For real ‘scraping the bottom-of-the-barrel’ entertainment, you couldn’t go past The Gong Show. Debuting in 1976, Chuck Barris introduced The Unknown Comic, the flounder dance, and (in the process) greatly influenced modern-day performance art with this cool spoof of the amateur talent show.
Celebrities would judge contestants, and – after pretending to restrain themselves – would give a really bad act ‘the Gong.’ After an initial pilot with Gary Owens as host and Arte Johnson, Joanne Worley, Richard Dawson and Adrienne Barbeau as judges, Barris managed to sell both a daytime and a nighttime version… read more >
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