Bob Barker, 'The Price Is Right' Host, Dead At 99: Reports

LOS ANGELES, CA — Bob Barker, a household name and the long-time host of the game show "The Price Is Right", died Saturday at his Los Angeles home, according to multiple reports citing his publicist. He was 99.

TMZ was first to report Barker's death.

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

Barker hosted the iconic daytime game show for 35 years. Before handing the microphone to Drew Carey in 2007, Barker earned 19 Emmys and a Lifetime Achievement award for his work on "The Price Is Right."

Barker 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 if they failed to answer a question.

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" in 1972. 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.

In all, he taped more than 5,000 shows in his career. He said he was retiring because "I'm just reaching the age where the constant effort to be there and do the show physically is a lot for me. ... Better (to leave) a year too soon than a year too late."

He well understood the attraction of "The Price Is Right," in which audience members — invited to "Come on down!" to the stage — competed for prizes by trying to guess their retail value.

"Everyone can identify with prices, even the president of the United States. Viewers at home become involved because they all have an opinion on the bids," Barker once said. His own appeal was clear: Barker played it straight — warm, gracious and witty — refusing to mock the game show format or his contestants.

Barker also spent 20 years as host of the Miss USA Pageant and the Miss Universe Pageant. A longtime 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.

PETA President Ingrid Newkirk released a statement following Barker's death, calling his influence "indisputable."

"What mattered to him most was using his voice and prominent position to protect animals," Newkirk said. "To us — and to so many animals around the world — Bob will always be a national animal rights treasure."

Officials at CBS, which broadcast "The Price Is Right," also reacted to Barker's death, calling him a "beloved member of the CBS family."

"Bob made countless people’s dreams come true and everyone feel like a winner when they were called to ‘come on down,'" the network said. "In addition to his legendary 50-year career in broadcasting, Bob will be remembered as a dedicated animal rights activist. Daytime television has lost one of its most iconic stars."

Barker had a memorable cameo appearance on the big screen in 1996, sparring with Adam Sandler in the movie "Happy Gilmore." "I did `The Price Is Right' for 35 years, and they're asking me how it was to beat up Adam Sandler," Barker later joked.

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, Mo., 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.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.