Staying Fit
Barbara Walters, who died on Friday at 93, advised young journalists to better their craft by asking subjects about their childhoods — to get to the heart of their personalities.
Walters’ brother, Burton, died of pneumonia at 3, and her early years were largely shaped by the fact that her older sister, Jackie, was mentally disabled. “It gave me a childhood that was sad and kind of lonely, because there were things I couldn’t do, like have friends over,” she said. “I think it gave me empathy.”
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Walters was broadcast journalism’s preeminent female pioneer. She interviewed eight consecutive U.S. presidents and first ladies from Richard and Pat Nixon through Barack and Michelle Obama, and conducted notable interviews with leaders the likes of Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Iran’s Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and Libya’s Muammar al-Gaddafi. She was the first American journalist to sit down with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, provocatively asking if he had ever ordered anyone killed. “Nyet,” he replied. Her last on-air interview was with presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2015.
The 11-time Emmy nominee (and one-time winner) capped her long and authoritative career as the cohost, creator and executive producer of The View, an influential daytime talk show with an all-women panel. When she retired in 2014 after 16 seasons, veteran news personality Larry King remarked, “I thought Barbara was a forever person. I thought she and television were like ham and eggs.” Walters told AARP’s Myrna Blyth “it was the right time.”
She forged a reputation for scooping her rivals by outworking them. “I do so much homework,” she said, “I know more about the person than he or she does about himself.” CBS’s Bob Schieffer called her his “toughest competitor,” and Walter Cronkite famously asked Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, “Did Barbara get anything I didn’t?”
The daughter of impresario Lou Walters, who opened New York’s Latin Quarter nightclub and booked acts for legendary showrooms in Miami Beach and Las Vegas, Barbara was born in Boston and studied English at Sarah Lawrence College. She started as a publicist, then producer of a children’s program on NBC’s New York affiliate, and worked her way into newswriting and a stint as reporter at large on the Today show.
