American broadcaster, the first woman to co-anchor network news at a whopping salary of one-million dollars per year in 1975. She was a successful, cool and intelligent woman with a sympathetic demeanor who conversed equally well with heads of state and movie stars.
As the daughter of a vaudeville booking agent with a flamboyant personality, Barbara Walters was raised in the environment of entertainers and witnessed the opening of Boston’s first Latin Quarter nightclub, which made her dad wealthy within two years. She learned at the same time that fame and money come and go. When her dad went bankrupt, she was able to help with the family finances. She had an older brother who died when she was three years old and an older sister who was born handicapped. Through their ups and downs, her family remained extremely close. After the advantage of a Sarah Lawrence education, Walters graduated with a bachelor’s in English and toured the continent.
She was drawn to the news business and began work in the publicity department of WRCA-TV in New York, soon moving up to a writer-producer slot. Moving to CBS, she wrote material for talk shows. In 1961 Walters joined NBC’s “Today” show as a writer, and when given air-time, she shone on camera. Her career began to soar.
She signed her lucrative one-million dollar contract in 1975 and began anchoring the ABC news in 1976. In 1984 she became an anchor on the network’s news magazine “20/20.” Since 1997, she was host of her own daytime discussion show, “The View.” Her casual yet probing style of asking questions stood her in good stead, giving her the clout to gain interviews with every president since Richard Nixon as well as outstanding public figures. In 1990 she was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ Hall of Fame.
Walters married four times to three husbands. First to businessman Robert Katz on 20 June 1955. They had it annulled in less than a year, divorcing in 1958. Five years later she married theatrical producer Lee Gruber, a marriage that ended in divorce 13 years later in 1976. The couple was childless until they adopted a daughter in 1968. Walters called her daughter Jacqueline Dena “the most important thing in my life.” Her third marriage was to Merv Adelson in 1981; they divorced in 1984. They remarried in 1986 and divorced for the second time on 17 August 1992 in Los Angeles, California. In late 1998 she was keeping company with Senator John W. Warner but expressed quite frankly that she had no desire to marry a fourth time.
Walters announced on 25 January 2004 that she would be stepping down from her co-host position on the popular TV news magazine “20/20.” She cited her desire to have more flexibility in her schedule than the weekly show allowed, but she told The New York Times that she’d become uncomfortable with the pressure to find newsworthy interview subjects that appeal to broad audiences.
Walters’ memoir “Audition” was released in May 2008. In the book and on several talk shows, she revealed that she had an affair with Senator Edward Brooke from Massachusetts In the 1970s.
At age 80 she underwent heart valve replacement surgery on 14 May 2010 in New York City.
Barbara Walters died at her home in Manhattan on 30 December 2022 at the age of 93.
Link to Wikipedia biography
Link to Astrodienst discussion forum