Barbara walters died at 93. Barbara Walters, the intrepid interviewer, anchor, and program host who blazed the way as the first woman to become a TV news superstar during a career remarkable for its duration and variety, has died. She was 93.
ABC broke into its broadcast to announce Walters’ death on Friday night.
“Barbara Walter lived life with no regrets. She was a trailblazer not only for female journalists but for all women,” her publicist Cindi Berger also said in a statement, adding Walters died peacefully at her New York home.
An ABC spokesperson did not have an immediate comment Friday night beyond sharing a statement from Bob Iger, the CEO of ABC parent The Walt Disney Company.
“Barbara was a true legend, a pioneer not just for women in journalism but for journalism itself,” Iger said.
During nearly four decades at ABC and before that at NBC, Walters’ exclusive interviews with rulers, royalty, and entertainers brought her celebrity status that ranked with theirs while placing her at the forefront of the trend that made stars of TV reporters.
Late in her career, she gave infotainment a new twist with “The View,” a live ABC weekday kaffeeklatsch with an all-female panel for whom any topic was on the table and who welcomed guests ranging from world leaders to teen idols. With that side venture and unexpected hit, Walters considered “The View” the “dessert” of her career.
A statement from the show said Walters created “The View” in 1997 “to champion women’s voices.”
“We’re proud to be part of her legacy,” the statement said.
Barbara Walter gasps. Her drive was legendary as she competed — not just with rival networks, but with colleagues at her network — for each big “get” in a world jammed with more and more interviewers, including female journalists following in her trail.
“I never expected this!” Walters said in 2004, taking stock of her success. “I always thought I’d be a writer for television. I never even thought I’d be in front of a camera.”
she was a natural on camera, mainly when plying notables with searing questions.
“I’m not afraid when I’m interviewing; I have no fear!” Walters told The Associated Press in 2008.
In a voice that never lost its trace of her native Boston accent or its substitution of Ws-for-Rs, Walters lobbed blunt and sometimes giddy questions, often sugarcoated with a peaceful, respectful delivery.
“Offscreen, do you like you?” she once asked actor John Wayne, while Lady Bird Johnson was asked whether she was jealous of her late husband’s reputation as a ladies’ man.
Also, visit These 7 Trump properties are at the focal point of New York’s misrepresentation claim.
In May 2014, she taped her final episode of “The View” amid much ceremony to end a five-decade career in television (although she continued to make occasional TV appearances ). During a commercial break, a multitude of TV newswomen she had paved the way for — including Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Robin Roberts, and Connie Chung — posed for a group portrait.
“I have to remember this on the bad days. Barbara Walters said quietly, “because this is the best.”
Barbara walters career began with no such inklings of majesty.
Barbara Walters graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1943 and eventually landed a “temporary,” behind-the-scenes assignment at “Today” in 1961. Shortly afterward, what was seen as the token woman’s slot among the staff’s eight writers opened. Walters got the job and began to make occasional on-air appearances with offbeat stories such as “A Day in the Life of a Nun” or the tribulations of a Playboy bunny. For the latter, she donned bunny ears and high heels to work at the Playboy Club.
As she appeared more frequently, she was spared the title of “’ Today’ Girl” that had been attached to her predecessors. But she had to pay her dues, sometimes sprinting between interviews to do dog food commercials.
She had the first interview with Rose Kennedy after the assassination of her son, Robert, and with Princess Grace of Monaco and President Richard Nixon. She traveled to India with Jacqueline Kennedy, China with Nixon, and Iran to cover the shah’s gala party. But she faced a setback in 1971 with the arrival of a new host, Frank McGee, who insisted she wait for him to ask three questions before she could open her mouth during interviews with “powerful persons.”
Although she gained celebrity status in her own right, the celebrity world was familiar to her even as a little girl. Her father was an English-born booking agent who turned an old Boston church into a nightclub. Lou Walters opened other clubs in Miami and New York, and young Barbara spent her after-hours with regulars such as Joseph Kennedy and Howard Hughes.
Those were the good times. But her father made and lost fortunes in a dizzying cycle that taught her success was always at risk of being snatched away and could neither be trusted nor enjoyed.
Sensing greater freedom and opportunities awaiting her outside the NBC studio, she hit the road to produce more exclusive interviews, including with Nixon chief of staff H.R. Haldeman.
By 1976, she had been granted the title of “Today” co-host and earned $700,000 a year. But when ABC signed her to a $5 million, five-year contract, she was branded the “million-dollar baby.”
Reports failed to note her job duties would be split between the network’s entertainment division and ABC News, then mired in third place. Meanwhile, Harry Reasoner, her seasoned “ABC Evening News” co-anchor, was said to resent her salary and celebrity orientation.
It wasn’t just the shaky relationship with her co-anchor that brought Walters problems.
Comedian Gilda Radner satirized her on “Saturday Night Live” as a rhotacistic commentator named “Baba Wawa.” And after her interview with a newly elected President, Jimmy Carter, in which Walters told Carter “be wise with us,” CBS correspondent Morley Safer publicly derided her as “the first female pope blessing the new cardinal.”
She later recalled that period seemed to mark the end of everything she’d worked for.
“I thought it was all over: ‘How stupid of me ever to have left NBC!’”
But salvation arrived in the form of a new boss: ABC News president Roone Arledge moved her out of the co-anchor slot and into special projects. Meanwhile, she found success with her quarterly primetime interview specials. She became a frequent contributor to newsmagazine “20/20” and later co-host. A perennial favorite was her review of the year’s “10 Most Fascinating People.”
By 2004, when she stepped down from “20/20,” she had logged more than 700 interviews, ranging from Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Moammar Gadhafi to Michael Jackson, Erik and Lyle Menendez, and Elton John. Her two-hour talk with Monica Lewinsky in 1999, timed to the former White House intern’s memoir about her affair with President Bill Clinton, drew more than 70 million viewers.
Lewinsky tweeted that she had lunch with Walters a few years ago were “of course, she was charming, witty, and some of her questions were still her signature interview style.”
A special favorite for Walters was Katharine Hepburn, although a 1981 exchange led to one of her most ridiculed questions: “What kind of a tree are you?” (Walters would later object that the question was perfectly reasonable within the context of their conversation).
Barbara Walters did pronounce herself guilty of being “dreadfully sentimental” at times and was famous for making her subjects cry, with Oprah Winfrey and Ringo Starr among the more famous shedders.
But her work also received high praise. She won a Peabody Award for her interview with Christopher Reeve shortly after the 1995 horseback-riding accident that left him paralyzed.
Barbara Walters’ first marriage to businessman Bob Katz was annulled after a year. Her 1963 marriage to theater owner Lee Guber, with whom she adopted a daughter, ended in divorce after 13 years. Her five-year marriage to producer Merv Adelson ended in divorce in 1990. Walters wrote a bestselling 2008 memoir “Audition,” which caught readers by surprise with her disclosure of a “long and rocky affair” in the 1970s with married U.S. Senator Edward Brooke.
Barbara Walters’ self-disclosure reached another benchmark in May 2010 when she announced: “The View” that, days later, she would undergo heart surgery. In a primetime special, she would feature her successful surgery and those of other notables, including Clinton and David Letterman.
Barbara Walters is survived by her daughter, Jacqueline Danforth.
“I hope I will be remembered as a good and courageous journalist. I hope that some of my interviews, not created history, were witness to history, although I know that title has been used,” Walters told the AP upon her retirement from “The View.” “I think that I have a great sense of accomplishment when I look at what I have done. I don’t want to sound proud and arrogant, but I’ve had a wonderful career, and I’m so thrilled I have.”
Moore, a longtime Associated Press television writer who retired in 2017, was the principal writer of this obituary. Associated Press journalists Stefanie Dazio and Alicia Rancilio contributed to this report.
Barbara Walters’ Memorable Interviews Through the Years. Bob Iger, the CEO of The Walt Disney Company, the parent company of ABC News, praised Walters as someone who broke down barriers.
“Barbara Walter was a true legend, a pioneer not just for Famous women in journalism but for journalism itself. She was a one-of-a-kind reporter who landed many of the most important interviews of our time, from heads of state to the biggest celebrities and sports icons. I had the pleasure of calling Barbara a colleague for over three decades, but more importantly, I could call her a dear friend. All of us will miss her at The Walt Disney Company, and we send our deepest condolences to her daughter, Jacqueline,” Iger said in a statement Friday.
In a career that spanned five decades, Walters won 12 Emmy awards, 11 of those while at ABC News.
Barbara Walters made her final appearance as a co-host of “The View” in 2014 but remained an executive producer and continued to do some interviews and specials for ABC News.
“I do not want to appear on another program or climb another mountain,” she said. “I want instead to sit on a sunny field and admire the gifted women — and OK, some men too — who will be taking my place.”