There’s actually an original program premiering on E! tonight. Sort of.
If you know anything about my fan base and followers, any time anything involving a game show is given attention it’s breaking news. And tonight they get yet another fix invoving perhaps their most enduring and prolific guilty pleasure, THE PRICE IS RIGHT. It’s actually the third and final installment of a mini-series titillatingly titled DIRTY ROTTEN SCANDALS which has taken up a couple of hours of network real estate otherwise dedicated to multiple runs of movies like MY COUSIN VINNY. The first two, respectively dedicated to the behind-the-scenes shenanigans of DR. PHIL and AMERICA’S NEXT TOP MODEL, kind of flew under the radar. This one, at least in my world, is a bit bigger of a deal.
TV INSIDER’s Scott Fishman deemed it significant enough to drop a preview story yesterday:
(M)any of the “Barker’s Beauties” and former crew members are breaking their silence on what went on behind the scenes in new documentary Dirty Rotten Scandals….the two back-to-back episodes… pull… from original reporting from journalist David Kushner…Bob Barker became a national treasure as longtime host of The Price Is Right. The beloved game show made “Come on Down,” Plinko, and Showcase Showdown iconic. But beyond the bright lights, sparkly sets and prize giveaways there was a seemingly darker side, perhaps not untypical of the era. At the center was Barker himself, who faced multiple allegations of having a hostile work environment, sexual harassment, and discrimination over his 35-year run that ended in 2007.
USA TODAY’s Anthony Robledo added his own summation:
Former models Kathleen Bradley, Holly Hallstrom, and former producer Barbara Hunter opened up about the culture of sexual harassment that existed on the game show during its early years. Bradley, one of the models known as “Barker’s Beauties,” said that many men on the set regularly gawked at the woman during the time the late Bob Barker hosted. I was in the elevator, and one of the men just stuck their hands right on my boobs,” Hunter, who worked as a producer on the show during the mid-1970s, said in a clip from the series, shared by People on March 17. “I had to push him away, I didn’t say anything. It became instinct to know how to handle it.”
But as Fishman added in depth, it’s Hallstrom who seems to be the most motivated and determined to share her side of this sordid story, and a quick recap of the history strongly suggests she’s justified:
Barker sued Hallstrom for libel and slander, following her decision to speak to media outlets including the TV show Hard Copy after she said she was fired in October 1995 because of weight gain due to medication. Hallstrom saw this as retaliation after the longtime show staple refused to go on the record against Barker when fellow “Beauty” Dian Parkinson sued him for sexual harassment in 1994.
Hallstrom refused to back down and stayed in the legal fight for five years. The expenses she incurred resulted in her going broke, selling her house, and even living in her car at one point. Barker dropped the lawsuit 48 hours before trial. Hallstrom then countersued for wrongful termination, and malicious prosecution. A settlement was offered with an NDA, which she passed on. In 2015, she defeated the TV titan in the legal battle, finally leaving her free to tell her story.
Robledo’s postscript hints at the degree of lingering anger and bitterness that still remains in the now seventy-something Hallstrom to this day:
“It was pure stubbornness because I knew I had the truth. That I could win. That I could beat him with the truth, and I did,” Hallstrom told TV Insider about the long legal battle and the new docuseries. “I’m so grateful for this documentary, so that everyone, but especially the fans can hear what really happened.
All well and good, except for the fact that a sizable percentage of fans of both the show–and for that matter E!–already knew all about this.
Back when E! was an actual big-time network with actual competent management, they buttressed their schedule with a regularly scheduled series called E! TRUE HOLLYWOOD STORY, then as now capitalizing on the almost insatiable desire for a certain audience segment to vicariously thrill to others’ traumas. The episode that Hallstrom and others–including fellow OG model Janice Pennington–opened up about Barker’s indiscretions originally aired more than 24 years ago. When Barker was alive to defend himself and when a much larger audience was also still alive to care. You could choose to watch it here and basically be caught up on most of what Kushner’s “original reporting” reveals.
Or you can reperuse what yours truly mused back in the summer of 2023 when Barker left us a few months short of his centennial. I stand by now what I concluded then:
Honor the memory of the personality. Question the true legacy of the person…the darker side of Barker can’t be ignored, nor should it be forgotten.
Judging by what I know about the relative ratings of E! then and now, I strongly suspect tonight’s regurgitation will be much less meaningful to its viewers –even those too young to have been around for THS and/or too lazy to click on a couple of links.
Which means hopefully the remorsefulness expressed in the most recent Facebook posts from my friend and fellow game show guru Randy West for contributing background to this effort will be borne out to be an overreaction. As he accurately surmises:
This kind of inappropriate behavior was rampant when Barker and a few other senior male employees started in the business; their failure to understand its hurtfulness and its ramifications, and their failure to become enlightened and evolve with the changing times was both sad and inexcusable.
Allow me to add this personal observation which I also strongly suspect West would back me up on. TPIR was far from the only set and environment that had these dynamics back then–and even sadder to say, even now. The leader of the free world was unfortunately spot on when he gave Billy Bush his sage advice at roughly the same time that THE PRICE IS RIGHT’s backstage shenanigans were first profiled. I’m perpetually curious why the likes of Hallstrom and her contemporaries don’t express some sort of contempt for their fellow women who willingly enabled these sordid souls and established the beachhead of possibilities in the first place. And I’d offer the same sort of counsel to Kushner, who had a golden opportunity to resurrect those stories and perhaps even a few opportunistic participants in something as unabashedly salacious as DIRTY ROTTEN SCANDALS. Barker’s chapter is closed, and all indications are THE PRICE IS RIGHT is a far more stable working environment today.
Or is it? A new generation of inquiring minds might want to know those truths of yesterday and today. Have at it, “citizen journalists”.
Until next time…