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      ‘One Piece’ Creator Hopes Live-Action Series Will Defy ‘a History of Failure’

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      On Thursday, an eight-part adaptation of Eiichiro Oda’s pirate comedy-adventure “One Piece” will make its Netflix debut. The stakes are high: Millions of fans want to see if the showrunners, Matt Owens and Steven Maeda (whom Oda describes as “‘One Piece’ superfans”), succeeded in converting the beloved manga and anime series to live-action. Although some viewers over 30 may not recognize the title, “One Piece” is one of the most popular entertainment franchises in the world.Since July 1997, when it began appearing in the Japanese manga magazine Weekly Shonen Jump, “One Piece” collections have sold more than 516 million copies worldwide. An animated TV series notched its 1,000th episode earlier this year, and there have been numerous TV specials, light novels and video games; fans discuss “One Piece” trivia on countless websites. The 15th theatrical feature, “One Piece Film: Red,” was the No. 1 box-office hit in Japan in 2022, outdrawing “Top Gun: Maverick.”Netflix held the fan screening in Santa Monica, Calif. The “One Piece” franchise is enormously popular, with more than 516 million books sold and numerous anime series and movies released.Yuri Hasegawa for The New York TimesOda is extremely private — he does not allow his face to be photographed, if he can help it — but he talked about “One Piece” in a rare interview from Los Angeles. Speaking through the interpreter Taro Goto, he discussed the origins of “One Piece,” casting its hero for TV, and the film that changed his mind about live-action adaptation. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.When it comes to adapting a phenomenally popular manga and anime series like “One Piece” to live action, what do you have to keep in mind?A live-action adaptation of a manga doesn’t simply re-enact the source material on a one-to-one basis: It involves really thinking about what fans love about the characters, the dynamics among them — and being faithful to those elements. A good live-action show doesn’t have to change the story too much. The most important thing is whether the actors can reproduce the characters in a way that will satisfy the people who read the manga. I think we did it well, so I hope audiences will accept it.Colton Osorio, left, and Peter Gadiot in “One Piece,” premiering Thursday on Netflix.NetflixYou’ve said you wanted to be a manga artist since you were in elementary school. How did “One Piece” begin?I set out to draw the manga I wanted to read when I was young. When I started, I had to draw things that didn’t exist to get attention. There were plenty of heroes who fight the demons and save the world; the market was saturated with that kind of story. I wanted to do something different but relatable. I understood that I had been supported and helped by a lot of people to get to where I was, so friendship became a central theme.The hero of the story is Monkey D. Luffy (it rhymes, appropriately, with “goofy”), who is determined to become King of the Pirates by finding a fabulous treasure known as the One Piece. Luffy is warmhearted, upbeat and ferociously devoted to his friends, but he’s no matinee idol. How did you design him?I knew I wanted to write a pirate manga, and just drew from instinct the kind of young boy I imagined in the role. As the adventure continued, I realized that various kinds of pirates would appear, so I decided to give Luffy a face that would be very easy to draw. Later, when I had to give autographs and needed to sketch Luffy, it was easy to do.“One Piece” includes strong female characters like Nami, played in the series by Emily Rudd. (With Mackenyu Arata, center, and Iñaki Godoy.)NetflixSomething that sets “One Piece” apart from many adventure manga is the powerful, capable women in the story, including the archaeologist Robin and Nami, the navigator.There are many strong women in the world of “One Piece” — women with intelligence like Robin, or with abilities like Nami. There are even attractive and strong women among the enemy pirates. In the manga I read as a kid, there was always a point where the heroine existed just to be rescued. That didn’t sit well with me; I didn’t want to create a story about women being kidnapped and saved. I depict women who know how to fight for themselves and don’t need to be saved. If a moment comes where they’re overpowered, their shipmates will help them out, and vice versa.As a boy, Luffy ate the accursed gum-gum fruit and it turned his body into rubber, allowing him to deliver fantastic stretchy kicks and punches in fights. Isn’t he better suited to animation than to live action?When I first started, I didn’t think there was any point in drawing a manga that could be remade in live-action. But when I saw the movie “Shaolin Soccer,” it felt like a manga-esque world brought to life. I changed my mind. I realized times had changed, and there was technology available that could make a live-action “One Piece” happen. So I shifted to finding the right partner to bring the manga to life.Actors have portrayed Luffy and his crew in stage shows and even in a Kabuki play. But attempts to adapt popular anime into American live-action movies and series have generally been unsuccessful, as in the widely panned “Ghost in the Shell” (2017) and the short-lived “Cowboy Bebop” (2021). Did that worry you?Various manga had been made into live action, but there was a history of failure; no one in Japan could name a successful example. Would fans of “One Piece” — and viewers who don’t know the manga — accept it? Perhaps it was time to search for the answer. Thankfully, Netflix agreed that they wouldn’t go out with the show until I agreed it was satisfactory. I read the scripts, gave notes and acted as a guard dog to ensure the material was being adapted in the correct way.Oda said casting Luffy was the biggest challenge. “I didn’t expect to find anyone quite like Iñaki Godoy,” he said.NetflixLuffy is not the brightest doubloon in the dead man’s chest, but he’s an endearing character: He’s impulsive and happy-go-lucky until some villain threatens his friends or menaces someone weaker — then it’s a fight to the finish. Was he difficult to cast?I thought the biggest challenge was going to be finding somebody to play Luffy — I didn’t expect to find anyone quite like Iñaki Godoy. When I first created Luffy, I drew the most energetic child I could imagine: a normal child on the outside, but not at all normal on the inside. Iñaki was just like the person I drew; he felt absolutely natural. Before I saw the first cut of the show, a lot of my notes were based on how the manga Luffy would act. But after seeing Iñaki’s performance, I was able to shift gears and give notes on how the live-action Luffy should act.The live-action “One Piece” uses more extensive dialogue than the manga or the animated series, which focus more on the visuals.In a manga, the more dialogue you put in, the less space you have to draw, so I cut the words as much as possible. But when people actually talk, the conversations are different. In live-action dramas, there’s always a lot of dialogue. If the characters spoke in real life, their speeches would have the natural feel that’s in the scripts. I’m very happy about how that turned out.Over the last 26 years, you’ve drawn thousands of pages of the manga as well as magazine covers, book covers and posters. You still draw in ink on paper; have you ever considered switching to digital?Everyone is drawing digitally now and it’s not that I’m not interested in it, but for some reason readers tend to take that work a little lightly. I enjoy the experience of drawing by hand, and I expect I’ll continue using hand drawing for the duration of “One Piece.”You’ve spoken with enthusiasm about the possibility of a second season of the live-action series, and “One Piece” collections continue to appear on best-seller lists around the world. When you started Luffy’s saga back in 1997, did you ever imagine it would run for more than 25 years?I never thought “One Piece” would last this long: When I began, I imagined it might run for five years. But it was my first time doing something serialized, and I found that as I kept writing, the characters took on lives of their own. Before I knew it, they were writing the story for me, and it just kept going. More

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      In ‘Invasion,’ Simon Kinberg Adds Touchy-Feely to Creepy-Crawly

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      The series co-creator says the real ticking clock of the alien-invasion show, back this month, is “Can we make connections with other people in time?”This interview includes spoilers for the Season 2 premiere of “Invasion.”The Apple TV+ series “Invasion” is about aliens attacking Earth, but Season 1, which arrived almost two years ago, took some time getting to … you know, the invasion. It was fine and dandy to meet a bunch of people around the world as they faced weird happenings, but where were the creatures, the cool spaceships, the explosions?“I was certainly conscious that it wasn’t going to be like a lot of other alien-invasion films and television shows that are sort of rock ’em, sock ’em,” Simon Kinberg, the series co-creator (with David Weil) and showrunner, said recently.Mitsuki (Shioli Kutsuna) is given a special task in Season 2. Kinberg described the character as one of the “people in our midst that are sort of vibrating at a different frequency.”Apple TV+To fine-tune the show’s distinctive mood, he reached back to his experience as a producer on “Logan,” the unexpectedly melancholy film that concluded the Wolverine trilogy in 2017.“We really slowed that movie down and focused it on drama and relationship,” Kinberg said. “While they weren’t used to the pacing of a movie like ‘Logan,’ audiences were moved and emotionally engaged — with also action and superpowers, the same way that ‘Invasion’ has supernatural mystery.”Season 2, which premiered last week, picks up four months after Season 1 ended, and Earth is in a bad way. Deadly ink-black creatures are rampaging, and familiar characters are engulfed in the apocalyptic chaos. The brainiac Mitsuki (Shioli Kutsuna), for example, is getting over her grief by engaging in guerrilla warfare against the aliens. In that same span, the well-to-do homemaker Aneesha (Golshifteh Farahani) has further accelerated her transformation into a ruthless survivor.Golshifteh Farahani plays the formerly well-to-do homemaker Aneesha, who has morphed into a ruthless survivor since the alien invasion.Apple TV+While the action has amped up, the new season also explores a quasi-psychedelic dimension, most spectacularly after Mitsuki is whisked to the wreckage of a spacecraft downed in Season 1. There, an egomaniacal entrepreneur (Shane Zaza) leads a team that is trying to communicate with a nebulous extraterrestrial presence.“You realize that it’s not just the war, but it’s also trying to understand the mechanics of the thinking of this alien,” Alik Sakharov, who directed four episodes of the new season, including the premiere, said in a video chat.A huge science-fiction fan, with “Deadpool,” “The Martian” and several Marvel Cinematic Universe entries on his résumé, Kinberg, 50, spoke in a video call from his home in Los Angeles about his preference for an unconventional approach to sci-fi in the show. He also teased a connection between that mysterious black shard and a certain Jedi weapon. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.The alien-invasion subgenre tends to offer either action-driven, “War of the Worlds”-type stories or more philosophical narratives like “Arrival” or “Contact.” Why did you try to combine both approaches in the show?What was exciting to me was creating a new type of tonal template for a science-fiction show, and specifically an alien-invasion story, where you are combining something really epic with something really intimate, something that’s very supernatural and science fiction with something that’s very human and dramatic. I actually pitched the show to Apple as “War of the Worlds” combined with [Alejandro González Iñárritu’s] movie “Babel.” So as you said, “Arrival,” “Contact” and, for me, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” was a huge influence — those are very grounded, much smaller. But I also love telling stories on a big scale, having worked on superhero movies, the “Star Wars” universe, and I wondered what would happen if you could combine the two of them.In Season 1, the aliens crawling over Earth were lethal shape-shifting beasties. That was bad enough, but they are even worse now.Yeah, we called them the worker aliens in Season 1. We see a few of them in Season 2, and they are evolved or enhanced into the hunter-killer aliens. They are organic, they are bioengineered — so they’re both organic and inorganic.What Kinberg called “the worker aliens” are bioengineered, he explained, “both organic and inorganic.”Apple TV+Do they have a life cycle like the Xenomorph from “Alien”? I’m sorry, I’m getting really nerdy here.No, I love getting nerdy! [Laughs.] They don’t have a life cycle, but they’re able to be killed. We spend a lot of time in the writers’ room getting as nerdy as possible and trying to build the rules because we have lots of powers this season in terms of what the characters are able to do, and we want to be really careful.At the end of Season 1, we’re told that the aliens are “terraforming.” So they’re involved in some big project?Absolutely. They’re not here to simply kill us — killing us is a byproduct of just wanting our land. It is like most invasions for territory, whether it’s humans invading other humans or aliens invading humans. They’re invading our planet for resources, and they’re just clearing the way so they can have it.Mitsuki, Caspar (Billy Barratt) and Luke (Azhy Robertson) all have a special relationship with the aliens. Why these three?I remember reading or hearing from people that they didn’t know why these different parallel stories were being told in Season 1, that it felt arbitrary. Season 2 starts to really show what the connections are between these people. We chose them because they are special or touched. I really believe that some people do have E.S.P., some people have different kinds of, let’s call them powers. There would be people in our midst that are sort of vibrating at a different frequency — and it would be the frequency that the aliens are operating on.Why are you making the main characters gradually gravitate toward each other?I think that the core of the show is “Can we make connections with other people in time?” The real ticking clock of the show for me isn’t “Are we going to develop weapons that are strong enough to kill the aliens?” That’s not really what the show is about.Is that why the story plays off the concept of the hive mind?The idea is that, ultimately, our advantage as humans is that we’re able to create community — which you can call a hive mind — whether it’s the internet or cheering for the same sports team or nationalism. You have people that may share a political cause or a love for something or a love for one another as a family. Within that, you have the thing that we inherently bring to any situation, which is our individually unique perspective. And I think that type of individual heroism, when combined with other people, is what makes us able to survive, let alone hopefully overcome a technologically superior race.In Season 1, Aneesha and her children find a mysterious black alien shard that, of course, surfaces again in Season 2. What can you tell us about it?The shard is something really powerful. I really grew up a “Star Wars” kid, and I thought about the kyber crystals that make the lightsabers. I was always fascinated about where they came from, and so the shard is my sort of kyber crystal for the show.What do you want viewers to get out of “Invasion” as Season 2 gets underway?It has the peanut butter and jelly that are my favorite elements of my favorite science fiction: You really get to go on a big ride with people you care about. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Claim to Fame’ and ‘Family Law’

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      The ABC reality show hosted by Kevin and Frankie Jonas wraps up, as does Canadian legal drama on the CW.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Aug. 28-Sept. 3. Details and times are subject to change.MondayCLAIM TO FAME 8 p.m. on ABC. While Kevin Jonas tours with his other brothers (the Jonas Brothers), and Frankie Jonas is up to his usual TikTok shenanigans, the show they co-host, about people who have a celebrity relative, is coming to an end. After a season of challenges, detective work and the elimination of relatives of former President Jimmy Carter, Dolly Parton and Jenny McCarthy, there are four celebrity relatives left to uncover. Even though we have our suspicions (*cough* Gabe is related to Nick Cannon *cough*), some contestants like Monay have held tightly to their secret relation. On Monday, all will finally be revealed.STARS ON MARS 8 p.m. on Fox. What happens when you send some “celebranauts” (Fox’s wording, not mine) into a Mars simulation? This week we are getting the answer, as Porsha Williams Guobadia, Cat Cora, Tinashe, Paul Pierce and Adam Rippon compete to assemble a satellite tower and broadcast a message back to Earth. The stakes couldn’t be lower, as obviously they aren’t really on Mars.A still from “Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland.”ALAMY/Alain Le GarsmeurONCE UPON A TIME IN NORTHERN IRELAND 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). From the late 1960s to the late 1990s, Northern Ireland saw no shortage of nationalist and sectarian violence. This new documentary series combines archival footage with profiles of people who lived through the conflict.TuesdayJUSTIFIED: CITY PRIMEVAL 10 p.m. on FX. This show is a sequel to “Justified,” with Timothy Olyphant returning as Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens. This time Givens is joined by his daughter, played by Olyphant’s real-life daughter Vivian Olyphant. The show takes place in Miami, 15 years after Givens left Kentucky. This eighth episode wraps up the first season.WednesdayA computer screen showing the Ticketmaster website.Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesSOLD OUT: TICKETMASTER AND THE RESALE RACKET 11 p.m. on Vice. If you, too, tried and failed to get tickets to Taylor Swift’s tour this year, you are no stranger to mayhem in concert sales. This Vice documentary follows malicious brokers who buy face-value tickets and sell them for much more — and how a Ticketmaster and Live Nation monopoly allows them to get away with it.ThursdayTHE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940) 9:45 p.m. on TCM. Based on the novel of the same name, this movie follows the Joad family as they head to California to start a new life after their farm in Oklahoma was seized by the government. “What we’ve been trying to say is that ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ is just about as good as any picture has a right to be; if it were any better, we just wouldn’t believe our eyes,” Frank S. Nugent wrote in his review for The New York Times.FridayFAMILY LAW 9 p.m. on The CW. This Canadian law drama has followed Abigail Bianchi (Jewel Staite) as she rehabilitated herself and her image after showing up to court drunk. This season she has continued to work at the family practice, Svensson and Svensson, while managing her crumbling marriage. The finale will put that all into perspective as she has to choose between her family’s law firm and a lucrative offer at her former firm.SaturdayTopher Grace, left, and George Clooney in “Ocean’s Eleven.”Warner Bros., via Everett CollectionOCEAN’S ELEVEN (2001) 8:30 p.m. on TBS. This movie gave us three rules to live by, or keep while committing crimes: “Don’t hurt anybody, don’t steal from anyone who doesn’t deserve it, and play the game like you’ve got nothing to lose.” The story follows Danny Ocean (George Clooney), Rusty (Brad Pitt) and their friends as they plan a heist from a casino owner who is not-so-coincidentally the lover of Danny’s ex-wife, Tess (Julia Roberts). Watch for the truly random foods — popcorn, fruit cup, lollipop? — that Brad Pitt’s character is eating in each scene.SundayTHE INCREDIBLES (2004) 6 p.m. on Freeform. This animated movie about a family of superheros who try to keep their individual superpowers under wraps gave us some amazing characters: Jack-Jack (the bizarrely strong baby of the family), Frozone (everything he touches can turn to ice) and Edna Mode (“My God, pull yourself together!”). “‘The Incredibles’ may resonate more strongly with adults than with children, as it is, at its heart, a story of midlife frustration and compromise, examining the toll that unfulfilling work can exact on a marriage, and the heady rebirth that professional satisfaction can bring,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times. If you can’t get enough of this superhero family, INCREDIBLES 2 (2018) is airing immediately after on the same channel. More

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      Bob Barker, Betty White and Their Fight Over Billy the Elephant

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      Barker and White were known for supporting animal welfare but took opposite sides in a debate about the best home for an elephant.Bob Barker and Betty White were American television fixtures for decades who were united in their support of animal welfare causes but were divided about what they thought was best for an elephant named Billy.The tension between them, about a planned renovation of the Los Angeles Zoo’s elephant exhibit, became fodder for celebrity and gossip outlets. Barker, who died on Saturday, had opposed the renovation and wanted the one elephant left at the zoo at the time, Billy, to be moved to a sanctuary. White, who was deeply involved with the zoo, supported the renovation.In January 2009, Barker, Cher and Lily Tomlin spoke at a Los Angeles City Council meeting to oppose the renovation and Barker offered to pay $1.5 million to relocate Billy.Barker had opposed the exhibit for years, and in 2006 said that the elephants there had “lived in misery.”The zoo’s nonprofit partner, the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association, responded that the zoo was the elephant’s home and that it would give Billy and other elephants “a level of personal care and state-of-the-art veterinary services they simply won’t get anywhere else,” The Los Angeles Times reported.White had a more than five-decade relationship with the zoo and was a trustee of the Zoo Association at the time of her death in December 2021. She told The New York Times in 2011 that the zoo was her home away from home and that she could drop by outside normal visiting hours.She spoke in support of the renovation at a City Council meeting and stood by the project in a 2012 interview with the zoo’s magazine, Zoo View.“It seemed like it was never going to happen, and to almost get shut down, that close to fruition — I think it was a whole week that I didn’t sleep,” she said. “But sure enough, by persevering, we got it accomplished, and it’s beautiful on both sides of the enclosure. It’s great for the elephants, and it’s great for the people.”Representatives for Barker and White did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Sunday.Animal welfare supporters, including Bob Barker, Cher and Lily Tomlin, for years argued that Billy the elephant should be removed from the Los Angeles Zoo.Richard Vogel/Associated PressThe disagreement gave rise to a rumor of a feud between the two that was published in 2009 in The National Enquirer, which cited anonymous sources saying that Barker had threatened to not attend the Game Show Awards if White attended. Neither Barker nor White appears to have addressed the rumor in public.Barker did attend the 2009 award show, where he was honored for his work on “The Price Is Right.”White, who won the award for Favorite Celebrity Player for “Million Dollar Password,” only appeared at the show in a video tribute to Mark Goodson, who produced shows including “The Price Is Right,” “Family Feud” and “Match Game.”Four years later, White tried to make amends, The National Enquirer said, again citing an anonymous source.White visiting Billy the elephant at the Los Angeles Zoo in 2008.Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times, via Getty ImagesBilly still lives at the zoo, though a Los Angeles City Council committee said in December 2022 that after 30 years, Billy should be moved to a sanctuary.Cher and Tomlin are still supporting the effort to move Billy. The zoo said that it disagreed with the effort and that it had “complete confidence in the knowledge, skills and expertise of our entire animal care team.” More

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      America Came on Down, and Bob Barker Was Thrilled Every Time

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      At the helm of “The Price Is Right” for 35 years, Barker eased many sick days with his knack for turning silly games and giddy contestants into fun television.On YouTube, fans have posted multiple compilations of contestants summoned to come on down to the podiums of “The Price Is Right.” They are screaming, they are hyperventilating, they are fully freaking out. All this before they have even bid on a luggage set, a roll-top desk, a home stereo system.Bob Barker, the show’s longtime host, who died Saturday, was the still point in this delirious world. He joined the show in 1972 — an original version had run from 1956 to 1965 — and stayed on its Television City stage for 35 years. Eventually the stage was named for him. Over the decades, his ties narrowed, his collars shortened. His tan remained the finest that the sun or, just possibly, the aestheticians of Burbank, Calif., could provide, even as his hair went from brown to gray to white. His eyebrows were twin carets, inserting pleasure or gentle mockery into a scene. He had the gift, which great hosts have, of making inane, repetitive games feel risky, exciting. Each new contestant, tens of thousands of them during his tenure, seemed to delight him.I watched “The Price Is Right” like a lot of us probably did: at home, sick, when nothing else was on and I couldn’t convince my mom to drive to a video store. I associate the show with the scents and flavors of those days — mentholated cough drops, chicken Cup O’ Noodles, children’s Robitussin. Woozy on phenylephrine, I followed games like Plinko, Bullseye, Cliff Hangers, in which bids sent a yodeling mountain climber up a cardboard slope. I could have sworn I’d hallucinated that last one. I had not.Reliable, consistent, even courtly, Barker smiled through it all. And at the end of every episode, he reminded us to spay and neuter our pets. He wanted us to choose responsibly, to bid judiciously. He saw us through inflation, recession, bubble and boom and bust. He was America’s dad. Then its granddad. Had a sexual harassment suit by Dian Parkinson, one of “Barker’s Beauties,” gone forward, he might also have been seen as America’s lechy uncle. (The suit was eventually dropped, though other women received payments after suing the show for sexual harassment, racial discrimination and wrongful termination.)There’s a frenzy, a late-capitalist absurdity to “The Price Is Right,” which continues under the gleeful ministrations of the comedian Drew Carey and requires little in the way of knowledge or skill, beyond a vague sense of what things cost at the supermarket. (An unusually dark aspect of the Carey era: a new game called Pay the Rent.) The show supports the very American notion that everyone deserves something for nothing — or at least, something for knowing the price of a box of raisins and having the upper body strength to spin a wheel. A show in which men made the rules and did the talking while women posed in short skirts, that feels an unfortunate kind of American, too.Contestants lucky enough to come on down won prizes that some of them could not have afforded otherwise, prizes that they may not have wanted and. cars excepted, probably did not need. People populated that studio audience because they weren’t at work, because work couldn’t substitute for the excitement of being on television. Most jobs would not give them an RV just for nudging a number higher or lower. There are reasons that it is America’s longest running game show.If we watched the show in the Barker years, if we watch it now, that likely means that we weren’t at work either. The hunger for wealth, for merchandise, can feel like a fever. So it makes sense that this is what we tuned into when we were sick, when we were low, when we had slipped, owing to illness or age or some other factor, out of the workday world.Barker worked hard. No one could deny it. He seems to have been paid handsomely for his labor. (The models who caressed all that stereo equipment, not so much.) He was calm while the contestants had hysterics, smooth while they behaved erratically. If he wanted a new car, no yodeling would be required, no frenzy. He understood his position, his reputation, and could happily satirize it in side projects like his cameos in “Happy Gilmore,” “The Nanny,” and “How I Met Your Mother.”So raise a glass — or a plastic cup of cough syrup — to a man who knew his own worth. More

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      Bob Barker, Longtime Host of ‘The Price Is Right,’ Dies at 99

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      The winner of numerous Emmy Awards, he was almost as well known for his advocacy of animal rights as he was for his half a century as a daytime television fixture.Bob Barker, whose warmth and wit as the host of “The Price Is Right” for nearly four decades beckoned legions of giddy Americans to a stage promising luxury vacations and brand-new cars, died on Saturday at his home in the Hollywood Hills section of Los Angeles. He was 99.His death was announced by a spokesman, Roger Neal.Mr. Barker, who was also a longstanding and prominent advocate for animal rights, was a fixture of daytime television for half a century — first as the host of “Truth or Consequences,” from 1956 to 1974, and, most famously, starting in 1972, on “The Price Is Right,” the longest-running game show on American television.He began his 35-year stint as host of “The New Price Is Right,” as it was then known, when it made its debut on CBS as a revised and jazzed-up version of the original “The Price Is Right,” which had been on the air from 1956 to 1965. (The “New” was soon dropped from the name.) He was also host of a weekly syndicated nighttime version from 1977 until it was canceled in 1980.Mr. Barker with Janice Pennington, left, and Anitra Ford — two of the models known as Barker’s Beauties, whose main function was to display the prizes — on the set of “The Price Is Right” in 1972.CBSAlmost a decade before he retired in 2007, Mr. Barker estimated that during his tenure more than 40,000 contestants had heeded the announcer’s familiar call to “come on down!” and collected some $200 million in small and large prizes, from beach blankets to Buicks, by guessing the prices of various objects.Mr. Barker won 14 Daytime Emmy Awards as host of “The Price Is Right” and four more as executive producer (as well as a lifetime achievement Emmy in 1999). He once said that the show had lasted as long as it did because “all our games are based on prices, and everyone can identify with that.” He added, however, that he personally never knew the price of anything, and that if he were ever a contestant on such a show he would be “a total failure.”Mr. Barker was widely known for his longstanding dedication to the cause of animal rights. He quit as master of ceremonies for both the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants in 1988 because they gave fur coats as prizes. He also protested the mistreatment of animals by their trainers on the sets of various movies and television shows. He ended every installment of “The Price Is Right” by saying: “Help control the pet population. Have your pet spayed or neutered.”Almost a decade before he retired in 2007, Mr. Barker estimated that during his tenure more than 40,000 contestants had heeded the announcer’s familiar call to “come on down!” and had collected some $200 million in prizes, from beach blankets to Buicks.Photographs by Getty Images and Associated PressRobert William Barker was born on Dec. 12, 1923, in Darrington, Wash. His father, Byron, was a power line foreman who in 1929 died from complications of injuries he had received in a fall from a pole several years earlier. Shortly thereafter, his mother, Matilda (Tarleton) Barker, took a job teaching in Mission, S.D, on the Rosebud Indian Reservation.“Cowboys tied up their horses at hitching rails,” Mr. Barker recalled of those years. “It was like I was growing up in the Old West.”Mr. Barker in a publicity photo from 1956, the year he began hosting “Truth or Consequences.” For two years he was seen on both that show and “The Price Is Right.”Elmer Holloway/NBCU, via Getty ImagesWhen Mr. Barker was 13, his mother married Louis Valandra, a tire salesman, and they moved to Springfield, Mo. He received a basketball scholarship to Drury College in Springfield but dropped out to enlist as a Naval Aviation cadet when World War II broke out.He was waiting for a combat assignment when the war ended, and he was discharged as a lieutenant junior grade. He returned to Drury, majored in economics and graduated summa cum laude in 1947.Even before he earned his degree, Mr. Barker had begun his first radio job, at KTTS in Springfield, where he was a disc jockey, a news writer, a sportscaster and a producer. After college he worked at WWPG in Palm Beach, Fla., and KWIK in Burbank, Calif.In 1945, he married Dorothy Jo Gideon, his high school sweetheart, who once explained the secret of their marriage this way: “I love Bob Barker. And Bob Barker loves Bob Barker.” She died in 1981, and Mr. Barker never remarried.Mr. Barker is survived by his half brother, Kent Valandra. Mr. Barker’s longtime friend Nancy Burnet, a fellow animal rights activist who had been overseeing his care — and about whom he wrote in his autobiography, “Our relationship has gone on for 25 years, off and on. Mostly on.” — is an executor of his estate.Mr. Barker with his wife, Dorothy Jo, and their dogs in 1977. He was widely known for his dedication to the cause of animal rights.CBS, via Getty ImagesMr. Barker’s big break came in 1956 when the producer Ralph Edwards heard him on KNX, a Los Angeles radio station, and asked him to audition for “Truth or Consequences,” a long-running game show (it had begun on radio in 1940) on which contestants were required to perform wild stunts. He got the job, and he and Mr. Edwards became lifelong friends.Mr. Barker was still the host of “Truth or Consequences” when he was offered “The Price Is Right” in 1972, and for two years those jobs overlapped. For a long time after that he was among the busiest people on television, with duties that also included hosting the Rose Bowl parade and the Pillsbury Bake-Off for most of the 1970s and ’80s.He occasionally showed up in movies as well, almost always as a comically exaggerated version of himself. His most memorable appearance was in the 1996 comedy “Happy Gilmore,” in which he gleefully engaged in a brawl with the title character, a boorish hockey player turned golfer played by Adam Sandler.Mr. Barker occasionally showed up on the big screen, usually as a comically exaggerated version of himself. His most memorable appearance was with Adam Sandler in the 1996 comedy “Happy Gilmore.”Universal PicturesTo many viewers “The Price Is Right” was, as one critic put it, among television’s last “islands of wholesomeness.” That image was challenged in 1994 when Dian Parkinson, who for almost 20 years had been a model on the show — one of the so-called Barker’s Beauties, whose main function was to display the prizes — sued Mr. Barker for sexual harassment.Ms. Parkinson, who had left the show the year before, said she had sex with Mr. Barker because she thought she would lose her job if she didn’t. In response, Mr. Barker acknowledged that he and Ms. Parkinson had had a relationship for a number of years, beginning in 1989, but insisted that it had been consensual.“She told me I had always been so strait-laced that it was time I had some hanky-panky in my life,” he said, “and she volunteered the hanky-panky.” Ms. Parkinson withdrew the suit in 1995 because, she said, she lacked both the emotional endurance and the money to pursue it.Mr. Barker announced his retirement in October 2006. “I will be 83 years old on Dec. 12,” he said at the time, “and I’ve decided to retire while I’m still young.”His final episode as host of “The Price Is Right” was taped on June 6, 2007, and shortly shown twice on June 15: first in its regular daytime slot and again in prime time.Mr. Barker’s chair sat empty after the taping of his final episode of “The Price Is Right” in June 2007.Damian Dovarganes/Associated PressAfter an extensive search, the comedian Drew Carey was chosen as Mr. Barker’s successor in July 2007. In an interview with The Times, Mr. Carey called Mr. Barker a “legend” and praised him for the “empathy” he showed contestants.“He wants them to win. You can hug him,” Mr. Carey said. “He went from being your dad and your uncle to your grandfather.”Mr. Barker returned to the show as a guest in 2009 to promote his autobiography, “Priceless Memories,” and again in 2013, to celebrate his 90th birthday, and 2015, as the unannounced guest host, an April Fool’s Day gag. He promised to come back when he turned 100.“People ask me, ‘What do you miss most about “Price is Right”?’ And I say, ‘The money,’” Mr. Barker said in a 2013 interview with Parade magazine. “But that is not altogether true. I miss the people, too.”Richard Severo, a Times reporter from 1968 to 2006, died in June. Peter Keepnews and More

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      Bob Barker Fought Animal Cruelty Through Philanthropy and Activism

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      With millions in donations and a powerful bully pulpit, Mr. Barker became one of the most prominent allies of the animal rights movement in Hollywood.Bob Barker, the longtime host of the television game show “The Price Is Right” who died on Saturday, made animal rights advocacy a hallmark both of his career in show business and his life after retirement.Over decades as the host of the longest-running game show in American television history, Mr. Barker, beginning in the 1980s, used his bully pulpit to remind millions of viewers to “help control the pet population; have your pet spayed or neutered.”In one instance in 1996, he powered through his announcement even as an excited contestant clung at his arm, unable to contain her joy at having just won $51,676, or $99,602 when adjusted for inflation.He continued that tradition for more than 20 years, until his very last show on June 15, 2007.“There are just too many cats and dogs being born,” he explained in an interview with The New York Times in 2004. “Animals are being euthanized by the millions simply because there are not enough homes for them. In the United States, there is a dog or cat euthanized every 6.5 seconds.”Mr. Barker supported a wide range of efforts to fight what activists saw as rampant animal cruelty in American society.Bob Barker, at 11 years old, with his dog Brownie, in South Dakota.Bob BarkerAs one of the most prominent allies of the movement in Hollywood, he became a strict vegetarian, stopped dyeing his hair because the products were tested on animals and quit his job as host of the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants because their organizers refused to remove fur coats from the prize packages.“I am so proud of the trailblazing work Barker and I did together to expose the cruelty to animals in the entertainment industry,” Nancy Burnet, a fellow animal rights activist who had been overseeing his care, said in a statement on Saturday.Mr. Barker put $25 million into founding the DJ&T Foundation, which finances clinics that specialize in spaying and neutering. The foundation was named after Mr. Barker’s wife, Dorothy Jo, and his mother, Matilda Valandra, who was known as Tilly.Estimates show that the number of dogs and cats euthanized in shelters has been reduced to a fraction of what it was in the 1990s, at least partially attributable to “the drive to sterilize pet dogs and cats,” according to a 2018 study.Mr. Barker also donated $5 million to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society at the urging of its founder Paul Watson, who used the money to buy a ship named for Mr. Barker for use in the organization’s anti-whaling campaigns.Bob Barker donated $5 million to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to buy a ship for the group’s anti-whaling campaigns. The ship, left, was named The Bob Barker in his honor.Selase Kove-Seyram for The New York Times“He said he thought he could put the Japanese whaling fleet out of business if he had $5 million,” Mr. Barker said of Mr. Watson in an interview with The Associated Press. “I said, ‘I think you do have the skills to do that, and I have $5 million, so let’s get it on.’”Ingrid Newkirk, the president of the animal rights group PETA, said in a statement on Saturday that Mr. Barker had a “profound commitment to making the world a kinder place.”Ms. Newkirk added, “To us — and to so many animals around the world — Bob will always be a national animal rights treasure.”Mr. Barker’s efforts were born from a lifelong affinity for animals.“I always had a pack of dogs with me,” he said in 2004, recalling his upbringing in the small town of Mission on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation in South Dakota. “There were a lot of dogs in Mission. Not many people, but a lot of dogs.”His dedication to opposing animal cruelty continued well into his retirement, as Mr. Barker continued to donate to organizations like PETA, which named its West Coast headquarters in Los Angeles for Mr. Barker after he made a $2.5 million donation in 2012 for renovations. More

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      David Jacobs, ‘Dallas’ and ‘Knots Landing’ Creator, Dies at 84

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      As the creator of “Dallas” and its spinoff “Knots Landing,” he did more than anyone to change the landscape of nighttime TV.David Jacobs, who more than anyone invented the modern prime-time soap opera when he created “Dallas,” the long-running CBS series about an amoral oil baron and his feuding family, and followed it a year later with “Knots Landing,” died on Sunday in Burbank, Calif. He was 84.His son, Aaron, said he died in a hospital from complications of a series of infections. Mr. Jacobs had also recently received a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.Mr. Jacobs had written for several television shows when, in 1977, he pitched CBS on what he called an American version of “Scenes From a Marriage,” Ingmar Bergman’s 1973 mini-series, which was later turned into a film. His story shifted the location from Sweden to a Southern California cul-de-sac with a focus on four middle-class couples.CBS showed some interest but passed, asking him to write a glitzier saga instead.“Which meant Texas to me,” Mr. Jacobs recalled in a 2008 interview with the Television Academy. Working with Michael Filerman, an executive at Lorimar Productions, he wrote a script about the wealthy Ewing family.When Mr. Filerman sent the script to CBS, he gave it the title “Dallas.”“‘Dallas?’” Mr. Jacobs recalled saying to Mr. Filerman. “‘Kennedy was killed in Dallas. I don’t want to do this in Dallas. First of all, it was oil people and Houston is the oil city. Dallas is the banking city.’ And Michael said, ‘Who knows that? Who cares? Do you want to watch a show called “Houston”? ’”The title “Dallas” stuck, and the series made its debut in 1978, becoming a megahit for CBS. It took its basic cues from the daytime soap-opera genre — long-running melodramas with core casts that were originally known for being sponsored by soap manufacturers.The cast of “Dallas” featured Larry Hagman as the oil baron, J.R. Ewing; Patrick Duffy as his brother Bobby; Barbara Bel Geddes and Jim Davis as their parents, Miss Ellie and Jock; Linda Gray as Sue Ellen, J.R.’s wife; and Victoria Principal as Pamela, Bobby’s wife.The cast of “Dallas” in a 1979 promotional photo. Front row, from left: Charlene Tilton, Jim Davis and Linda Gray. Back row, from left: Patrick Duffy, Victoria Principal, Barbara Bel Geddes and Larry Hagman. CBS Photo Archive/Getty ImagesIn a cliffhanger to end the third season, J.R. was shot. In the fourth episode of the next season, the identity of his assailant was revealed:It was his sister-in-law and mistress, Kristin Shepard (Mary Crosby). The episode generated a 53.3 Nielsen rating, a record at the time for an entertainment program. (That record would be broken in 1983 by the final episode of “M*A*S*H.”)Mr. Jacobs soon had another series in mind, about a postapocalyptic utopia. But when he pitched it to CBS, a top executive demurred, opened a desk drawer and handed Mr. Jacobs his old script about the couples in the cul-de-sac. It was “Knots Landing.”“Is there any way we can make this a ‘Dallas’ spinoff?” Mr. Jacobs recalled the executive asking.Mr. Jacobs spun off two recurring characters from “Dallas” — Gary, another Ewing brother (played by Ted Shackelford), and his wife, Valene (Joan Van Ark) — and added an ensemble of other characters. “Knots Landing” made its debut in 1979 and became another long-running hit, lasting 14 seasons.Joan Van Ark and Ted Shackelford as husband and wife in a scene from “Knots Landing,” a long-running “Dallas” spinoff also created by Mr. Jacobs. CBS via Getty ImagesDavid Arnold Jacobs was born on Aug. 12, 1939, in Baltimore. His father, Melvin, was a bookie, a cabdriver and an insurance salesman, among other things. His mother, Ruth (Levenson) Jacobs, was a homemaker.By his own account, Mr. Jacobs disliked school until he attended the Maryland Institute College of Art, from which he graduated with a degree in fine arts in about 1961. But while he had artistic talent, he said, he recognized that he wasn’t talented enough to make a living as a painter.He moved to New York City and turned to writing. Over the next dozen or so years, he said, he wrote entries for The Book of Knowledge, a children’s encyclopedia; articles about art, architecture and other subjects for various publications, including The New York Times Magazine; biographies of Beethoven and Charlie Chaplin; and short stories for magazines like Redbook and Cosmopolitan.Mr. Jacobs moved to Los Angeles after his divorce from Lynn Oliansky to stay close to their daughter, Albyn, and found work in TV.He was hired early on to rewrite scripts. One was an episode of “Delvecchio,” a 1976-77 crime drama starring Judd Hirsch as a detective studying to be a lawyer. (A producer threw the script in a garbage can.) Another, in 1976, was for “The Blue Knight,” a police procedural starring George Kennedy.Mr. Jacobs was hired as a staff writer for “The Blue Knight,” but the series was canceled soon after. It had been a Lorimar production, and the company’s Mr. Filerman gave him a deal that led to the creation of “Dallas” and “Knots Landing.”Mr. Jacobs at a TV Land Awards ceremony in 2009 in Los Angeles. His series “Knots Landing” received a 30th-anniversary award. With him, from left, were three of the show’s stars: Donna Mills, Michelle Phillips and Michele Lee.Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty ImagesThe key casting decision in “Dallas” was who would play J.R. In the academy interview, Mr. Jacobs recalled being on a conference call with the actor Robert Foxworth, who was being considered for the role.When Mr. Foxworth asked how the ruthless J.R. could be made more sympathetic, Mr. Jacobs recalled, he told him that was not going to happen. “He likes being the son of a bitch,” Mr. Jacobs said, “and he believes that you get them before they get you.”Mr. Foxworth turned down the role, but he would later be was one of the stars of “Falcon Crest,” another prime-time soap.“Dallas” ended its long run in 1991, “Knots Landing” in 1993. Mr. Jacobs was a creator, producer and executive producer of several other series through the 1990s, but none were as successful. He returned to his roots as an executive producer of “Dallas: The Early Years,” a 1986 TV movie presented as a prequel to the series; ”Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-De-Sac,” a 1997 mini-series; and “Knots Landing Reunion: Together Again,” a 2005 TV movie.A “Dallas” reboot ran from 2012 to 2014 on TNT. But Mr. Jacobs told Forbes.com that he had been excluded from any creative input into the series and later said in an interview with The Daily Beat that he had hated it.In addition to his son, Mr. Jacobs is survived by his wife, Diana (Pietrocarli) Jacobs; his daughters, Albyn Hall and Molly Jacobs; and two granddaughters.In 1981, the debut of “Dynasty” — a much more opulently staged prime-time soap starring Joan Collins, Linda Evans and John Forsythe — provided formidable competition for “Dallas.”“‘Dynasty’ was a better expression of second Reagan administration values than ‘Dallas,’” Mr. Jacobs wrote in an article for The Times in 1990, “because, while ‘Dallas’ was about the quest for money, ‘Dynasty’ was about the things that money could buy. In ‘Dallas,’ money was a tool, a way of keeping score.”He added: “During almost any other period, ‘Dynasty’ would have been regarded as more vulgar than ‘Dallas.’ In the mid-’80s, however, ‘Dynasty’ was widely viewed as the classier of the two shows.” More