Barbara Walters

Her father booked the acts. Lou Walters ran the Latin Quarter in Boston, opened the New York room in 1942, produced a Ziegfeld Follies, and brought the Folies Bergère from Paris to a Las Vegas casino, making and losing fortunes. Barbara grew up backstage among showgirls who spun her until she was dizzy, which is why, she said afterward, famous people never impressed her. Her brother had died of pneumonia at 14 months. Her older sister Jacqueline was intellectually disabled and the household arranged itself around her. When the clubs failed, the government took the house, the car and the furniture, and her father had a breakdown. She came out of Sarah Lawrence in 1951 with a degree in English and a family to support.

She wrote publicity and then a children's program at NBC's New York station, joined the Today show as a writer in 1961, and was promoted to Today Girl, which meant the weather and the soft items. She made her own filmed reports instead — one on a nun's day, one on a Playboy Bunny's — and NBC kept giving her airtime. Frank McGee, made host in 1971, refused to share an interview unless he asked the first three questions. Only when McGee died in 1974 was she named co-host, the first woman on an American news program. ABC took her in 1976 with five million dollars over five years, the highest-paid anchor in television, and sat her beside Harry Reasoner on the evening news. In 1977 she got the first joint interview with Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin.

She is remembered for a question she did not ask. Katharine Hepburn, in old age, volunteered that she felt like a strong tree. Walters asked what kind, and Hepburn said an oak, because oaks do not get Dutch elm disease. It came back at her for the rest of her life as though she had asked a grown woman to name her tree, and became shorthand for soft interviewing — applied to a reporter who sat down with Fidel Castro, Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, and interviewed every president from Nixon to Obama. The private record is harder. Four marriages to three men. Three miscarriages before she adopted a daughter. An affair with Senator Edward Brooke while he was married, disclosed in her own memoir. And a 40-year loyalty to Roy Cohn, whose disbarment trial she testified at in 1986.

She left The View in 2014, made her last ABC appearance in 2015, and was last seen in public in 2016. She had dementia in her last years and died at home in Manhattan on December 30, 2022, at 93. Her last words, a biographer reported, were that she had no regrets and a great life. They are cut into her stone at a Jewish cemetery in Doral, Florida, where she lies beside her parents and the sister the family had built itself around. The line of women reading American news after her runs through Jane Pauley, Katie Couric and Diane Sawyer. Gilda Radner's parody of her voice is still quoted by people who never watched her work.

Barbara Walters's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Not for Women Only television
  Her own morning program, running after the Today show 1971
• The Barbara Walters Specials television
  Primetime interviews, opening with the Carters and with Barbra Streisand 1976
• The Sadat and Begin joint interview television
  The first, filmed while the terms of the Egypt-Israel treaty were being worked out 1977
• The View television
  She created it, produced it and sat on it for 17 years 1997
• Audition: A Memoir book
  In which she disclosed her affair with Senator Edward Brooke 2008

• 1939 aged ~10 Leaves her Brookline school mid-year when the family moves to Miami Beach Her father moved them repeatedly as the clubs rose and failed.
• 1951 aged ~22 Graduates from Sarah Lawrence College with a degree in English
• 1953 aged ~24 Produces a children's program at NBC's New York station It was directed by Roone Arledge, later the head of ABC News.
• 1961 aged ~32 Joins the Today show as a writer and researcher
• 1974 aged ~45 Named the first woman to co-host an American news program Frank McGee, who had claimed the first three questions of every shared interview, had died.
• 1976 aged ~47 Signs with ABC for five million dollars and co-anchors the evening news The highest-paid news anchor in television, male or female.
• November 1977 aged 48 Lands the first joint interview with Sadat and Begin Walter Cronkite, finishing his own, was heard asking whether Barbara had got anything he had not.
• 1997 aged ~68 Creates The View and puts herself on the panel
• December 30, 2022 aged 93 Dies at her home in Manhattan at 93

• Katharine Hepburn 1907–2003
  Four-time Oscar-winning actress whose independent spirit and wit made her a screen legend. interviewed
• Richard Nixon 1913–1994
  37th President whose foreign policy achievements were overshadowed by the Watergate scandal. the first president she interviewed
• Barack Obama b. 1961
  44th President and first African American to hold the office, known for the Affordable Care Act. the last president she interviewed
• Katie Couric b. 1957
  First woman to solo anchor a major network evening newscast and pioneering morning television host. opened the door for her
• Roger Ailes 1940–2017
  Television executive who created Fox News and transformed partisan cable news and conservative politics. close friend