The Gong Show: What Was That All About?
Story By @GIJoeRepairShop
This past Sunday was the fiftieth anniversary of the premiere of The Gong Show on NBC. As a child, I never quite understood what was going on there. Why was there a giant gong? Why were some of the acts so terrible? Why was there a guy with a paper bag over his head? As an adult, I can see that adding a giant gong and paper bags over people’s heads would certainly be an improvement to shows like American Idol.
The Gong Show’s premise is simple enough. The show is a satirical amateur talent contest. Contestants have a certain amount of time (usually between 45 seconds and two minutes) to perform their act for a panel of celebrity judges. The panel evaluates the performance and can strike a giant golden gong at any time if they find the act too painful, or absurd, to continue watching. If any of the judges hit the gong, then the performer must immediately stop their act and leave the stage. If a performer does not get “gonged,” the judges then score their performance out of ten points. Finally, the contestant who accumulates the highest score by the end of each episode wins a trophy and a cash prize. The cash prize is usually an exact, random amount, such as $513.23.
The show was created and hosted by television producer Chuck Barris. It thrived on free-form humor, running gags, and spontaneous on-set antics that poke fun at the television industry. Several famous names appeared on The Gong Show at the beginning of their careers, including Paul Reubens (Pee-wee Herman) who appeared on the show fourteen times! One of the true stars of The Gong Show is Murray Langston, also known as The Unknown Comic. He always appeared with a paper bag over his head. Initially, he decided to wear the bag because he was embarrassed to be seen doing such a quirky nightclub act on television. Ultimately, he would appear on The Gong Show over one hundred fifty times.
The original run of The Gong Show only lasted from the summer of 1976 to the summer of 1978. Censors had been unhappy with the show’s increasingly risqué acts and humor being shown on daytime television. Following an incident in which an act only consisted of two women suggestively eating popsicles, and another incident in which a female contestant suddenly exposed her breasts on air, NBC gave Chuck Barris an ultimatum to tone down the content of the show or face cancellation. Ultimately, this lead to the show’s cancelation.
Sadly, today, The Gong Show lives on in people’s memories, but is widely unavailable on either DVD or Blu-ray. It is also unavailable on any streaming services in the United States. Your best bet to watch old episodes is YouTube, where it continues to entertain millions of happy viewers.
