Watch Bob Barker Get a Standing Ovation When He Debuts His Gray Hair on ‘The Price Is Right’ in 1987

Bob Barker received a standing ovation in 1987 when he walked onto The Price Is Right sound stage and debuted his head full of silver hair.

After several minutes of applause from the audience for his new hair color, Barker, who was 64 years old at the time, teased, “You like the suit, is that it?”

He then thanked the “lady in the back row” who yelled out, “We love your hair!” Barker went on to note, “I know that if you saw the show yesterday, my hair was dark. And I’ll tell you, I had a blind date last night.”

“Never again, but do you like it? Because if you don’t, if you don’t like it, I can chant an old Sioux Indian chant and it’ll be dark again,” he joked with a nod to his Native American roots of the Sioux tribe.

Later on, Barker explained: “I was tinting my hair for years and it started getting blue. Then they put a permanent dye in it and it got red. And so I decided to do the patriotic thing and let it be white. Red, white and blue, and here we are.”

While chatting with Los Angeles Times back in 1990, the TV personality said ratings for the CBS show improved once he went all natural.

“I was prematurely gray,” Barker told the publication. “I began to gray at my temples, and I guess it could be that technology at that time was not what it is today, but I didn’t look good. It looked like I had no hair at my temples, so they suggested I tint it.”

“I went on vacation and I just let it go,” he added. “When I came home the people on the show said, ‘You look better this way than you do with it dyed or tinted. Why don’t you leave it this way?’”

As for the big reveal on The Price Is Right, Barker shared, “We taped ahead. So let’s say on the Wednesday show I had dark hair, but when we taped the next show I had gray hair and that show aired on Thursday. I got a letter from a fellow who said, ‘Bob, you must have had one hell of a night.’”

The acclaimed television host died of natural causes in his longtime Hollywood Hills home this week at the age of 99, Roger Neal — who served as his publicist from 1987 through 1994, and again from 2020 — announced Saturday on behalf of Barker’s girlfriend, Nancy Burnet.

“It is with profound sadness that we announce that the World’s Greatest MC who ever lived, Bob Barker, has left us,” Neal said in a statement.

“I am so proud of the trailblazing work Barker, and I did together to expose the cruelty to animals in the entertainment industry and including working to improve the plight of abused and exploited animals in the United States and internationally,” Burnet added in her own. “We were great friends over these 40 yrs. He will be missed.”

Barker is survived by his half-brother Kent Valandra and half-nephews Robert Valandra and Chip Valandra, as well as a half-niece, Vickie Valandra Kelly.