Barbara Walters biography

Synopsis

Early Life

Journalist, writer. Born Barbara Jill Walters on September 25, 1929, in Boston, Massachusetts. She was the daughter of Dena Seletsky Walters and nightclub impresario Lou Walters. She had two siblings: older sister Jacqueline, who was born developmentally disabled and died in 1985, and brother Burton, who died of pneumonia in 1932. Walters was born Jewish, though her parents weren't practicing Jews.

In 1937, Lou Walters opened a chain of nightclubs that expanded his business from Boston, Massachusetts, to Miami Beach, Florida. As a result, Barbara attended Fieldston and Birch Wathen private schools in New York City, and graduated from Miami Beach High School in 1947. Barbara was surrounded by celebrities from an early age, which has been said to account for her relaxed manner when interviewing famous people.

Walters attended Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, graduating in 1953 with a bachelor's degree in English. After a brief stint as a secretary, she landed her first job in journalism as the assistant to publicity director and Republican activist Tex McCary of WRCA-TV. After sharpening her writing and producing skills at the NBC affiliate, Walters moved to CBS, where she wrote material for the network's Morning Show . In 1955, she married business executive Robert Henry Katz. They divorced in 1958.

Television Journalist

In 1961, the NBC network hired Barbara Walters to work as a researcher and writer for the popular Today show. Her initial assignments were stories slanted toward female viewers. Within a few months, however, she lobbied for a breakthrough assignment to travel with First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy on a trip to India and Pakistan. The resulting report earned Walters increasing responsibility at the network.

In 1963, she married theatrical producer Lee Guber. They adopted a daughter, Jacqueline Dena, named after Walters' sister and mother. Walters and Guber divorced in 1976.

By 1964, Walters became a staple at the Today show, alongside Hugh Downs and later Frank McGee, and earned the nickname "Today girl." Though serving as a co-host, she wasn't given that official billing until 1974, and was restricted from asking questions of the show's "serious" guests until the male co-host had finished asking his.

Household Name

Walters remained on the show for 11 years, during which time she honed her trademark probing-yet-casual interviewing technique. By 1972, she established herself as a competent journalist and was chosen to be part of the press corps that accompanied President Nixon on his historic trip to China. In 1975, she won her first Daytime Entertainment Emmy Award for best host in a talk series.

Enticed by an unprecedented $1 million annual salary, Walters accepted a job at ABC in 1976 as the first woman co-anchor of a network evening news program. That same year, she was chosen to moderate the third and final presidential debate between challenger Jimmy Carter and incumbent President Gerald Ford. Walters also launched the first of a series of Barbara Walters Specials in 1976. The initial interview program featured President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalynn Carter. She followed up the next year by arranging the first joint interview with Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel and President Anwar Sadat of Egypt.

It was during this time that Barbara Walters honed her skill as a reporter and solidified her probing interview style. She became known for her deftly maneuvered questions, often catching her subjects off guard and revealing uncommon candor. Her success has been attributed to her relentless effort to get the "first interview" from a wide range of people, an uncanny ability to ask the questions the public would most like to hear, and her ability not to alienate the people she interviews.

Many of Walters' male colleagues were outraged and openly critical of her new found success. Among the most outspoken was her ABC co-anchor, Harry Reasoner, whose patronizing manner was apparent on camera. Critics also remained skeptical of Walters' qualifications as a credible journalist and questioned the move as a publicity stunt by ABC News to cash in on Walters' "star status." Adding to Walters' credibility problems was Gilda Radner's famous parody of "Baba