Napkins, Napkins, Napkins. Dian Parkinson is being smothered in paper napkins by an overly attentive and possibly love-stricken waiter who keeps inventing reasons to return to her table. "Is he trying to tell me something? Does he think I'm eating sloppy?" she asks, laughing. "That's so cute." Later, the meal over, the waiter begs to interrupt just once more. He'd like to talk tickets with Dian, please. "Tickets for what?" she politely asks, prompting him with a bright white smile. "Oh, the show." No problem, she tells him. "Sometimes," Dian confides when the satisfied server walks away, "I forget who I am and what I do. I don't think of myself as anything but a girl making a living." Well, OK--but what a living. Dian, one of "Barker's Beauties" on TV's The Price Is Right since 1975, is the most popular hostess on that ratings smash. Cheers of "Dian!" greet her at the twice-daily tapings. A modest post-show saunter across the stage, albeit one in a lethal swimsuit, leads to a noisy eruption from the laggards in the audience, who stayed behind hoping for such an appearance. The result of her first Playboy cover and pictorial (December 1991) is a backlog of eight months' worth of mail. "I'm sorry," she pleads to her would-be correspondents. "I promise to answer it all." Being onstage has always been therapeutic for Dian. Her military-brat background--Dad was a Marine--left the North Carolina--born, Virginia-raised Dian with a regimented attitude toward life. "I started out as Miss World USA," she says. "That was a way of escaping a pretty tough childhood being the daughter of a drill instructor. Running away to a pageant was a way of leaving that behind. Miss World USA opened the doors." Past the threshold was a Bob Hope Vietnam USO tour and a fashion career in New York. Then, when her East Coast--based marriage ended and forced a move, she headed for Los Angeles and stardom. "I packed two pairs of jeans, three T-shirts and left everything else. I bought a $499 Dodge Dart and started over." She enlisted in 1975 to be the "wholesome and sexy one" for Price, which has been right for Dian for nearly two decades. "We really work," she stresses the next day, rehearsing on CBS' tiny Stage 33. "It's not like a movie set, where you stay in your trailer until your scene." About her popular and steady gig here--which is an intense combination of a revival meeting, a Beatles concert and an Herbalife convention--Dian says, "I love the audience. There's an excitement here you can't believe. Am I crazy in love with The Price Is Right? Yes. I'm crazy about it." It shows. Dian wears it well. And when this morning glory crouches and waves goodbye to viewers at the end of each taping, blowing kisses to all the overanxious restaurant servers in her future, you just know they're crazy about her, too.
