Barbara Walters

Lore & Background

Barbara Walters was born in Boston to Dena and Lou Walters, children of Russian Jewish immigrants. Her father managed the Latin Quarter nightclub in Boston and later opened its New York location, also working as a Broadway producer and entertainment director. During her childhood, the family experienced both wealth and financial loss, including losing their penthouse and possessions. Walters attended several schools, including Lawrence School, Ethical Culture Fieldston School, Birch Wathen School, and earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Sarah Lawrence College in 1951.

Walters began her career at WNBT-TV in 1953 as a writer-producer of a children's program, Ask the Camera. She joined NBC's Today show in the early 1960s as a writer and segment producer, later becoming the show's regular 'Today Girl' and then a reporter-at-large. In 1974, she became co-host of Today, the first woman to hold such a position on an American news program. In 1976, she became the first American female co-anchor of a network evening news program, alongside Harry Reasoner on the ABC Evening News.

Walters was a correspondent, producer and co-host on ABC's 20/20 from 1979 to 2004. She created, produced, and co-hosted the ABC daytime talk show The View from 1997 until 2014. She interviewed every sitting U.S. president and first lady from Richard and Pat Nixon to Barack and Michelle Obama, as well as numerous world leaders and celebrities. Her final on-air appearance for ABC News was in 2015, and she last publicly appeared in 2016.

Reader's Guide

Barbara Walters' significance lies in her role as a pioneer for women in broadcast journalism. She broke barriers by becoming the first female co-host of a national news program on Today in 1974 and the first American female co-anchor of a network evening news program on ABC Evening News in 1976. Her career spanned over six decades, from 1951 to 2014, during which she set a standard for the television interview format. Walters' ability to secure and conduct interviews with a wide range of influential figures—from every sitting U.S. president and first lady from the Nixons to the Obamas, to world leaders like Fidel Castro, Vladimir Putin, and Saddam Hussein—demonstrated her reach and impact. She also created and co-hosted The View, a long-running daytime talk show that provided a platform for diverse perspectives. Her legacy includes multiple honors: induction into the Television Hall of Fame in 1989, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the NATAS in 2000, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2007. Walters' work helped reshape the role of women in news media and established her as a central figure in American television journalism.

Pioneering the New Journalism in the Art World

Barbara Goldsmith first made her mark as a journalist by writing prize-winning profiles of Hollywood luminaries in her early twenties—Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Joan Crawford, and Audrey Hepburn among them. But it was her deep engagement with the visual and performing arts that truly defined her early career. In the late 1960s she launched 'The Creative Environment,' a series of in-depth interviews with figures such as Marcel Breuer, I.M. Pei, George Balanchine, and Pablo Picasso, exploring their creative processes. That series caught the eye of Clay Felker, editor of the New York Herald Tribune's Sunday supplement. When the Tribune folded in 1967, Goldsmith actually supplied Felker with the capital needed to purchase the magazine's rights and relaunch it as a standalone glossy. She became a founding editor and writer of New York magazine in 1968, covering not just art but the vivid personalities orbiting it. Her third-issue profile of Viva, the Andy Warhol film 'superstar,' accompanied by Diane Arbus photographs, drew both praise and controversy. Tom Wolfe called it 'too good not to print' and included it in his New Journalism anthology, crediting her as one of the movement's originators. Goldsmith, characteristically, deflected the label, insisting that good journalism simply stands on its own merits rather than belonging to any so-called group.

From Magazine Editor to Bestselling Author

By the mid-1970s, Goldsmith had grown restless with the editorial role of polishing other writers' work. She shifted her focus to authoring books while continuing to contribute to the New Yorker and the New York Times. Her 1975 novel, The Straw Man, set against the backdrop of New York's art world, followed a wealthy family's bitter legal battle over a vast collection of Old Masters and Impressionists. It hit number one on bestseller lists, and John Kenneth Galbraith praised it as 'brilliant social criticism.' In 1980 she published Little Gloria...Happy at Last, a nonfiction narrative of the 1930s custody battle involving young Gloria Vanderbilt. The book topped both the New York Times and Publishers Weekly bestseller lists, was selected by the Book of the Month Club, and was adapted into both a Paramount film and an NBC mini-series starring Bette Davis and Angela Lansbury. Her 1987 work, Johnson v. Johnson, chronicled the longest and most expensive will contest in American history, earning raves from The Washington Post and The New York Times. Then in 1998, Other Powers brought readers into the Gilded Age world of suffragist and spiritualist Victoria Woodhull, earning a Los Angeles Prize finalist nod and sweeping critical acclaim.

A Life of Honors and Recognition

Throughout her career, Goldsmith accumulated a remarkable roster of distinctions reflecting the breadth of her contributions. She was awarded four honoris causa doctorates and elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, two Presidential Commissions, and the New York State Council on the Arts. Her peers in the literary and arts communities recognized her through honors from The New York Public Library Literary Lions, the Literacy Volunteers, the American Academy in Rome, The Authors Guild, and the Guild Hall Academy of Arts for Lifetime Achievement. In 2009, the Republic of Poland bestowed upon her the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit, a rare international honor for an American writer. In November 2008, the New York Landmarks Conservancy elected her a 'Living Landmark,' a distinction acknowledging her as a cultural figure inseparable from the city's identity. She also won Emmy awards for her television work, including a 1968 special about Lauren Bacall in Paris and her contribution to the Little Gloria mini-series. The Financial Times ultimately captured her impact by declaring that her legacy encompassed art, literature, friends, family, and philanthropy.

Art, Family, and Philanthropy

Beyond her writing, Goldsmith lived a life deeply intertwined with the visual arts. Her earliest journalistic assignments were in the art field, and during that period she simultaneously built a personal collection focused primarily on contemporary American painting and sculpture. This dual identity—as both chronicler and collector of art—shaped the lens through which she approached her journalism and fiction. After leaving the New York magazine world, she took on a senior editorial role at Harper's Bazaar under the Hearst Corporation in 1974, where she attracted top-tier writers to the publication. Her philanthropic work earned her critical and popular acclaim alongside her literary achievements, and it was cited prominently in the Financial Times' assessment of her legacy. She raised three children and eventually welcomed six grandchildren into her life. Her career spanned an extraordinary range—Hollywood profiles, architectural and dance criticism, legal-saga nonfiction, Gilded Age history, and novelistic fiction—yet it was the thread of art, community, and generosity that wove through every chapter of her story.

Gallery