Little Known Facts About TV Personality Barbara Walters
Barbara Ann Walters was born on born September 25, 1929 in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father, Lou, was a theatrical booking agent, a producer, and he operated night clubs. One of his acts was the Ziegfeld Follies of 1943 which he co-produced. Barbara’s mother, Dena Seletsky, also gave birth to a son, Burton, and an older daughter named Jacqueline. However, Barbara’s brother died from complications of pneumonia in 1932. Barbara’s sister was born mildly retarded. Jacqueline influenced Barbara’s life, especially in later years. (She died of cancer in 1988.) Read this illuminating article and find out some little known facts about TV personality Barbara Walters!
Early Years
Father Lou and mother Dena were both Jewish at the start. However, Barbara Walters’ father later turned to Atheism. The result was Walters was raised with no religion in her home. Still, she is Jewish.
Being that Walters’ father schmoozed with celebrities, Barbara found herself being around them a lot. Those experiences made her become very comfortable with them instead of being nervous and star-struck. That attribute helped her later on in her career as a journalist interviewing big names like Boris Yeltsin, Margaret Thatcher, King Hussein of Jordan, Katharine Hepburn and General Colin Powell. A little known fact about TV personality Barbara Walters is her “top three interviews” thus far in her career were with Fidel Castro in 1977, Michael Jackson in 1997 and Monica Lewinsky in 1999. She has interviewed every United States President and First Lady since the Nixon Administration.
Disaster Strikes
Barbara Walters’ father ended up losing his nightclub businesses. Trouble with the government also took their homes, a penthouse on Central Park West and a house in Florida. Lou had a nervous breakdown. When Walters was twenty-two years old, she had to be the breadwinner for her family.
Being raised first in a life of luxury, then finding herself being the sole supporter of her family might have turned Barbara Walters into a bitter woman. It certainly made her determined to succeed. But it didn’t harden her heart. Certainly not towards her sister. Barbara said this, “The most dominant person in my life was Jackie. I was embarrassed by her, and at the same time I loved her very much. I always knew I had to take care of Jackie – financially support her, but more than that. The sadness of her life gave me an understanding, and a compassion, and a pain in my heart.”
Her Career
Barbara Walters has had a long and memorable television career thus far, with no end in sight. She started out writing for CBS News. She then wrote for NBC’s “The Today Show” in 1961. Walters worked her way up to become a reporter. Many other jobs followed. Walters is known for her role as a news anchor on ABC’s “20/20” with Hugh Downs; NBC’s “Today”, and “The ABC Evening News.” Today, she co-hosts her daytime talk show “The View.” Barbara Walters also co-created the show. And, she is the co-executive producer. The View” earned her a Daytime Emmy award in 2003 for “Best Talk Show.
Walters’ career has garnered her Emmy Awards in 1975, 1980, 1982, 1983, and 1997 so far. She holds the disctinction of being the first news anchor to earn one million dollars a year. That’s what the ABC Network paid her in 1976 to come aboard.
A little known fact about TV personality Barbara Walters is, in 2001, Ladies Home Journal designated her as being the “fourth most powerful woman in America.
Private Life
Besides being a journalist, writer, news anchor, co-host, and producer, Barbara Walters is a smoker, a vegetarian, a dog lover, an ex-wife and a mother. Her first husband was businessman Robert Henry Katz. Their marriage lasted from 1955 to 1958. She was married to theater owner Lee Guber from 1963 to 1976. A little known fact about TV Personality Barbara Walters is that she and and Guber adopted a daughter she named “Jacqueline Dena” when she was born in 1968. Then, she married Merv Adelson, the CEO of Lorimar Televisionried in 1986. They divorced in 1992.
The five-foot-five-inch tall television icon was also, according to People Magazine in 2000, one of the “Best Dressed Stars of All-Time”.
