Barbara Jill Walters [1] (born September 25, 1929) is an American journalist, writer, and media personality who has hosted morning television shows (Today and The View ), the evening news magazine (20/20 ), and co-anchor of ABC Evening News and correspondent on World News (then ABC Evening News). Walters was first known as a popular TV morning news anchor for over 10 years on NBC's Today , where she worked with Hugh Downs and later hosts Frank McGee and Jim Hartz. Walters later spent 25 years as co-host of ABC's newsmagazine 20/20 . She was the first female co-anchor of network evening news, working with Harry Reasoner on the ABC Evening News and was later a correspondent for ABC World News Tonight with Charles Gibson.

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Biography

Walters was born in Massachusetts to Louis "Lou" Walters and his wife, Dena Seletsky. Lou Walters ran a night club called the Latin Quarter in the Bay Village neighborhood of Boston, but by the time of the 1930 United States census, April 1930, the family was living at 3435 92nd Street in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City. Louis Walters was born in England about 1896 to Russian-Jewish parents who emigrated to the United States in 1900. By 1930, according to his census entry, Walters was a theatrical booking agent. ^[2] In 1937, her father opened the New York version of the Latin Quarter; he also was a Broadway producer (he produced the Ziegfeld Follies of 1943 ). ^[3] Walters' elder sister, Jacqueline, was born developmentally disabled ^[4] and died of ovarian cancer in 1985. Her brother, Burton, died in 1932 of pneumonia. ^[5] Walters' parents were Jewish. ^[6]

According to Walters, being surrounded by celebrities when she was young kept her from being "in awe" of them. When he was a young man, Walters' father lost his nightclubs 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." Of her mother, she said, "My mother should have married the way her friends did, to a man who was a doctor or who was in the dress business." ^[7]

After attending Ethical Culture Fieldston School and Birch Wathen Lenox School ^{[8] [9]} private schools in New York City, Walters graduated from Miami Beach High School in 1947. In 1951 she received a B.A. in English from Sarah Lawrence College. ^[10]

Career and accolades

After a brief period as a publicist with Tex McCrary Inc. and a job as a writer at CBS News, Walters joined NBC's The Today Show as a writer and researcher in 1961. She moved up to become that show's regular "Today Girl," handling lighter assignments. Within a year she had become a reporter-at-large developing, writing, and editing her own reports and interviews. When Frank McGee was named host, he refused to do joint interviews with Walters unless he was given the first question. 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.

Walters has seldom minced words when describing the visible, on-the-air disdain her co-anchor, Harry Reasoner, displayed for her when she was teamed up with him on the ABC Evening News in 1976-78. 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. 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.

Walters is also known for her years on the ABC newsmagazine 20/20 where she joined host Hugh Downs in 1979. Throughout her career at ABC, Walters has appeared on ABC news specials as a commentator, including presidential inaugurations and the coverage of 9/11. She was also chosen to be the moderator for the third and final debate between candidates Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, held at Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall in Williamsburg, Virginia, during the 1976 Presidential Election. ^[11] Many of her regular and special programs are syndicated around the world. As of 2004, she is in semi-retirement as a broadcast journalist, but remains a correspondent for ABC News as well as a host of ABC's special programs.

On June 14, 2007 Walters received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She has won Daytime and Prime Time Emmy Awards, a Women in Film Lucy Award, and a GLAAD Excellence in Media award. Her impact on the popular culture is illustrated by Gilda Radner's "Baba Wawa" impersonation of her on Saturday Night Live, featuring her idiosyncratic speech with its rounded "R."

Walters published her memoirs, Audition: A Memoir, in 2008.

In the fall of 2008, she was honored with the Disney Legends award, an award given to those who made an outstanding contribution to The Walt Disney Company, which owns the network ABC. That same year, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York Women's Agenda.

Interviews

Walters started to gain a reputation for her interview skills while at The Today Show . Not all of her interviewees remain dry-eyed, and critics ^{[weasel words]} accuse Walters of pumping for the ratings by generating public tears. Critics ^{[weasel words]} have also accused Walters of not posing enough tough questions to her subjects, relying mainly on so-called "softball" questions to elicit sometimes unexpected answers. Her Barbara Walters Specials are top-rated and, since 1993, offer a review of the year's most prominent newsmakers. Prior to the move of the Academy Awards to an early Sunday evening time slot, a Walters interview show, usually featuring one or more of the top nominees, was a regular feature. Walters' celebrity interviews at ABC came as part of her $1 million contract to join ABC, with half of it coming from the news department and half from doing celebrity specials.

Walters is known for "personality journalism" and her "scoop" interviews. In November 1977 she achieved a joint interview with Egypt's President Anwar Al Sadat and Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Her interviews with world leaders from all walks of life are a chronicle of the latter part of the 20th century. They include the Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his wife the Empress Farah Pahlavi, Russia's Boris Yeltsin, China's Jiang Zemin, the UK's Margaret Thatcher, Cuba's Fidel Castro, as well as India's Indira Gandhi, Václav Havel, Muammar al-Gaddafi, Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, King Hussein of Jordan, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Other interviews with influential people include pop icon Michael Jackson, and in 1980 Lord Olivier.

Walters was widely lampooned in 1981 (and often since) for having posed the question, during an interview with actress Katharine Hepburn: "If you were a tree, what kind would you be?" But as she has often pointed out (and the video clips confirm) Hepburn initiated the discussion by saying that she would like to be a tree, and Walters merely followed up with the question, "What kind of a tree?" ^[12]

During a story about Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Walters claimed that, "for Castro, freedom begins with education." Some critics^[who?] point to her characterization of Castro as freedom-loving and argue that it painted an inaccurate picture of his government.

On March 3, 1999, her interview of Monica Lewinsky was seen by a record 74 million viewers, the highest rating ever for a journalist's interview. Walters asked Lewinsky, "What will you tell your children about this matter?" and Lewinsky replied, "I guess Mommy made some mistakes," at which point Walters brought the program to a dramatic conclusion, turning to the viewers, saying, "And that is the understatement of the century."

Walters interviewed President-elect Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, in a one-hour ABC special that aired on November 26, 2008. ^[13]

The View

Walters hosts the daytime talk show The View , of which she is also co-creator and co-executive producer with her business partner Bill Geddie. ^[14] Walters described the show in its original opening credits as a forum for women of "different generations, backgrounds, and views". The show's co-hosts are Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Sherri Shepherd. Previous co-hosts include Meredith Vieira, Lisa Ling, Rosie O'Donnell, Star Jones, and Debbie Matenopoulos.

Personal life

Walters has been married three times. She told The New York Times in 1996: "I'm convinced that you stay married when the days are bad, only because you really want to be. But I always had an out. I had this job, and this life and enough money. I didn't have to fight the bad days." Her husbands were:

• Robert Henry Katz, a business executive and former Navy lieutenant. They married on June 20, 1955, at The Plaza Hotel in New York City. The marriage was reportedly annulled in 1958. ^[15]
• Lee Guber, theatrical producer and theater owner. They married on December 8, 1963 and divorced in 1976. They have one daughter, Jacqueline Dena Guber (born 1968, adopted the same year).
• Merv Adelson, the CEO of Lorimar Television. They married on May 10, 1986 and divorced in 1992.

The lawyer Roy Cohn said that he proposed marriage to Walters the night before her wedding to Lee Guber, but Walters has denied this claim. She explained her lifelong devotion to Cohn as gratitude for his help in her adoption of her daughter, Jacqueline. ^[16] In her autobiography, Walters says that Cohn got her father's warrant for "failure to appear" dismissed. ^[17] Walters dated former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in the 1970s ^[18] and she was linked romantically to United States Senator John Warner in the 1990s. ^[19]

In Walters's autobiography Audition she claimed that she had an affair in the 1970s with Edward Brooke, then a married United States Senator from Massachusetts. Walters said that the affair ended to protect their careers from scandal. ^[20]

References

1. Miss Walters engaged
2. Genealogy.com: Ancestry of Barbara Walters
3. Lou Walters, Nightclub Impresario and Founder of Latin Quarter, Dies
4. Stated in interview at ''Inside the Actors Studio''
5. James Conaway, "How to talk with Barbara Walters about practically anything," ''The New York Times'', 10 September 1972, page SM40, 43-44
6. Television Personality Looks Anew At Religion
7. Elisabeth Bumiller, "So Famous, Such Clout, She Could Interview Herself", ''The New York Times'', 21 April 1996, page H1
8. Can Barbara Walters's Career Survive Rosie and Donald's War?- New York Magazine
9. And Now Back To You, Barbara - New York Times
10. WALTERS, BARBARA: U.S. Broadcast Journalist
11. CNN: 1976 Presidential Debates. Retrieved on June 14, 2008.
12. Kate the Great, The Katharine Hepburn Forum - The Barbara Walters Interview Retrieved 2008-05-10{{Verify credibility|date=May 2008|accessdate=2008-05-08}}
13. The Obamas to Sit Down with Barbara Walters" ''TV Guide''. November 25, 2008. Retrieved on November 26, 2008.
14. BARBARA WALTERS—HOUSE MOM TO BIGOTS
15. "Katz—Walters", ''The New York Times,'' June 21, 1955, page 36
16. Barbara Walters: An Unauthorized Biography
17. Barbara Walters gets personal. This time, she's candid about her own life.
18. LISTEN TO SHILLER, NOT THE TV SHILLS
19. Barbara Walters
20. Barbara Walters: I had affair with U.S. senator, Associated Press, May 1, 2008