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Della: A Memoir of My Daughter
This surprisingly candid, often funny, and entirely moving memoir is Chuck Barris’s story about life with his only child, Della. Born on Christmas Eve in 1962, Della was a lovable charmer like her father, an adventurous and quick-witted kid. She had a carefree suburban childhood, even while her father was fast becoming an entertainment superstar, inventing, hosting, and producing his legendary game shows. When Barris and his wife eventually divorced, Della was shuttled between parents in New York and California, then moved from boarding school in Switzerland to Beverly Hills High, among other places. Bored, lonely, and often depressed, she discovered drugs and petty crime early in adolescence, and her escapades soon took on a far more alarming and dangerous aspect. She was lost, yearning for attention and guidance, and growing up in Los Angeles amid temptation everywhere. Her father felt caring for a daughter was more than Barris had bargained for. Ranging from late-night phone calls from the neighbors to emergency room visits, Della’s behavior was out of control. When Della decided at age sixteen to move out on her own, Barris didn’t object. He gave her a trust fund and let her go out into the world alone, a regret that he shares with readers here in heartbreaking and clear-eyed detail as he chronicles Della’s descent into addiction and her eventual death from an overdose at age thirty-six. But Della is not just a grief-stricken story. Filled with loving memories and spontaneous humor, it is a brave and hard-earned reflection on fatherhood and a tribute to innocence lost.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
6 people are currently reading
85 people want to read
About the author
Chuck Barris
15 books21 followersCharles Hirsch "Chuck" Barris was an American game show creator, producer, and host. He is best known for hosting The Gong Show and creating The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game. He is also a songwriter, who wrote the hit "Palisades Park", and the author of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, a story about himself that became a film directed by George Clooney.
Barris was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He attended Drexel Institute of Technology where he was a columnist for the student newspaper, The Triangle. He graduated in 1953.
Barris got his start in television as a page and later staffer at NBC in New York City, and eventually worked backstage at the TV music show American Bandstand, originally as a standards-and-practices person for ABC. Barris soon became a music industry figure. He produced pop music on records and TV, but his most successful venture was writing "Palisades Park". Barris also wrote or co-wrote some of the music that appeared on his game shows.
Barris was promoted to the daytime programming division at ABC in Los Angeles and was put in charge of deciding which game shows ABC would air. Barris told his bosses that the pitches of game show concepts were worse than Barris' own ideas. They suggested that he quit his ABC programming job and become a producer.
Barris formed his production company Chuck Barris Productions on June 14, 1965. Barris first became successful during 1965 with his first game show creation, The Dating Game, on ABC. The show would air for eleven of the next fifteen years and be revived twice in the 1980s and 1990s.
The next year Barris began The Newlywed Game, originally created by Nick Nicholson and E. Roger Muir, also for ABC. The combination of the newlywed couples' humorous candor and host Bob Eubanks's sly questioning made the show another hit for Barris. The show is the longest lasting of any developed by his company, running for a total of 19 full years on 'first run' TV, network and syndicated.
Barris created several other short-lived game shows for ABC in the 1960s and for syndication in the 1970s, all of which revolved around a common theme. Barris also made several attempts through the years at non-game formats, such as ABC's Operation Entertainment; a CBS revival of Your Hit Parade; and The Bobby Vinton Show. The latter was his most successful program other than a game show.
Barris became a public figure in 1976 when he produced and served as the host of the talent contest spoof The Gong Show. The show's cult status far outstripped the two years it spent on NBC (1976–78) and the four years it ran in syndication (1976–80).
Barris continued strongly until the mid-1970s, when ABC cancelled the Dating and Newlywed games. This left Barris with only one show, his weekly syndicated effort The New Treasure Hunt. But the success of The Gong Show in 1976 encouraged him to revive the Dating and Newlywed games, as well as adding the $1.98 Beauty Show to his syndication empire. He also hosted a short lived primetime variety hour for NBC from February to April 1978, called The Chuck Barris Rah-Rah Show, essentially a noncompetitive knock-off of Gong.
In Barris's biography, he claims to have worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as an assassin in the 1960s and the 1970s. A 2002 feature film version, directed by George Clooney and starring Sam Rockwell, depicts Barris as killing 33 people. Barris wrote a sequel, Bad Grass Never Dies, in 2004.
Barris published Della: A Memoir of My Daughter in 2010 about the death of his only child, who died in 1998 after a long struggle with drug addiction.
Barris was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He attended Drexel Institute of Technology where he was a columnist for the student newspaper, The Triangle. He graduated in 1953.
Barris got his start in television as a page and later staffer at NBC in New York City, and eventually worked backstage at the TV music show American Bandstand, originally as a standards-and-practices person for ABC. Barris soon became a music industry figure. He produced pop music on records and TV, but his most successful venture was writing "Palisades Park". Barris also wrote or co-wrote some of the music that appeared on his game shows.
Barris was promoted to the daytime programming division at ABC in Los Angeles and was put in charge of deciding which game shows ABC would air. Barris told his bosses that the pitches of game show concepts were worse than Barris' own ideas. They suggested that he quit his ABC programming job and become a producer.
Barris formed his production company Chuck Barris Productions on June 14, 1965. Barris first became successful during 1965 with his first game show creation, The Dating Game, on ABC. The show would air for eleven of the next fifteen years and be revived twice in the 1980s and 1990s.
The next year Barris began The Newlywed Game, originally created by Nick Nicholson and E. Roger Muir, also for ABC. The combination of the newlywed couples' humorous candor and host Bob Eubanks's sly questioning made the show another hit for Barris. The show is the longest lasting of any developed by his company, running for a total of 19 full years on 'first run' TV, network and syndicated.
Barris created several other short-lived game shows for ABC in the 1960s and for syndication in the 1970s, all of which revolved around a common theme. Barris also made several attempts through the years at non-game formats, such as ABC's Operation Entertainment; a CBS revival of Your Hit Parade; and The Bobby Vinton Show. The latter was his most successful program other than a game show.
Barris became a public figure in 1976 when he produced and served as the host of the talent contest spoof The Gong Show. The show's cult status far outstripped the two years it spent on NBC (1976–78) and the four years it ran in syndication (1976–80).
Barris continued strongly until the mid-1970s, when ABC cancelled the Dating and Newlywed games. This left Barris with only one show, his weekly syndicated effort The New Treasure Hunt. But the success of The Gong Show in 1976 encouraged him to revive the Dating and Newlywed games, as well as adding the $1.98 Beauty Show to his syndication empire. He also hosted a short lived primetime variety hour for NBC from February to April 1978, called The Chuck Barris Rah-Rah Show, essentially a noncompetitive knock-off of Gong.
In Barris's biography, he claims to have worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as an assassin in the 1960s and the 1970s. A 2002 feature film version, directed by George Clooney and starring Sam Rockwell, depicts Barris as killing 33 people. Barris wrote a sequel, Bad Grass Never Dies, in 2004.
Barris published Della: A Memoir of My Daughter in 2010 about the death of his only child, who died in 1998 after a long struggle with drug addiction.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
February 18, 2014
A colleague gave me this book, saying she didn't have time to read it right now, and she thought I might like to read it since I like the biography/memoir genre. I remember the author from years ago - - Chuck Barris, creator of The Gong Show, Dating Game, Newlywed Game, and other shows. I guess I was also drawn to the father-daughter aspect of the book. So I read it. It was a really painful book to read, yet I just couldn't put it down. Della was the daughter of Chuck Barris and his first wife, who divorced when Della was five years old. These parents failed their daughter in so many ways and on so many levels - - it broke my heart. I guess it was supposed to. But I think I mostly found the book frustrating. I so wanted Chuck Barris to absolutely beat himself up for the miserable parent he was. There are moments when he admits that he let her down, but for some reason, I don't think he feels that way deep down where it really counts. If he did, I don't think he could ever deal with the guilt. After reading the book, I wanted to know more about Chuck Barris - - the man - - and actually watched a five-part series on Youtube about his life. Interesting, but I was longing to feel his remorse about the tragic loss of daughter to drug addiction. It just never came. If you like memoir and are intrigued, as I was, by this famous father/daughter story, you will probably like the book.
April 10, 2013
A very troubling memoir; a perfect example of how parents can fail their children & children can fail to release themselves from harmful relationships with their parents. Chuck Barris seems like an incredibly selfish & self-absorbed man, unwilling to care for his daughter in life or own up to his mistakes as a parent after his daughter's death. He does not appear remorseful for failing his daughter, or to be sincere in recognizing that he did. Perhaps because of his many failures & his daughter's resulting downward spiral, this book is a poignant page-turner. What a tragic tale.
October 10, 2023
Brutally honest. Chuck Barris does not sugar coat anything in this book. He describes how his failure of a marriage and moral abandonment of his Daughter led to her Long slow death.
October 4, 2025
Antiquarians may remember Della Barris as the little kid who sometimes opened "The Gong Show" by announcing, "And here he is, the star of our show, my daddy, Chuck Barris!" She died at age 36 from a combination of vodka and coke, pretty much bookending her post-childhood life -- she entered adolescence by ODing on the same combination at age 14. Chuck, an excellent writer of serious fiction, funny fiction, autobiography and fake autobiography, is in earnest here and delivers an intensely sad account of her life.
No way of knowing what he doesn't reveal, of course, but by his own account he wasn't a great father -- trying to ignore problems until they reached a head, at which point he simply got angry. The original sin seems to have been his divorce from Della's mother, followed by his fighting for and winning sole custody several years later based on Della's account of mistreatment at Mom's hands (it turned out she was playing her parents off against each other, and was probably taken aback when she was sent to live with Dad). Chuck's tossing her out of the house while settling a large sum of money on her didn't work out too well, either. There are long stretches of father-daughter dialogue, presumably close to what was actually uttered, presenting them both as sharp, funny and at least somewhat self-aware, which makes the ending all the more depressing.
Not the saddest account of a daughter's death ever -- that would be Peter De Vries' fictionalized "The Blood of the Lamb," brilliantly written, very funny in spots and almost unreadably painful in others -- but a worthy entry from a guy who, to the extent he's remembered at all, is probably thought of as merely a producer of dumb game shows.
No way of knowing what he doesn't reveal, of course, but by his own account he wasn't a great father -- trying to ignore problems until they reached a head, at which point he simply got angry. The original sin seems to have been his divorce from Della's mother, followed by his fighting for and winning sole custody several years later based on Della's account of mistreatment at Mom's hands (it turned out she was playing her parents off against each other, and was probably taken aback when she was sent to live with Dad). Chuck's tossing her out of the house while settling a large sum of money on her didn't work out too well, either. There are long stretches of father-daughter dialogue, presumably close to what was actually uttered, presenting them both as sharp, funny and at least somewhat self-aware, which makes the ending all the more depressing.
Not the saddest account of a daughter's death ever -- that would be Peter De Vries' fictionalized "The Blood of the Lamb," brilliantly written, very funny in spots and almost unreadably painful in others -- but a worthy entry from a guy who, to the extent he's remembered at all, is probably thought of as merely a producer of dumb game shows.
July 25, 2011
I'm not sure what made me choose this book off the library shelf. I hadn't read "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" but was impressed by what a ripping yarn the film version was, and I was a fan of Barris's "The Gong Show" back in the day. This is a sad book. Barris lets the reader know right away that the story of his daughter's life does not have a happy ending. But somehow I wasn't able to put this book down. His writing is awkward at times-- in particular his dialogue. But I wonder how much of that is because of Della's quirky voice-- much of this story is based on Barris's recollection of her life story as she told it to him.
It's a story we've heard many times of a child of privilege spiraling out of control. But somehow Barris's unrelenting honesty-- yes, there's lots of blame to go around here-- makes the story of Della's life one worth paying attention to.
It's a story we've heard many times of a child of privilege spiraling out of control. But somehow Barris's unrelenting honesty-- yes, there's lots of blame to go around here-- makes the story of Della's life one worth paying attention to.
March 10, 2011
Most people think of Chuck Barris and laugh. He was the goofy host of the bad 70s game show The Gong Show. Of course any one watching that would be able to tell he was a lousy parent--he looked half drunk most of the time. And as it turns out he was a neglectful parent, though to be fair he tried as much as he could with his sensitive but spunky girl Della. But the world was not easy for a girl growing up on the fast drug fueled streets of LA in the 70s. Della got lost and never found her way back--she became a drug addicted prostitute with HIV and ultimately the victim of an overdose. Barris is not the world's greatest writer but what he lacks in skill he makes up for in emotion. A wrenching, but fulfilling read.
April 30, 2013
A devastating read, yet one that should be a required manual for every parent-to-be. Especially for those who forget that everything we do and say affects our children.
I have always loved the way Chuck Barris writes. One of my favorite books since I read it in the '70s, is "You and Me, Babe." Romantic, yet so honest about relationships and how fragile they can be.
Here, he does it again. But this time his honesty is so brutal, mostly about himself. It's a sad, sad story, yet I couldn't put it down. One of the reasons he's a brilliant writer--albeit, very underrated, or even acknowledged. He reminds us how useless regret is, and how we should aim to avoid it before it's too late.
I have always loved the way Chuck Barris writes. One of my favorite books since I read it in the '70s, is "You and Me, Babe." Romantic, yet so honest about relationships and how fragile they can be.
Here, he does it again. But this time his honesty is so brutal, mostly about himself. It's a sad, sad story, yet I couldn't put it down. One of the reasons he's a brilliant writer--albeit, very underrated, or even acknowledged. He reminds us how useless regret is, and how we should aim to avoid it before it's too late.
Read
August 3, 2011I was very much affected by this book and Della's life. I don't even know how to describe it but reading this brutally honest memoir shows you all the things that could have been done to prevent Della from dying alone from an overdose. Don't know any drug addicts personally, but I remember being irritated when I see addicts on the streets, now I look at them with a different perspective. They most likely are the people who didn't get enough affection, and who weren't strong enough to fight life alone.
December 13, 2012
This had to be a tough book to write for Chuck Barris. Its the tragic story of his daughter's too short life.
Mr Barris doesn't try to make a martyr of himself or a tragic heroine of his daughter. The story of his family's dysfunctional roller-coaster ride is told in a "warts and all" way that makes it all the more personal and all the more sad.
Della Charlotte Barris was a drug addict, manipulator, thief, sometime prostitute and sometime beggar, but she was also brilliant, creative, depressed, and the beloved (if not always liked) daughter of Chuck Barris.
Mr Barris doesn't try to make a martyr of himself or a tragic heroine of his daughter. The story of his family's dysfunctional roller-coaster ride is told in a "warts and all" way that makes it all the more personal and all the more sad.
Della Charlotte Barris was a drug addict, manipulator, thief, sometime prostitute and sometime beggar, but she was also brilliant, creative, depressed, and the beloved (if not always liked) daughter of Chuck Barris.
June 13, 2010
Barris, the creator and host of the original 1970s "The Gong Show," is remorseful and honest about his poor judgment in raising his daughter. A quick read, well written. Summary: The author and television producer recounts the tragic death of his HIV-positive daughter from a drug overdose, the positive and painful times they shared throughout her life, and his journey through grief.
June 1, 2015
I sincerely enjoyed this book. I found it in the bargain bin as a used book and flipped to the middle and started reading. I immediately bought the book. As I finished reading, I just wanted to hug everyone in the book. I held the book for a bit and felt so bittersweet about the story. I'm not going give spoilers. I simply enjoyed the writing style and the passion with which the book was written.
August 4, 2010
This book was written in Barris' own words, so it's a little "homemade," as my father would say. He makes up for what he lacks in technical skill with candor and brutal honesty, owning up to the mistakes and errors in judgement that he lives with every day. Not for the feint of heart.
October 21, 2010
It was aight. I read it because I saw it in the library and really needed something to read. Plus having 2 daughters I thought it could be interesting but overall I just found it depressing - what an awful father he was!
June 29, 2011
Sad, sad look into the live of addiction and the tragedy that came from it. Makes you think what you would do if your teen/adult child was spiraling out of control. The father/author I am sure has so many regrets.
June 18, 2010
Interesting. I liked that Chuck wrote the book from his daughter's point of view, not his. He even adlibbed conversations he thinks she would have had from certain memories, using her voice.
April 22, 2011
Awfully written, awfully conceived. Seems that he was feeding off of her death and his guilt. Really, awful all the way round.
June 30, 2013
a very sad story. the author was quite brave in his honesty.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews