Bob Barker, the enduring, dapper game show host who became a household name over a half century of hosting Truth or Consequences and The Price Is Right has died.

He was 99 years old.

Barker — also a long-time animal rights activist — died Saturday morning at his home in Los Angeles, publicist Roger Neal said.

“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,” said Nancy Burnet, his long-time friend and co-executor of his estate, in a statement.

Barker retired in June 2007, telling his studio audience: “I thank you, thank you, thank you for inviting me into your home for more than 50 years.”

He was working in radio in 1956 when producer Ralph Edwards invited him to audition as the new host of Truth or Consequences, a game show in which audience members had to do wacky stunts — the consequence — if they failed to answer a question — the truth, which was always the silly punchline to a riddle no one was ever meant to furnish. (Q: What did one eye say to another? A: Just between us, something smells.)

In a 1996 interview with The Associated Press, Barker recalled receiving the news that he had been hired: “I know exactly where I was, I know exactly how I felt: I hung up the phone and said to my wife, ‘Dorothy Jo, I got it!’ “

Barker stayed with Truth or Consequences for 18 years, including several years in a syndicated version.

Meanwhile, he began hosting a resurrected version of The Price Is Right on CBS in 1972. (The original host in the 1950s and 60s was Bill Cullen.) It would become TV’s longest-running game show and the last on a broadcast network of what in TV’s early days had numbered dozens.

“I have grown old in your service,” the silver-haired, perennially tanned Barker joked on a prime-time television retrospective in the mid-90s.

CBS said in a statement that daytime television has lost one of its “most iconic stars”.

“We lost a beloved member of the CBS family today with the passing of Bob Barker,” the network said, noting that he had “made countless people’s dreams come true and everyone feel like a winner when they were called to ‘come on down’ “.

Comedian Drew Carey was chosen to replace him.

Barker was back with Carey for one show broadcast in April 2009. He was there to promote the publication of his memoir, Priceless Memories, in which he summed up his joy from hosting the show as the opportunity “to watch people reveal themselves and to watch the excitement and humor unfold”.

“There hasn’t been a day on set that I didn’t think of Bob Barker and thank him. I will carry his memory in my heart forever,” Carey wrote in a post on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.

As a TV personality, Barker retained a touch of the old school — for instance, no wireless microphone for him. Like the mic itself, the mic cord served him well as a prop, insouciantly flicked and finessed.

Barker also spent 20 years as host of the Miss USA pageant and the Miss Universe pageant.

A long-time animal rights activist who daily urged his viewers to “have your pets spayed or neutered” and successfully lobbied to ban fur coats as prizes on The Price Is Right, he quit the Miss USA pageant in 1987 in protest over the presentation of fur coats to the winners.

Among his activities on behalf of animals was a $250,000 donation to Save the Chimps. The Fort Pierce, Florida-based organisation said in an e-mailed statement Saturday: “Bob Barker’s kind spirit lives on at Save the Chimps, where we walk every day on the road named for him after his game-changing contribution,” said Save the Chimps’ CEO Ana Paula Tavares.

In 1997, Barker declined to be a presenter at the Daytime Emmy awards ceremony because he said it snubbed game shows by not airing awards in the category. He called game shows “the pillars of daytime TV”.

In 1994, the widowed Barker was sued for sexual harassment by Dian Parkinson, a Price is Right model for 18 years. Barker admitted engaging in “hanky panky” with Parkinson from 1989-91, but said she initiated the relationship. Parkinson dropped the lawsuit in 1995, saying it was hurting her health.

Born in Darrington, Washington, in 1923, Barker spent part of his childhood on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, where his widowed mother had taken a teaching job. The family later moved to Springfield, Missouri, where he attended high school. He served in the Navy in World War II.

He married Dorothy Jo Gideon, his high school sweetheart; she died in 1981 after 37 years of marriage. They had no children.

Barker was given a lifetime achievement award at the 26th annual Daytime Emmy Awards in 1999.