Della barris biography of barack

Every day, he sees his daughter. Just as every day, fathers throughout the world see their daughters too. She is a beautiful girl, Chuck Barris will tell you, full of the passion and vigor of a child with a lifetime ahead of her. “Della … ” he says, a thought that goes uncompleted. The name just hangs in the air, like the spoonful of chowder hovering before Barris’ mouth.

On this brisk Friday afternoon he is sitting at a rear table at the Friars Club, a place where he has been coming to eat for nearly 40 years. A basket of bread is to his left, a glass of water to his right. Yet his eyes look straight ahead, as if someone is there, waiting. In a sense, there is.

Barris, you see, is a tortured soul,; one who is haunted by his daughter every day. She is dead. Has been for nearly six years. He sees her because, when a child dies, she never really dies. Instead, she sits on your shoulder and whispers devastating nothings into your ear. Why weren’t you there for me? Why didn’t you help me more? Why did you let me die?

Barris hears the whispers. He sits, often consumed by this ghost, in his penthouse apartment atop the Trump Plaza in midtown Manhattan. She is there — a little girl with freckles and long, wavy hair. A teenager, desperate for attention but secondary to her father’s high-flying career as a TV mastermind. An adult, addicted to drugs and struggling to hang on. “It can be torturous,” he says. “Not a day goes by that she doesn’t enter my mind. Not a day.”

He dips in for more soup. They all call him “Mr. Barris” here, equal parts habit and respect. The building is a portal back in time, with its dated wood furniture and maroon-jacketed waitstaff. In the old days, anyone who was anyone in showbiz would stop by, for a laugh and a nice smoke, if nothing else. “Used to be wonderful,” Barris says between slurps. “Still is, but in a different way. Times change.”

Indeed, they do. If you are here looking for wacky Chuck Barris, for the guy with the crazy ‘fro and the Hollywood swagger — bad news. He is gone, and will not be returning. The 74-year-old senior citizen sitting in front of his soup is someone entirely different.

Barris was responsible for inventing and/or producing more than a dozen wildly successful television game shows — including “The Dating Game” and “The Newlywed Game” — which placed him among Hollywood’s most important minds for much of the 1970s. He was a man who could walk down any street in America and instantly be recognized. Yet, nowadays, Barris dismissively calls his creations “meaningless” and “sadly inconsequential.”

The one he speaks most negatively of is “The Gong Show,” which from 1976 to 1980 featured Barris hosting a warped gathering of amateurs: grade-D singers, belly dancers, nose-whistlers, ventriloquists, all judged on their dubious talent by a panel of grade-B personalities. The program made Barris both a household name (he says people still approach him with “Gong Show” questions, comments and insults) and millions of dollars, but he bristles at the buffoonish reputation that follows him.

“If that’s what I go down being remembered for,” he says, “so help me . . . “

Surrounded on this day by men in suits and snazzy ties, Barris is out of place. He wears a pair of wrinkled blue jeans, a black T-shirt and a brown corduroy jacket with one of the pockets sticking out. His gray hair is frazzled, a Muppet post-spin cycle, and he does not care what anyone thinks.

Two years ago, he briefly returned to the spotlight when a largely ignored memoir he wrote in 1982, “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” became a successful motion picture starring George Clooney and Drew Barrymore. The film’s plot turned on Barris’ claims to being an undercover CIA assassin (a far-fetched fantasy he once denied in an interview with Connie Chung but now acknowledges with an ambiguous shrug), and its release afforded him a brief return to the spotlight. “It was good, because it sold books and reminded people that I now see myself, first and foremost, as a writer,” he says. “But the movie promotion wasn’t really me. Promotion, in general, really isn’t me anymore.”

Biography of Della

What is Barris these days — what’s in his soul — is what tortures him. Since the completion of his latest memoir, “Bad Grass Never Dies: More Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” which was released in early April, Barris has turned his attention to his fifth book, a biography of Della, who died of a drug overdose July 28, 1998, in Brentwood, Calif. For now, the project is in the planning stage: How do I do this? Why would I do this? But it is, he swears, his only calling at the end of a long, fruitful existence.

Barris has lived everywhere, from Los Angeles to St. Tropez to New York. He has a striking wife, Mary, who is 30 years his junior, and a handful of loyal friends (his closest is Dick Clark, who first met Barris when the two worked for “American Bandstand” more than 40 years ago).

Four years ago, he survived a cancer that cost him part of one lung and left him, for a time, with a life-threatening infection and an awe-filled glimpse at mortality. “I’ve seen and felt and tasted it all,” he says. Yet there is “a hole,” as he calls it. Something that must be completed.

“I want to know the mystery of Della,” he says. “What made her tick?”

Della Barris was born Dec. 24, 1962, the only child of Chuck and his first wife, Lyn Levy (he has been married three times). The couple divorced 14 years later, and Barris, living in Hollywood at the time, took full custody. His years with Della were a mixed bag. There was, according to friends and relatives, a great deal of love between father and daughter. “I remember the night she was born,” says Riki Wagman, Barris’ sister and the author of an upcoming novel, “Confessions of an Open Window.” “Chuck called me from the hospital in New York, and he was just crying with joy. He adored Della throughout her life.”

Della, she recalls, possessed Chuck’s feisty demeanor (as well as his nose and chin), and a waywardness that sometimes comes from divorced parents. He loved her enough to include her on several “Gong Show” broadcasts (Della was mortified at her ill-conceived role in “The Gong Show Movie”) and would stop any boardroom meeting to take her phone calls. “No one else got that treatment,” says Loretta Strickland, Barris’ longtime secretary. “Just Della.”

Yet Della was a troubled soul, and while Barris was busy running his own production company, he admits that he often placed his daughter’s needs behind his career. It is a thought that, to this day, devastates him, as the “what ifs” creep into his brain. Della, according to Barris, began running with gangs when she was 14, and hard drug usage soon followed.

As a freshman she attended the prestigious Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles, but she bristled at the unisex student body and stuffy attitudes. She asked to be transferred to Beverly Hills High, and her father complied. “So stupid of me,” he says. “Westlake was a wonderful school, and maybe it would have rubbed off on her.”

High school dropout

Instead, Della dropped out of Beverly Hills High after her sophomore year, then ran away from home with “some guy.” Did Barris track her down? Did he spend day and night trying to find her? Did he turn to the FBI? “No,” he says. “And it was a terrible mistake. For years I had thrown money at her, tried to get her into therapy, something . . . anything. I finally gave up and let her go.”

For the next decade, father and daughter had little to no contact. Della spent part of the time living with Levy but was often on her own, dwelling with this person or that, checking in with her parents only when she was low on cash. With some encouragement from Wagman, Della spent time at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y., as part of a writing program for those without high school degrees, but that lasted less than three months.

“She had a series of boyfriends, maybe a girlfriend or two,” Barris says. “One time I got a call from her, and she wanted me to throw her a wedding in New York.” Chuck had never met the groom, had never known the groom existed. “I did it because I was her father,” he says. “But I wasn’t happy about it.”

During her early 30s, Della moved back to Los Angeles and lived in an apartment paid for by her father. Chuck says he encouraged her to get a job, to make new friends, to seek counseling. “One time, she saw a psychiatrist,” he says. “When the session ended, he took me aside and said, `You’ve got your hands full.”‘

Throughout Della’s final years, Chuck recalls a reclusive woman who locked herself in her apartment, consumed large quantities of drugs and mechanically ordered useless merchandise from QVC. Her father paid all her bills but failed to reach her. He refers to that time as the lost years. “Did I deal well as a parent? No,” he says. Then, a long sigh. “On my watch,” he whispers, “she died.”

The day Della passed away, Chuck and Mary were flying to Los Angeles from New York to be with Strickland, whose husband was undergoing treatment for a brain tumor. His suitcase, unusually heavy, was filled with gifts for Della.

“While he was on his way out, I got a call from his ex-wife, telling me about Della dying,” recalls Strickland. “Now when Chuck gets off a plane, the first thing he does is call me. This time, I couldn’t handle it all, and I left him a message to call his ex-wife. I didn’t think I should be the one to tell him.” When Barris found out, he was crushed. “I went to see him,” says Strickland, “and he just walked out and said he needed to be alone. He’s a great man. But he’s never recovered.”

Barris’ days are largely routine. He wakes up in the morning, eats breakfast with his wife, writes, eats lunch. Along with the Della project and the completion of “Bad Grass Never Dies,” Barris has been hard at work tweaking and updating “You and Me Babe,” his first novel (published in 1970) and the only Barris book to reach The New York Times’ best seller list. (It is scheduled to be re-released later this year.)

After lunch, he writes, writes some more, writes a little more, then usually leaves the house at night, possibly for dinner and a play or movie.

Met on blind date

He met Mary in August 1997, when a mutual friend set them up on a blind date. She was a prototypical Kentucky-born Southern belle living in Atlanta, he a hard-nosed writer who had sworn off marriage. An odder couple there never had been. “My friend told me Chuck was very unique, very different,” says Mary. Their first date was dinner at a nearby restaurant. Chuck asked her out again for the following night. “From the moment we laid eyes on each other,” she says, “there was a spark. Chuck has something special in him.”

Chuck Barris, anguished father, loves life because he too well knows the motivation: death. He wakes up every morning and appreciates the sunshine. He goes to sleep at night and acknowledges the gift of another breath. He mourns the loss of his daughter but also knows that her personal legacy is his knowledge. Soak it all in, because it doesn’t last. That’s why Barris writes and writes and writes. It’s his energy. It’s also why someone lies down next to him each night.

“I never wanted to get married again,” he says. “No way. No how. But then I saw what my life could be with Mary. You have to take advantage of opportunities while you still can. You have to keep going.”

Still sitting in the Friars Club, sipping from a glass of water, Barris pulls out a piece of paper and a black pen. He draws a crude pie, then divides it into several pieces. He colors in four of the five slivers, and points at the empty triangle. It represents the dwindling days of his existence.

Just this morning, he says, a friend called from Monaco, raving about the good life. The weather was gorgeous, the Mediterranean Sea was beautiful, and his friend’s yacht was fully loaded and ready to ride.

Barris, meanwhile, was sitting in his apartment, a tortured writer stationed in front of his Dell computer. Upon hearing of the fun and sun of Monaco, Barris took a second to re-examine his life. “Quick conclusion,” he says. “In Monaco, I’d be bored as hell. I need … this.”

———-

Resume highlights

Chuck Barris was responsible for some memorable moments in daytime, primetime and syndicated television programming. Among his game show creations:

– “The Dating Game,” 1965

– “The Newlywed Game,” 1966

– “Operation Entertainment,” 1968

– “The Gong Show,” 1976

– “The $1.98 Beauty Show,” 1978

Bio notes:

– Born June 3, 1929, in Philadelphia.

– Co-composed the 1962 hit song, “Palisades Park.”

– Began his television career as an NBC page.

– Claimed to have been a CIA operative.

– Had a film made about his life, “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” (2002), by George Clooney in his directorial debut.

Source: Internet Movie Database

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