'Everything on There Was True': Marc Summers Backs Explosive Bob Barker Docuseries

LOS ANGELES — For 35 years Bob Barker was the most familiar face in American daytime television, a man who ended every broadcast asking viewers to have their pets spayed and neutered. A new docuseries argues the set behind him was a different place entirely, and one of his contemporaries says the series has it right.

Marc Summers, the 74-year-old former host of "Double Dare," said of the allegations in E!'s "Dirty Rotten Scandals": "Everything on there was true and then..."

The series, released in March, examines long-running claims of a hostile work environment, sexual harassment, and discrimination on "The Price Is Right."

What the record already showed

The allegations are not new, which is part of the story. Model Dian Parkinson sued Barker for sexual harassment in 1994 and dropped the suit the following year. Holly Hallstrom, one of "Barker's Beauties," was fired in 1995 and said the dismissal was retaliation for declining to publicly defend him.

Both cases were covered at the time. Neither dented the man's standing, and he continued hosting until 2007.

Summers ties the change in Barker's behavior to a specific loss — the 1981 death of his wife, Dorothy Jo, at 57. After that, Summers said, "His ego wouldn't fit in the room. It was all about Bob."

The part Hollywood keeps rediscovering

There is a familiar shape here. The claims were public. The lawsuits were filed. The trade press covered them. And the industry decided that a show delivering those ratings was worth not looking at too closely.

That is the durable lesson, and it is not really about one host. An industry that spent the last decade congratulating itself for finally confronting its own conduct had this file open the entire time, in daylight, on network television at 11 a.m.

Barker died in 2023 at 99. He is not available to answer any of it, which is its own kind of ending — the accounting arrives after the only person who could respond is gone.

What's next

"Dirty Rotten Scandals" continues its run, and Summers' comments are likely to draw further recollections from people who worked in daytime television in that era.

Whether any of it changes how Barker is remembered is a separate question. Cultural memory is stubborn, and for most of the country he remains the man with the long microphone and the closing line about pets.