My longtime pal, the great Disney historian Jim Korkis, writes…
I was on The Gong Show with my brother as "The Quasimodo Belairs" (singing, dancing hunchbacks) and we won. Also as a member of AFTRA, I got paid scale which is why I went on in the first place. What made Chuck Barris amazing is that he would come into the green room waiting area before taping and talk to each contestant telling them sincerely how great they were and making them feel like stars. I think that is one of the reasons people went on and were willing to behave as idiots. I later did The Dating Game with my two brothers and Camouflage. I have fond memories of Barris.
Most of the folks I've met who worked for Chuck Barris felt he was a wee bit too eager to wring every possible dollar from every show even to the point of harming the product…but they also thought he was a nice, sincere guy who was good to people in every non-monetary way. And The Gong Show, for all its inanity, did help an awful lot of performers (young and old) get their SAG cards or keep their health insurance current. I'm surprised the folks who own the show now — Sony, I think — haven't edited some DVDs of the better acts that appeared on the program. There were more than people recall, and some of those folks went on to have real careers. (Though come to think of it, a DVD of the worst acts would probably sell better.)
Does everyone know the story of how Barris came to host The Gong Show? The original host of the daytime version was John Barbour, who later gained fame on Real People. Barbour was then a rather acerbic movie critic on the local NBC news in L.A. and they taped the entire first week of Gong Shows with him as master of ceremonies. He and Barris did not get along. As I understand it, the Barris version is that Barbour didn't "get" the premise and thought it was going to be a real talent show with him discovering The Stars of Tomorrow. The Barbour version was that he was bringing some order to the chaos because Barris didn't know what the hell he was doing.
After the first taping, Barris went to NBC and said he wanted to junk the shows and start over with a different host. As he later told the tale, NBC agreed on the condition that since it was his concept and he'd shown a flair for it while running the run-throughs, he would be the host. Barris said he reluctantly agreed…though some suggested that was his idea all along. Either way, the Barbour shows never aired, Barris took over and the show was a modest hit for a while. Gary Owens hosted the first season of the prime-time syndicated version but then Chuckie took that over, too.
There have been a couple of attempts to revive the show but they haven't worked…I think because the format wasn't the star. It was the chemistry of Barris and the kind of panelists he selected. They created the context that the real bad acts were there to be enjoyed on whatever level one could enjoy them…and of course, the bad acts made the good acts look better.
There was one segment I'd love to see again. One day, I got a call from a performer friend of mine, Charlie Brill, who sometimes appeared on the show as a judge. Charlie said, "Are you watching The Gong Show?" I said no. He said, "Turn it on." I said, "Why?" He said, "Don't ask why. Just turn it on. You'll see."
So I did what Charlie said, just in time to see Barris introduce a number by the show's director, John Dorsey. You heard Dorsey's voice say, "Camera three, pan right to the door…ready three, take three…" and the image on the screen cut to the door out of the booth from which Dorsey directed the show. You saw Dorsey tap dance out of the booth, tap his way onto stage, do an entire number (not bad) and tap his way back to the booth, all the time calling out camera directions and shots. He was saying, "Camera two, two-shot on Charlie and Mitzi…ready three, take three…camera one, pan left, waist-shot of Chuck…" Throughout, his routine was perfectly covered with rapid-fire cutting right on the beats. There's a skill to directing a show like that and even people who loathed the content of The Gong Show admired the way Dorsey was able to cover it and do a live camera-cut…which means that camera shots were chosen as on a live show with no after-the-fact selection of shots. And it was even more impressive that he was able to do it while tap-dancing.