Barbara Walters, the television pioneer who paved the way for women in a male-dominated medium, died on Friday.She was 93 years old.
His death was confirmed by his representative, Cindi Berger, who said Walters died “peacefully at her home, surrounded by her loved ones.”
“She lived her life with no regrets,” Berger said.“She was a trailblazer not just for female journalists, but for all women.”
ABC, the network where she last worked, aired a Friday night special announcing Walters’ death and reflecting on her career.Bob Iger, CEO of the Walt Disney Company, ABC’s parent company, said in a statement that Walters died Friday night at her New York residence.
He called her “a trailblazer not just for women in journalism but for journalism itself.”
Walters was known in recent years as the co-creator and matriarch of ABC’s hit daytime show “The View,” but older viewers remember her as the first female anchor of a news program.network and the preeminent interviewer on television.
She earned this reputation through a penchant for meticulous preparation, whether she’s interviewing despots or divas, models or murderers.
“I do so much homework, I know more about the person than they know about themselves,” Walters said in a 2014 TV special.
This dynamism proved essential to its success.When she broke into the business in 1961 as a writer on NBC’s “TODAY” show, the idea of a woman sitting down and interviewing a sitting president on prime-time television ( which she did just over a decade later) seemed more fantasy than reality in an industry dominated by men like Edward R.Murrow and Walter Cronkite.
“She was playing in a field that was an old boys’ network, both literally and figuratively, and she didn’t take no for an answer,” Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture, told NBC.from Syracuse University.News before Walters’ death.
“At some point, the things that had been a liability for her, being a woman trying to break into a male-dominated industry, started to become more of an asset,” Thompson said.
“She was smart and prepared, but at the same time she came across as more compassionate (than her male peers).
“Barbara Walters turned out to be the evolutionary step between Edward R.Murrow and Oprah Winfrey.”
In some ways, Walters had been preparing for these hallmark interviews all her life.
Born in Boston on September 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 on the East Coast.
“I learned that celebrities were human beings,” Walters said in 2014.“I never thought of a celebrity as someone so perfect and wonderful that I should be put off.”
Inheriting her father’s drive, Walters graduated from Sarah Lawrence College with a bachelor’s degree in English and took up journalism as an assistant at NBC affiliate WRCA-TV.In 1955, she married businessman Robert Henry Katz, but her first love remained her budding career.The couple divorced three years later.
Hired as a writer and researcher on “TODAY,” Walters became the series’ sole producer and began airing occasionally as the “TODAY Girl,” a reporting role reserved for fashion shows, lifestyle trends and to the weather that was previously owned by, among others, Florence Henderson of “Brady Bunch” fame.
Not quite the kind of tough reporting that Walters clearly aspired to.
Off the air, Walters married theater producer Lee Guber in 1963, with whom she adopted a daughter, Jacqueline, named after Walters’ older sister, who had an intellectual disability.
The marriage will last 13 years.
Her big breakthrough came with an assignment to travel with Jacqueline Kennedy during the first lady’s trip to India in 1962.This led to more news stories and a rise in the status of co-hosting responsibilities in the face of Hugh Downs – although she didn’t get the official title until 1974.By then Downs had left the network and been replaced by Frank McGee.
McGee, who died shortly after being associated with Walters, demanded that he ask each of Walters three questions in studio interviews.He was real newsmale, after all.
Thus, Walters began to conduct interviews outside the studio, quickly gaining a reputation as an incisive and thorough questioner.
People were watching – including rival network executives.
Walters was lured to ABC to become the first female co-anchor of a prime-time news program with an unprecedented $1 million annual salary.However, it didn’t take viewers long to sense the tension between Walters and co-anchor Harry Reasoner, who didn’t bother to hide his disdain for the former “TODAY Girl” being billed as his equal.
Her newfound stardom also brought the ultimate backhand honor: having difficulty pronouncing the harsh Rs ridiculed by Gilda Radner on “Saturday Night Live.” Walters later admitted that she did not find the “Baba Wawa” sketches funny.
With the ratings for her ABC news program disappointing, Walters’ career was saved by the prime-time interview specials she pitched for ABC.Her first interview featured President-elect Jimmy Carter, and within a year she had managed a joint interview with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat – a year before their historic peace treaty..
In 1979, she reunited with Downs on the ABC newsmagazine show, “20/20,” beginning a successful 25-year run.
But it was his interviews that remained Walters’ passion, compiling his mix of tough and fun questions on his 3×5 index cards and fussing with the order even after the cameras started rolling.In the 2014 television special that commemorated his retirement from television journalism, Walters showed an autographed photo of Cuban despot Fidel Castro that hung on his wall: “For the longest and most difficult interview I have never done in my life.
Although Walters got a lot of flak for asking Katherine Hepburn, “What kind of tree are you?” — in all honesty, a sequel to something the legendary actor said — she could ask the toughest questions, like looking Russian President Vladimir Putin in the eye and asking if he ever ordered the death of a rival.
His exclusive interview with Monica Lewinsky in 1999 earned the highest ratings in history for a primetime interview.
In 1997, Walters launched a new show closer to his roots “TODAY”: a mid-morning talk show with an all-female panel called “The View”.While she was a co-executive producer and had a seat at the table, she brought in Meredith Vieira as her 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 panelists.
While Walters has largely managed to avoid controversy over her long career, she caused a stir when she revealed she 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 want to appear on another program or climb another mountain,” she said.
“Rather, I want to sit on sunny ground and admire the very talented women – and okay, some men too – who will take my place.”
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