“On Stage with Bob Barker”
“To Mark: You Were a Hit.”
Forty-five years ago I was on stage with legendary TV personality Bob Barker. No, I was not a contestant on “The Price Is Right” but an aspiring comedian from Cleveland. And that’s how Barker introduced me at a national fraternity event in Little Rock, Arkansas, while I stood dry mouthed and knock-kneed behind that massive curtain. I was a 25-year-old PR consultant, hoping for a new side gig in comedy. My first public performance had been in a crowded Cleveland Heights bar. I documented that experience in a 1978 Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine story: “Taking My Shot at Comedy.”
The Plain Dealer article was reprinted in Sigma Nu’s magazine (The Delta) that summer. (I had joined the frat at Miami University in the early 1970s.) Subsequently, I was invited to perform at its Grand Chapter convention in Little Rock. That’s where I met emcee Bob Barker, a fellow Sigma Nu from Drury College. Some 20 years before Barker and Adam Sandler duked it out in Happy Gilmore, I raised Bob’s ire by missing dress rehearsal because my flight was late. I quickly made amends and was gratified when he said he had enjoyed my article and humbled when he added that his wife was “very moved” by my account.
But that upbeat backstory was replaced by sheer stage fright in the cavernous Little Rock Convention Center as I heard Barker’s melodic voice introduce me as: “Mark Massé, a comic from Cleveland.” Malarkey! The audience was expecting a polished performer, and I was a fraud. When the curtain rose, I stood in the blinding spotlight knowing my bluff had been called. Barker was off stage to my left. He stared as I stammered my opening. The
joke triggered some chuckles but louder groans.
I could have folded but didn’t. Anger replaced fear, and I grabbed the reins of my runaway routine to rousing applause. Barker brought me out for a curtain call. “That’s Mark Massé, ladies and gentlemen.” I bowed and shook his hand. Back stage I asked him for his feedback and an autograph. He said: “You started slowly, but by the end you had the audience, and that’s what counts.” He then wrote on the event program: “To Mark: You Were a Hit.”
When I learned recently of Bob Barker’s death at 99, I paused to remember how gracious he was to me on that long-ago night. His praise was the highlight of my short-lived career as a comic from Cleveland.
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© 2023 Mark H. Massé
NOTE: To access more of my fiction and nonfiction, please visit my Authors Guild website: www.markmasse.com & https://www.amazon.com/author/mhmasse
“On Stage with Bob Barker”
What a great memory!
Thanks, Lenny. T’was an amazing experience, from shame and failure to pure adrenaline-driven joy.