Barbara Walters dies at 93; news anchor broke the boy’s club of network television

Barbara Walters, the first woman to break up the all-male club of network television anchors and one of the last remaining megastars in broadcast news who deftly coaxed world leaders and celebrities alike into revealing their secrets and deepest fears, has died.

“Barbara Walters passed away peacefully in her home surrounded by loved ones, She lived her life with no regrets. She was a trailblazer not only for female journalists but for all women,” Cindi Berger, Walters’ publicist, said in a statement to The Times.

Seemingly indefatigable through her long career, Walters died at 93.

Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Bob Iger, Walters’ former boss, announced on Twitter that Walters died Friday evening at her home in New York.

“Barbara was a true legend, a pioneer not just for women in journalism but for journalism itself. She was a one-of-a-kind reporter who landed many of the most important interviews of our time, from heads of state and leaders of regimes to the biggest celebrities and sports icons,” Iger wrote. “I had the pleasure of calling Barbara a colleague for more than three decades, but more importantly, I was able to call her a dear friend.

“She will be missed by all of us at the Walt Disney Co., and we send our deepest condolences to her daughter, Jacqueline.”

Walters had undergone heart surgery in 2010.

A canny interviewer who prodded ranks of public figures into tearful confessions, Walters was an aggressive practitioner of “the get” who outmaneuvered competitors to land exclusives with figures as varied as Cuban leader Fidel Castro, actress Katharine Hepburn and White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

She made history when she was named the first female co-host of NBC’s “Today” show in 1974 and again two years later when ABC tapped her as the first female co-anchor of the network evening news. Walters faced open hostility from her male counterparts in both places, but never let it rattle her publicly, despite being shadowed by deep insecurities that she said lifted only late in her career.

“I was completely unwelcome,” she told The Times in 2008. “They didn’t want a woman, and they didn’t want me.”

Veteran network producer Av Westin, who worked with her at CBS and ABC, said Walters overcame what was a huge hurdle at the time: “To be able to plow through the resistance of a woman being accepted as more than a bit of pretty fluff — she really was the first who did that.”

Walters’ ill-matched pairing with evening anchor Harry Reasoner at ABC lasted only two years, and she went on to become a power player at the network as co-host of the prime-time news magazine “20/20,” a post she held for a quarter-century. Her creation of “The View,” the daytime talk show she co-hosted until 2014, gave her another prominent perch.

But Walters was perhaps most familiar to viewers with her “Barbara Walters Specials,” in which she quizzed entertainers such as Elizabeth Taylor, George Clooney and Michael Jackson about their personal lives, drawing them out with a mix of chumminess and relentlessness. Times television critic Mary McNamara said Walters was part confessor, part therapist and succeeded brilliantly at making “emotion newsworthy.”

Her ability to reinvent herself with the times made her a singular figure in the media: an octogenarian deeply immersed in current celebrity culture.

She moved in the same bold-faced social set as the movie stars and political leaders she interviewed, leading some critics to suggest that she pulled her punches in interviews to avoid offending friends. Walters insisted that her personal relationships never got in the way of her job, but was unapologetic about the amiable tone she had with interview subjects in her prime-time specials.

“I don’t want them to go away discouraged,” she told the New York Times in 1992.

While proud of the popularity of shows such as “10 Most Fascinating People,” Walters worried at times that the public had forgotten the hard-hitting interviews she did with dozens of world leaders, including Saddam Hussein and Moammar Kadafi. When asked what she hoped to be remembered for, Walters responded: “As a good journalist,” adding: “Not as someone who made people cry.”

Gifted with an innate appreciation of the power of the public confessional, Walters published her own juicy autobiography at age 78 in which she detailed her guilt-ridden relationship with her mentally disabled older sister, the attempted suicide of her father and an affair she had with a married U.S. senator in the 1970s.

“I wanted people to know that … I, who seemed to have this perfect life and this great career and the daughter and the men and so forth, have not had a perfect life by any means,” she told The Los Angeles Times.

Barbara Jill Walters was born in Boston on Sept. 25, 1929, the youngest daughter of Lou Walters, a vaudeville booker-turned-nightclub impresario who created the famed Latin Quarter club in Times Square, and Dena Seletsky, a clerk in a men’s neckwear store. Her older sister Jacqueline had a mild mental disability, which was a source of embarrassment and then guilt for Walters throughout her life.

For a time, the family enjoyed a posh lifestyle. Walters spent part of her childhood in a vast penthouse in Manhattan and a pistachio green mansion in Miami, where her father opened a Florida version of the Latin Club. Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., among other power brokers, was a frequent guest. Walters grew accustomed to encountering celebrities backstage.

“I met so many stars: Frank Sinatra, Milton Berle, Sophie Tucker,” she recalled in an interview. “It was very glamorous on the surface, but I knew they had problems and difficulties. So I’ve never been in awe of celebrities. That comes from my childhood.”

Still, Walters said she was a “somewhat lonely child,” in part because her parents kept her and her sister isolated so as not to expose Jacqueline to ridicule. The family was also constantly in a precarious financial state because of Lou Walters’ gambling debts, a situation that riddled his youngest daughter with insecurity for much of her life.

“No matter how high my profile became, how many awards I received, or how much money I made, my fear was that it all could be taken away from me,” she wrote in “Audition,” her 2008 autobiography.

After studying theater at Sarah Lawrence College, Walters worked as a secretary at a New York advertising agency, then got her first television job as a publicist for the local NBC affiliate in New York. Several years later, she was hired as a writer for CBS’ morning show, which was then co-anchored by a young Walter Cronkite and Dick Van Dyke. She made her on-camera debut on that program, replacing a model who failed to show up for a bathing suit segment.

When Walters was 29, her father’s newest club went bankrupt and he tried to kill himself with sleeping pills. Her first marriage, to hat manufacturer Bob Katz, had recently ended in divorce after three years, and she was left as the sole supporter of her family.

After a stint at a public relations firm, she landed a job as a writer on “Today” in 1961. She occasionally got to do on-air pieces, even covering First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy’s trip to India and Pakistan in 1962.

Walters was made an official reporter in October 1964, taking over for actress Maureen O’Sullivan in the role that had been known as the “Today Girl.” Now that she was in the spotlight, Walters worked with a voice specialist to overcome her difficulty pronouncing Rs, a quirk she said was the remnant of a Boston accent. But after viewers complained she sounded stilted, she gave up trying. (Her distinctive speaking style would later inspire comedian Gilda Radner’s “Baba Wawa” impersonation on “Saturday Night Live.”)

Walters sought to tackle meaty news stories, despite the resentment she encountered from male colleagues. When “Today” host Frank McGee demanded that Walters be limited to “girlie” interviews, she protested. The network president came up with a compromise: McGee could ask the first three questions of newsmakers visiting the studio; Walters, the fourth.

Quietly fuming, Walters sought interviews outside the studio, where McGee had no say, pursuing subjects with handwritten letters. She got an exclusive with President Nixon’s chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman; interviewed the elusive Israeli defense minister Moshe Dayan; and covered Nixon’s historic trip to China as one of only three female reporters in the traveling press corps.

Despite the attention she brought the network with her reporting, NBC refused to name Walters co-host of “Today” until McGee died of bone cancer in 1974. The appointment of the first female network anchor made the cover of Newsweek.

ABC lured Walters away two years later, promising her a then-staggering $5 million over five years — worth $30.2 million in 2022 dollars — to co-anchor the evening news and do prime-time specials. The press was skeptical of her worth, dubbing her the “million-dollar baby.” She encountered an even icier reception from Reasoner, her co-anchor.

The tension between the two was so palpable on the air that actor John Wayne sent Walters a telegram reading, “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”

“It was very hard,” she recalled in 2008. “I would wipe my eyes before I went out there and put the smile on. But after a while, people realized. It was so uncomfortable watching us that I was beginning to get the sympathy vote, which I didn’t really want.”

News division President Roone Arledge finally ended the pairing after two years, and Walters survived by fashioning a new role for herself: that of the globe-trotting interviewer. She interviewed Fidel Castro in a patrol boat on the Bay of Pigs and scored a world scoop by landing the first joint interview with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, infuriating competitors such as Cronkite.

“I’m very grateful that I have that period in my life,” she said. “I think the whole body of my work is enough so that people, I hope, realize that I don’t just do celebrities.”

At times, her career was filled with escapades out of a James Bond movie: A Panamanian dictator tried to romance her. She secretly passed on a message to President Reagan from an Iranian arms dealer involved in the Iran-Contra deal, an act that drew a public reprimand from ABC for violating news division standards.

In 1980, she was named co-host of “20/20,” the prime-time news magazine ABC had created to challenge “60 Minutes.” Walters used the show as a platform to expand her run of exclusive interviews, fiercely competing for scoops, sometimes even with ABC colleagues.

Westin, who served as her executive producer on that show for close to a decade, said the secret to Walters’ success was her over-preparation.

“She really had a lack of self-confidence, believe it or not,” he said. “If she was going to do an interview with a major figure, she would do more research than anyone. She would call around to all her contacts, asking, ‘What questions should I ask?’ She was always concerned her colleagues and critics would find her wanting, and she didn’t want to let that happen.”

Walters brought a lighter tone to her prime-time specials, perching on an elephant with James Stewart, riding behind Sylvester Stallone on a motorcycle and getting a lap dance from Hugh Jackman.

She was unapologetic about using every tool she had to score a big interview. She noted in her 2008 autobiography “Audition” that for all the discrimination she faced in journalism as a woman, it also had its advantages.

“A sought-after male subject chooses you to do the interview in the hope that somewhere along the line, the romantic side — or at least the flirtatious side — will surpass the professional,” she wrote.

In her later years, Walters remade herself as a successful producer of “The View.” The unpredictable back-and-forth of the hosts, particularly during Rosie O’Donnell’s tumultuous tenure on the show, made it water-cooler fodder. It also became a regular stomping ground for political figures seeking to reach female viewers.

Walters officially retired in 2014, but then quickly announced she was “coming out of retirement” to do a special “20/20” interview with the father of Elliot Rodger, the UC Santa Barbara student who killed six people and wounded 14. She continued to do occasional specials. Her last on-air interview was with then presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2015. She was rarely seen in public in recent years.

Walters is survived by her daughter Jacqueline, whom she adopted with her second husband, theatrical producer Lee Guber. They divorced in 1976. Walters’ third marriage, to television producer Merv Adelson, also ended in divorce.

Over the years, she was romantically involved with numerous powerful men, including future Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and U.S. Sen. John Warner of Virginia. In her autobiography, Walters revealed that she carried on a two-year affair in the 1970s with Edward R. Brooke, a married U.S. senator and first Black person elected to that body since Reconstruction.

If she had any regret in her life, Walters told The Times, it was that she never kept a diary.

“I still think, ’Oh, the things I’ve heard and forgotten!’ ” she said.

Gold is a former Times staff writer. Times staff writer Steve Marble contributed to this report.