When is It Time to Be Your Own? When Barbara Walters and The View met on the Today Show and into CNN, where I met Chris Cuomo
For more than five decades, Walters was a name to reckon with, whether speaking with world leaders on news programs, in celebrities’ homes for her regular “Barbara Walters Specials” or on “The View,” a daytime talk show in which a diverse panel of women discuss the latest headlines.
At NBC’s “Today” Show, she contributed occasional on-air features as well, then developed into a hit as she expanded her role there. In 1974, she became the show’s first female co-host.
Some of her shows were the highest-rated of their type and spawned a number of imitators. Indeed, “The View” – which debuted in 1997 – paved the way for American talk shows “The Talk” and “The Chew,” as well as such entries as Britain’s “Loose Women” and Norway’s “Studio5.”
CNN’s Chris Cuomo asked, “Do you know when it’s time?” “I like all the celebration, that’s great, but in my heart, I thought, ‘I want to walk away while I’m still doing good work.’ So I will.”
After graduating with my journalism degree, there was a general understanding that women in TV news are on borrowed time. Though it wasn’t explicitly spelled out in job interviews, we all understood we had a shelf life and somewhere in our late 40s, we’d hit our expiration date. If I had not been able to stay employed until the age of 50, I would have been forced to sit in a wheelchair on my way to the retirement home.
Barbara Walters: An Interview with Assad, Adelson, and Harvey: The Rise and Fall of the Hollywood Public Radio Pulsar Vicinity
Walters was married four times, to business executive Robert Katz, producer Lee Guber and twice to entertainment mogul Merv Adelson. The second marriage to Adelson ended in 1992. She and Guber had a daughter who they adopted in 1968.
The born on September 25, 1929 wasWalters. One of the reasons Barbara didn’t seem flustered by interviewing them was that she grew up around celebrities.
Since the uprising began, Assad has not given an interview to an American journalist. It was the second time that Walters had interviewed a leader like Assad. She also spoke with Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gaddafi.
She stayed at the network for almost forty years, co-hosting the magazine show with Hugh Downs and even working as a newscaster for a short time.
She was both mercilessly parodied – on the early “Saturday Night Live,” Gilda Radner mocked her as the sometimes mush-mouthed “BabaWawa” – and richly honored, with multiple Emmys, a Peabody and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
It is caustic if it’s a woman and authoritative if it’s a man. If it’s a woman it’s too pushy, if it’s a man it’s aggressive in the best sense of the word,” she once observed.
The 10 Most Fascinating People of 2006: It Was She Who Was Going To Die, Or What Would She Do When You Were Coming Home?
Though a celebrity, she covered serious subjects as well. She was a pathbreaker. And if you remember Walters as a journalist who blurred the lines between news and entertainment, there is some truth to that.
She easily delivered lines like these to introduce Hollywood’s “it” couple for her special, “The 10 Most Fascinating People of 2006” saying, “Those lips, those eyes, that body. When Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie met on the set of ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith,’ it set off Hollywood’s hottest romance.”
In a Thanksgiving special with President Barack Obama and the first lady Michelle Obama, Walters asked the first lady, “You love him very much, don’t you?”
“You have seen, I am certain, the pictures of Egypt from the President Mubarak in jail, pictures… in Libya of Moammar Gadhafi killed,” Walters said during the interview. “Are you afraid that you might be next?”
The parents of Walters kept her out of social settings to be with her sister who had a mental disability. Walters said she learned patience and empathy from Jackie, traits that proved handy.
“You know, there was such a dichotomy because on the one hand here was this glamorous life of nightclubs and gorgeous showgirls and big stars — Frank Sinatra and Milton Berle. And I’m sure it’s a life that people would look at and envy and think, ‘Oh, isn’t that terrific?’ “I don’t want that,” the man said. “I wanted to live a normal life.” I wanted a daddy who was home.”
“She loved not only making serious news but she loved the lighter side … [She] knew that people were interested in these things and she never felt that she should look down on them for that.”
“She always had to wait to ask the fourth question, because the men in charge wouldn’t let her ask first but she just pushed ahead Mitchell said she always asked the smartest questions.
It was assumed that the price of success was what made that impression. She was the first million dollars a year network anchor. Harry Reasoner could not have been nicer.
I think he did not want someone to be an anchor with him. David Westin was Walter’s boss, and he said that he wanted it all to himself. I think the idea of a woman who already did news, fashion, and also women’s issues, was offensive to him.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/30/172253629/barbara-walters-dead
A Moment in the Life of Barbara Walters: From a Career in Television Newshearing to the Birth of a Family. A Conversation with Andrea Camerota
It was Hepburn who made the comparison, after being mocked for asking actress Katherine Hepburn what kind of tree she would want to be. Walters simply asked, “What kind of tree?”
NBC’s Andrea Mitchell was in Havana for a planned interview with Fidel Castro — a network jet was on the way with a full crew — when the Cubans cancelled it because Walters had decided she would have one and insisted hers be exclusive. Walters’ fame was that powerful.
Over more than a half century, this driven celebrity journalist not only staved off financial disaster but built one of the most remarkable careers in TV news.
Editor’s Note: Alisyn Camerota is a journalist, author and anchor of CNN Newsroom with Victor Blackwell, weekdays from 2-4pm. The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author. CNN has more opinion on it.
One morning, as my mother was watching Barbara Cousteau on the ‘Today’ show, she had an idea: That looks like an interesting and exciting job. I wonder if my future child might do that.
Though my mother never shared that story with me until after I’d found my own way to journalism, I believe that somehow, as she watched Walters, a seed was planted and an idea took root.
On my first day of college, 200 eager freshmen sat in an auditorium to hear the dean of the school of communications give them a reality check about our competitive field. “I know you all want to be network anchors,” she said, “but look around this room. At most, only two of you will ever make it.” I craned my neck to see who the other person could be. It never occurred to me that I might not achieve my dream. After all, Barbara Walters had done it.
Walters herself has spoken candidly and poignantly about all she had to give up – she suffered miscarriages and failed marriages. She said that she regretted not spending more time with her daughter. Her job simply did not allow for family flexibility.
My colleagues and I who have career demands but also care for our families owe a huge debt of gratitude to someone named Walters. It is a lot easier to get what you want after someone else knocks on the door.
I haven’t seen her in a while, but I did attend her “retirement” luncheon which almost everyone in attendance thought was a joke. She was retiring from “The View”, but her colleagues were aware she would still produce behind the scenes. I watched as her friends and staff surrounded her as she entered the room, a bundle of elegant energy in a bright designer suit. I was star struck but managed to catch her attention just long enough to blather something about how I was a huge fan of her work. She graciously thanked me, then breezed on by, and I realized I’d missed an opportunity.
Thank you was what I should have said. Thank you, Barbara Walters. Thank you for breaking boundaries and shattering the glass ceiling. Thank you for sharing your sacrifice and letting the rest of us learn from it. My mother’s daughter will one day follow in her mother’s footsteps, and I appreciate that you allowed her to see a role model. It was that much easier to travel that trail because you left it well-lit.