he was met with a standing ovation.
Barker, 64 at the time, joked, “You like the suit, is that it?” after several minutes of cheers from the crowd for his new hair color.
He then expressed gratitude to the “lady in the back row” for shouting, “We love your hair!” “I know that if you saw the show yesterday, my hair was dark,” said Barker. And I’ll tell you, I had a blind date last night.”
“Never again, but do you like it? If you don’t like it, I can chant an old Sioux Indian chant and it’ll be dark again,” he quipped, paying homage to his Sioux tribal ancestry.
“I was tinting my hair for years, and it started getting blue,” Barker later said. It became crimson once they added a permanent color to it. So I made the patriotic decision to leave it white. Here we are in the colors red, white, and blue.
The TV personality said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times from 1990 that the CBS show’s ratings increased after he turned completely genuine.
“I was prematurely gray,” Barker told the magazine. “I began to gray at my temples, and I guess it could be that technology at that time was not what it is today, but I didn’t look good. It looked like I had no hair at my temples, so they suggested I tint it.”
“I went on vacation and just let it go,” he continued. “When I came home, the people on the show said, ‘You look better this way than you do with it dyed or tinted. Why don’t you leave it this way?’’
“We taped ahead. So let’s say on the Wednesday show I had dark hair, but when we taped the next show I had gray hair, and that show aired on Thursday. I got a letter from a fellow who said, ‘Bob, you must have had one hell of a night.’”
According to Roger Neal, who worked as Barker’s publicist from 1987 to 1994 and again in 2020, the renowned television presenter passed away of natural causes at his longstanding Hollywood Hills home this week at the age of 99. Neal made the announcement on behalf of Barker’s girlfriend, Nancy Burnet.
The statement from Neal said, “It is with profound sadness that we announce the passing of the World’s Greatest MC who ever lived, Bob Barker.”
“I am so proud of the trailblazing work Barker, and I did together to expose the cruelty to animals in the entertainment industry and including working to improve the plight of abused and exploited animals in the United States and internationally,” Burnet added in her own. “We were great friends over these 40 yrs. He will be missed.”
In addition to a half-niece named Vickie Valandra Kelly, Barker is also survived by his half-brother Kent Valandra, half-nephews Robert and Chip Valandra, and half-nephew Robert Valandra.
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