Longtime television personality Bob Barker died on Saturday at the age of 99, according to his publicist Roger Neal.
“It is with profound sadness that we announce that the World’s Greatest (master of ceremonies) who ever lived, Bob Barker has left us,” Neal said in a statement.
In his more than 30 years as emcee of “The Price is Right,” Barker changed in only one appreciable way: He stopped dyeing his hair in the early 1990s, two decades into the game show’s long and storied run.
But while Barker was synonymous with daytime TV and helping animals, he said in an interview with CBS Sunday Morning that the thing most people wanted to talk about was similar — his fight scene in the legendary Adam Sandler golf movie “Happy Gilmore.”
“They say could you really whip Adam Sandler?” Barker joked. “They say could you really beat Adam Sandler up in real life? I’d say, ‘Are you kidding? Adam Sandler couldn’t beat up Regis Philbin.’”
Although Barker’s scene with Sandler has become legendary, he originally wasn’t in the producers’ plans. Instead, Sandler and others tried to woo Ed McMahon, Johnny Carson’s sidekick, for the role, but he never responded to inquiries.
When Barker was later asked to come on board with the project, he agreed to do so with two stipulations — that writers would re-work the scene to allow Barker to beat Gilmore in a fight … and that the “Price is Right” star could shoot his own fight scenes rather than have a body double.
Barker had been training with his neighbor, Chuck Norris, and wanted to show off his skills.
“We trained every night,” Barker told Sandler while filming. “He helps me with my punches and my kicks, but I have to win this fight.”
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