Barbara Walters.
Toby Canham | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
Barbara Walters, the pioneering TV broadcaster who blazed a path for ladies in a male-dominated medium, died Friday. She was 93.
Her demise was confirmed by her consultant, Cindi Berger, who mentioned Walters died “peacefully in her home surrounded by loved ones.”
“She lived her life with no regrets,” Berger mentioned. “She was a trailblazer not only for female journalists, but for all women.”
ABC, the community the place she final labored, aired a particular report Friday night time saying Walters’ demise and reflecting on her profession. Bob Iger, CEO of the Walt Disney Company, guardian of ABC, mentioned in an announcement Walters died Friday night at her New York City residence.
He referred to as her “a pioneer not just for women in journalism but for journalism itself.”
Walters was recognized in recent times because the co-creator and matriarch of the hit ABC daytime present “The View,” however older viewers keep in mind her as the primary feminine anchor of a community news program and the pre-eminent interviewer on tv. She earned that status with a penchant for meticulous preparation, whether or not she was interviewing despots or divas, fashions or murderers.
Read extra from NBC News:
“I do so much homework, I know more about the person than he or she knows about themselves,” Walters mentioned in a 2014 tv particular.
That drive proved important to her success. When she broke into the business in 1961 as a author on NBC’s “TODAY” present, the thought of a girl sitting down and interviewing a sitting president on prime-time community tv (which she did simply over a decade later) appeared extra fantasy than actuality in an trade dominated by males like Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite.
“She was playing in a field that was such an old boy’s network, literally and figuratively, and she didn’t take no for an answer,” Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, informed NBC News earlier than Walters’ demise.
“At some point, the things that had been a liability for her, being a woman trying to get a foothold in a male-dominated industry, began to become more of an asset,” Thompson mentioned. “She was smart and prepared, but at the same time she came across as more compassionate (than her male peers).
“Barbara Walters proved to be the evolutionary step between Edward R. Murrow and Oprah Winfrey.”
Childhood exposure to celebrities
In some ways, Walters had been preparing for those trademark interviews all her life. Born in Boston on Sept. 25, 1929, Barbara Jill Walters got to see the rich and famous up close as the daughter of nightlife impresario Lou Walters, who owned clubs up and down the East Coast.
“I discovered that celebrities had been human beings,” Walters said in 2014. “I by no means considered a star as somebody so excellent and fantastic that I must be delay.”
Inheriting her father’s drive, Walters graduated from Sarah Lawrence College with a bachelors degree in English and broke into journalism as an assistant at NBC affiliate WRCA-TV. In 1955, she married businessman Robert Henry Katz, but her first love remained her fledgling career. The couple divorced three years later.
Hired as a writer and researcher on “TODAY,” Walters rose to become the only female producer on the show and started filing in on air occasionally as the “TODAY Girl,” a reporting role reserved for fashion shows, lifestyle trends and the weather that was previously held, among others, by Florence Henderson of “Brady Bunch” fame.
Hardly the kind of hard reporting to which Walters clearly aspired.
Off-air, Walters married the theater producer Lee Guber in 1963, with whom she adopted a daughter, Jacqueline, named after Walters’ older sister, who was developmentally disabled. The marriage would last 13 years.
Big breakthrough
Her big breakthrough came with an assignment to travel with Jacqueline Kennedy on the first lady’s trip to India in 1962. That led to more newsy pieces and a bump in status to co-hosting responsibilities opposite Hugh Downs — though she didn’t get the official title until 1974. By that time, Downs had left the network and was replaced by Frank McGee.
McGee, who died shortly after being partnered with Walters, demanded that he ask three questions to every one of Walter’s in studio interviews. He was a real newsman, after all.
So, Walters started fielding interviews outside the studio, quickly building a reputation as an incisive and probing questioner.
People were watching — including executives at rival networks. Walters was lured to ABC to become the first female co-anchor of a prime-time news broadcast with an unprecedented $1 million annual salary. It didn’t take long, however, for viewers to sense the tension between Walters and co-anchor Harry Reasoner, who couldn’t be bothered to hide his disdain for this former “TODAY Girl” being billed as his equal.
Her newfound celebrity also drew the ultimate back-handed honor: having her struggles pronouncing hard R’s lampooned by Gilda Radner on “Saturday Night Live.” Walters later admitted she didn’t find the “Baba Wawa” skits funny.
With ratings of her ABC news program a disappointment, Walters’ career was saved by the prime-time interview specials she started for ABC. Her first interview featured President-elect Jimmy Carter, and within a year she had managed a joint interview with Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat — a year before their historic peace treaty.
In 1979 she reunited with Downs on the ABC news magazine show, “20/20,” beginning a successful 25-year run.
The interviews
But it was her interviews that remained Walters’ passion, compiling her mix of tough and amusing questions on her trademark 3×5 index cards and fussing with the order even after the cameras started rolling. In the 2014 television special that commemorated her retirement from TV journalism, Walters showed off an autographed photo from Cuban despot Fidel Castro that hung on her wall: “For the longest and most troublesome interview I’ve ever accomplished in my life.”
Though Walters received much flak for asking Katherine Hepburn, “What form of tree are you?” — in fairness, a follow up to something the legendary actor had said — she could deliver the toughest of questions, like looking Russian President Vladimir Putin in the eye and asking him if he had ever ordered the death of a rival.
Her exclusive interview with Monica Lewinsky in 1999 earned the highest ratings in history for a prime-time interview. In 1997, Walters debuted a new show that was closer to her “TODAY” roots: a midmorning talk show with an all-women panel called “The View.” While she was co-executive producer and had a seat at the table, she tapped Meredith Vieira as the first moderator.
Over the years, the hit show would include Whoopi Goldberg, Star Jones, Lisa Ling, Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Rosie O’Donnell and Meghan McCain among the panelists.
While Walters largely managed to avoid controversy over her long career, she caused a stir with the revelation that she had had an affair with Sen. Edward Brooke, R-Mass., during the 1970s.
After nearly 60 years in journalism, Walters announced she was retiring in 2014.
“I don’t wish to seem on one other program or climb one other mountain,” she said. “I would like as a substitute to sit down on a sunny area and admire the very gifted girls — and OK, some males, too — who will probably be taking my place.”