Barbara Walters

Barbara Jill Walters (September 25, 1929 – December 30, 2022) was an American broadcast journalist and television personality. Known for her interviewing ability and popularity with viewers, she appeared as a host of numerous television programs, including Today, the ABC Evening News, 20/20, and The View. Walters was a working journalist from 1951 until her retirement in 2014. Walters was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1989, received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the NATAS in 2000 and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2007.

Walters began her career at WNBT-TV (NBC's flagship station in New York) in 1953 as writer-producer of a news-and-information program aimed at the juvenile audience, Ask the Camera, hosted by Sandy Becker. She joined the staff of the network's Today show in the early 1960s as a writer and segment producer of women's-interest stories. Her popularity with viewers led to her receiving more airtime, and in 1974 she became co-host of the program, the first woman to hold such a position on an American news program. During 1976, she continued to be a pioneer for women in broadcasting while becoming the first American female co-anchor of a network evening news program, alongside Harry Reasoner on the ABC Evening News. Walters was a correspondent, producer and co-host on the ABC news magazine 20/20 from 1979 to 2004. She became known for an annual special aired on ABC, Barbara Walters' 10 Most Fascinating People.

During her career, Walters interviewed every sitting U.S. president and first lady from Richard and Pat Nixon to Barack and Michelle Obama. She also interviewed both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, although not when either was president. She also gained acclaim and notoriety for interviewing subjects such as Fidel Castro, Anwar Sadat, Menachem Begin, Katharine Hepburn, Sean Connery, Monica Lewinsky, Hugo Chávez, Vladimir Putin, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Jiang Zemin, Saddam Hussein, and Bashar al-Assad.

Walters created, produced, and co-hosted the ABC daytime talk show The View; she appeared on the program from 1997 until 2014. Later she continued to host several special reports for 20/20 as well as documentary series for Investigation Discovery. Her final on-air appearance for ABC News was in 2015. Walters last publicly appeared in 2016.

Early life, family and education

Barbara Jill Walters was born on September 25, 1929, in Boston, a daughter of Dena (née Seletsky) and Lou Walters (born Louis Abraham Warmwater); her parents were children of Russian Jewish immigrants. Her paternal grandfather, Abraham Isaac Waremwasser, was born in the Polish city of Łódź and emigrated to England where he changed his surname to Warmwater. Walters' father was born in London in 1898 and moved to New York City with his father and two brothers on August 28, 1909. His mother and four sisters arrived there the following year.

During Walters' childhood, her father managed the Latin Quarter nightclub in Boston, which was owned in partnership with E. M. Loew. In 1942, her father opened the club's famous New York location. He also worked as a Broadway producer and produced the Ziegfeld Follies of 1943; he was also the entertainment director for the Tropicana Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. He imported the Folies Bergère stage show from Paris to the resort's main showroom. Walters' older brother, Burton, was 14 months old when he died of pneumonia. Her elder sister, Jacqueline, was born with mental disabilities and died of ovarian cancer in 1985.

According to Walters, her father made and lost several fortunes throughout his life in show business. He was a booking agent, and (unlike her uncles in the shoe and dress businesses) his job was not very stable. During the good times, she recalled her father taking her to the rehearsals of the nightclub shows he directed and produced. The actresses and dancers would make a huge fuss over her and twirl her around until she was dizzy, after which she said her father would take her out to get hot dogs.

Walters said that being surrounded by celebrities when she was young kept her from being "in awe" of them. When she was a young woman, her father lost his night clubs and the family's penthouse on Central Park West. As Walters recalled, "He had a breakdown. He went down to live in our house in Florida, and then the government took the house, and they took the car, and they took the furniture. [...] My mother should have married the way her friends did, to a man who was a doctor or who was in the dress business." During her childhood in Miami Beach, she briefly lived with the mobster Bill Dwyer.

Walters attended Lawrence School, a public school in Brookline, Massachusetts; she left halfway through fifth grade when her father moved the family to Miami Beach in 1939. She continued attending public school in Miami Beach. After her father moved the family to New York City, she spent eighth grade at the private Ethical Culture Fieldston School, after which the family moved back to Miami Beach. She returned to New York City after tenth grade and attended Birch Wathen School, another private school. In 1951, she earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York.

Career

Early career

Walters was employed for about a year at a small advertising agency in New York City and began working at the NBC network's flagship station WNBT-TV (now WNBC), doing publicity and writing press releases. In 1953 she produced a 15-minute children's program, Ask the Camera, which was directed by Roone Arledge. She also started producing for TV host Igor Cassini (Cholly Knickerbocker), but left the network after Cassini pressured her to marry him and started a fistfight with the man she was interested in. She went to WPIX to produce the Eloise McElhone Show, which was canceled in 1954. She became a writer on The Morning Show at CBS in 1955.

The Today Show

After a few years working at Tex McCrary Inc. as a publicist and as a writer at Redbook magazine, Walters joined NBC's The Today Show as a writer and researcher in 1961. She moved up, becoming the show's regular "Today Girl," handling lighter assignments and the weather. In her autobiography, she described this era before the Women's Movement as a time when it was believed that nobody would take a woman seriously reporting "hard news." Previous "Today Girls" (whom Walters called "tea pourers") included Florence Henderson, Helen O'Connell, Estelle Parsons, and Lee Meriwether. Within a year, she had become a reporter-at-large, developing, writing, and editing her own reports and interviews. One very well-received film segment was "A Day in the Life of a Nun." Another was about the daily life of a Playboy Bunny.

Beginning in 1971, Walters hosted her own local NBC affiliate show, Not for Women Only, which ran in the mornings after The Today Show. Walters had a great relationship with host Hugh Downs for years. When Frank McGee was named host in 1971, he refused to do joint interviews with Walters unless he was given the first three questions. She was not named co-host of the show until McGee's death in 1974 when NBC officially designated Walters as the program's first female co-host. She became the first female co-host of an American news program.

ABC Evening News and 20/20

Walters signed a five-year, $5-million contract with ABC, establishing her as the highest-paid news anchor, either male or female. She and Harry Reasoner co-anchored the ABC Evening News from 1976 to 1978, making her the first American female network news anchor. Reasoner had a difficult relationship with Walters because he disliked having a co-anchor, even though he worked with former CBS colleague Howard K. Smith nightly on ABC for several years. Walters said that the tension between the two was because Reasoner did not want to work with a co-anchor and also because he was unhappy at ABC, not because he disliked Walters personally. In 1981, five years after the start of their short-lived ABC partnership and well after Reasoner returned to CBS News, Walters and her former co-anchor had a memorable (and cordial) 20/20 interview on the occasion of Reasoner's new book release.

In 1979, Walters reunited with former The Today Show host Downs as a correspondent on the ABC newsmagazine 20/20. She became Downs' co-host in 1984, and remained with the program until she retired as co-host in 2004. Throughout her career at ABC, Walters appeared on ABC news specials as a commentator, including presidential inaugurations and the coverage of the September 11 attacks. She was also chosen to be the moderator for the third and final debate between candidates Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, held on the campus of the College of William and Mary at Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall in Williamsburg, Virginia, during the 1976 presidential election. In 1984, she moderated a presidential debate which was held at the Dana Center for the Humanities at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, New Hampshire.