The View on Barbara Walters
Barbara Ann Walters was born on September 25th,
1929 in Boston, Massachessets.
Barbara Walters began her career as a receptionist
in an ad agency, then became a newswriter for a series of
local stations, eventually working as a gopher and occasional
writer for CBS News. She worked as an assistant to the producer
at New York's WRCA-TV, and as a publicist for long-time talk
show host and Republican activist Tex McCrary, before joining
Today as a researcher and writer in 1961.
After a few months with Today she was promoted to an on-camera
position as a reporter, but assigned to cover only the fluffiest
of topics. At her own urging she was gradually allowed to
report on more serious topics, and by the mid-1960s she seemed
to be the show's co-host alongside Hugh Downs -- a position
that had previously been held only by men and a chimp named
J Fred Muggs. But despite sitting across from Downs and subsequent
host Frank McGee, Today maintained an informal rule that Walters
was not to ask questions of the show's 'serious' guests --
economists, philosophers, politicians -- until her male co-host
had finished asking his questions, and she was not actually
billed as co-host of The Today Show until 1974.
In 1976 she left NBC to co-anchor The ABC Evening News with
Harry Reasoner, becoming the first female to anchor a network
newscast. The media coverage of this "women's liberation
newscaster" was intense, and Reasoner was chilly on camera
and ice cold backstage. The ratings were disastrous, and soon
she was gone. ABC, though, had Walters under contract, and
to get their money's worth they offered a series of prime
time Barbara Walters Specials, with Walters interviewing celebrities
and newsmakers. And this became Walters' legacy -- her uncanny
knack for extracting sometimes chatty, often revealing, occasionally
embarrassing comments from the rich and powerful.
Over three decades, Walters' specials ranged from the sublime
-- she had the first joint interview with Egyptian President
Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin -- to
the absurd -- she leaned forward to ask Katharine Hepburn
what kind of tree she would choose to be, and asked Monica
Lewinsky how she would tell her as-yet un-conceived children
about her services to Bill Clinton. Walters was also co-host
of 20/20, again opposite Downs, from 1984-99, and after his
retirement she hosted the program either solo or with other
sidekicks from 1999-2004. She created the girls' gabfest The
View in 1997, and has been among the program's hosts ever
since. Read more about
Barbara Walters
More
on Bartbara Walters at the Official The View Web
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Barbara
Walters at Wikipedia.org
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