Barris Industries Inc., the publicly held entertainment...

Barris Industries Inc., the publicly held entertainment company run by TV entrepreneur Chuck Barris, has sold its interest in a Ply-Gem Industries Inc., a New York manufacturer of wood paneling and vacuum cleaner bags, to a company run by a friend and fellow producer, Burt Sugarman.

Sugarman’s firm, Giant Portland & Masonry Cement Co. of Columbia, S.C., purchased 997,500 common shares, or 27.6% of Ply-Gem, for about $13 million. Giant Portland becomes New York-based Ply-Gem’s biggest shareholder.

Beverly Hills-based Barris Industries bought Ply-Gem in 1981 during a period when Barris had halted production of all of his programs--including the “Gong Show” and “The Newlywed Game”--and was deciding what to do next.

“We had money in hand at the moment,” Barris Industries President Budd Granoff said Friday. “The company looked good and it kept earning more money.”

The venture has paid off--Barris is making a $6.97-million profit on the sale, Granoff said.

Barris is selling Ply-Gem because it’s “not compatible with what we’re trying to do now. It’s not an area where we have any expertise,” Granoff said.

The profit will go to develop and expand Barris’ entertainment and communications operations, which include studio lighting equipment and a tape library valued at between “$1 million and $50 million, depending on who you talk to,” Granoff said.

The wall paneling and cement business are not the only non-entertainment activities for Sugarman, who has been involved in TV and feature-film production since the early 1970s. In April, 1983, at the same time that he became chairman of Giant Portland & Masonry Cement, he bought a major stake in Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corp., the nation’s eighth-largest steel firm. He later reduced his holdings to less than 5%.