Barbara Walters, groundbreaking newswoman and TV personality, has died at the age of 93.
Barbara Walters, groundbreaking journalist and TV personality who hosted 20/20, The View, has died at the age 93.
Barbara Jill Walters was born in Boston on Sept. 25, 1929, to Dena and Louis "Lou" Walters. Her father worked in show business as a booking agent and nightclub producer, and discovered comedians Fred Allen and Jack Haley, who would go on to star as the Tin Man in the classic film "The Wizard of Oz." In her 2008 memoir "Audition," Walters revealed that she got her ambition to succeed from her older sister, Jacqueline, who was born developmentally disabled.
"No one was more surprised than I," she said of her on-air career. "I wasn't beautiful, like many of the women on the program before me, and I had trouble pronouncing my r's." At ABC, her interviews were wide-ranging and her access to public figures, unparalleled; Walters crossed the Bay of Pigs with Fidel Castro and conducted the first joint interview with Sadat and Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin. She also developed a reputation for asking tough questions.
There were lighter interviews, too. For years, she hosted an annual Oscars special, in which she interviewed Academy Award nominees and was known for making a number of them reveal deeply personal information and even cry. In 1994, she launched the "Most Fascinating People" special, which aired every December and afforded her the opportunity to chat with the year's top newsmakers.
Walters was married four times to three different men and adopted daughter Jacqueline Guber with second husband Lee Guber, a theater producer and owner. She named her daughter after her sister, writing in her memoir that she "wanted Jackie to feel that she, too, has a child, because I knew by this time she never would."
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