The late Bob Barker’s rep is denying recent allegations of harassment on The Price Is Right set.
“Barker was and is beloved, and people to this day love him,” Barker’s longtime rep Roger Neal told USA Today in a statement on Wednesday, March 18. “He was part of the fabric of American pop culture. He was the greatest MC in TV history. I was honored to have represented him.”
Barker, who died at age 99 in August 2023, was the Price Is Right host from 1972 to 2007.
A clip from E!’s Dirty Rotten Scandals docuseries released by People on Tuesday, March 17, showed two of “Barker’s Beauties,” Kathleen Bradley and Holly Hallstrom, alleging that there were several inappropriate instances with men who worked on the show during the Barker era.
“Over a course of time, I kind of noticed the guys were kind of talking, looking, gawking at the girls,” Bradley, now 75, said. “I found out this is a little more commonplace than I thought.”
She claimed that one of the men “would rub up against us, joking around.” Bradley added, “I learned the stagehand had been around on the set for a long time and was probably doing it to all the other girls.”
Bradley stated it was “totally inappropriate,” so she allegedly reported it to producers. “To my surprise, no action was taken. I was really taken aback,” she recalled. “This was really sexual harassment.”
At one point she “accidentally on purpose” hit one man in the groin when he attempted to show her how to play golf.
“We were so exhausted and tired of the treatment,” Bradley said. “You just have to do what you have to do.”
Hallstrom, now 73, brought up Barker by name.
“If anyone had gone to Bob because Bob was in charge of the show and said, ‘I have a problem, I have a complaint,’ he would have told her to get over it or look for a new job,” she alleged.
After several complaints, CBS implemented a rule regarding The Price Is Right models.
There was apparently a “10-second rule,” in which no one could “openly stare at a model for more than 10 seconds,” the clip alleged.
“There was no one monitoring how long the guys were staring at the models. It was a joke. It was an appeasement,” Hallstrom claimed. “They did things that made it look like they were taking action so you will stop complaining and go away.”
