Barbara Walters, who is fast closing in on her 80th birthday, has had an amazing career in television in the United States. She was the first female nightly news co-anchor, the first woman to co-host the Today show, the host of 20/20, the co-host of The View, and the host and producer of a series of Specials.
In retrospect, Walters has made her mark as a star interviewer, having interviewed some 30 heads of state from Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein to Poland’s Lech Walesa and Britain’s Margaret Thatcher.
She has interviewed three Israeli prime ministers – Golda Meir, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin. In addition, she has covered U.S. presidents, including John F. Kennedy’s assassination and Richard Nixon’s historic trip to China.
Not bad for a Jewish girl who landed her first job as a lowly secretary in an advertising agency.
In Audition: A Memoir (Alfred A. Knopf), Walters recaps her eventful life with verve and passion. She recounts her rise in TV land, discloses bracing and sad details about her family, and reflects on heady love affairs and three failed marriages.
She dedicates this autobiography, in part, to her late older sister, Jacqueline, who was developmentally disabled and never had “a real life.” Although Walters had “mixed feelings” about her, being both sympathetic and resentful, she credits Jacqueline with teaching her the meaning of compassion and the value of hard work.
This hefty book unfolds in chronological order, beginning with a frank account of the lives of her parents, Lou and Dena Seletsky, who never had much of a marriage. Not surprisingly, they hailed from remarkably similar backgrounds. Dena’s family came from a village in Lithuania, while Lou’s family – whose original name was Abrahams – came from Lodz, Poland, and settled in America by way of Britain.
Lou, the owner of a booking agency in the entertainment industry, struck it rich when, in 1937, he turned a former Greek Orthodox church in Boston into the glittering Latin Quarter nightclub.
Capitalizing on his success, Walters opened branches in Miami Beach and New York City. Walters, who was fairly close to him despite his long absences and womanizing, bears witness to his meteoric ascent.
Raised in an irreligious household, Walters writes, “We certainly knew full well that we were Jewish. But practising [Judaism] just never seemed important. As a result, I have no Jewish education… and don’t observe the holidays.”
A graduate of a renowned liberal arts college, she aspired to be an actress, but being practical, she attended a speedwriting school before being hired as a secretary. After a year, thanks to “pull,” she acquired a position as a publicity assistant at an NBC affiliate in New York City. She began dating her boss, 10 years her senior, who was embroiled in divorce proceedings. “He was the first man I slept with,” she discloses.
In this confessional tone, Walters subsequently writes about her first true love, a Frenchman who headed the catering and banquet department of a major hotel in Manhattan. “That he was married to an actress in Paris did not bother me,” she admits. “Neither was I bothered by the 18-year difference in our ages.”
Walters got her first big break after signing on as a writer for Today. She had previously been a publicist for a magazine, a job she disliked. By then, she had married and divorced her first husband, a manufacturer of children’s hats, for whom she felt little sexual desire. The union lasted three years, and today, she barely remembers it. After they separated, she saw her ex only once again.
In passing, she relates her father’s tragic descent into financial insolvency and his attempt at suicide. Due to these circumstances, Walters was forced to support her parents and sister, and for the next 40 years, she admits, she lived with a brooding sense of anxiety and insecurity. As she puts it, “I have… always felt I was auditioning, either for a new job or to make sure that I could hold on to the one I had.”
Walters’ foray into reporting occurred in the wake of Kennedy’s murder in 1963. NBC, caught short-handed by the assassination, sent her to Washington, D.C., to help cover his funeral. Shortly afterward, she got married for the second time. “I loved him, but I wasn’t passionately in love with him,” she observes. “I felt trapped and restless.”
Her reportage from China, in 1971, was a turning point. “I learned more about reporting than at any time before or since,” she says.
But there were dark days, too. Walters, a go-getter, was resented by her co-hosts, Frank McGee and Harry Reasoner, who were sullen male chauvinists. As a result, she had to scramble to advance her career.
Once her second marriage broke up, she dated the rather glitzy ambassadors to the United States from Iran and Argentina. One proposed marriage, but she was not game.
The first of her many reporting trips to the Middle East took place in August 1973, approximately a month before the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War. She went to Israel to interview Meir.
“Curiously, although I’m Jewish, I had never had any great desire to go to Israel,” she acknowledges. “I’d never felt any special religious or spiritual connection to the Jewish state…” Much to her surprise, Israel overwhelmed her and “aroused feelings I never knew I had… I felt a startling and quite strong connection.”
While in Israel, she was also granted an interview with Moshe Dayan, the flamboyant defence minister. Despite his reputation for rudeness, she befriended Dayan and remained friends with him until his untimely death.
By contrast, Sadat, whom she met in the wake of the Yom Kippur War, was personable and charismatic. She rates him as her best-ever interviewee. “He changed the world. At least he tried to.” (She rates her interview with Hollywood actor Warren Beatty as her absolute worst. It was like “pulling teeth.” )
In addition, Walters formed a cordial working relationship with Begin, but it unravelled after she pointedly questioned him about the wisdom of Israel’s ill-fated invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
Outside the Mideast, one of her finest hours as a journalist when she landed an interview with Cuban leader Fidel Castro. She recalls that Castro, a friendly fellow, invited her and her crew into his kitchen and prepared delicious melted cheese sandwiches for them.
Walters’ account of her third marriage, to a movie mogul she met on a blind date, makes for sober reading. “Wham! I thought, at last this is it.” But no, this marriage “sputtered along” until it simply “ran out of steam.”
She interviewed Saddam at a propitious moment, shortly after Israeli aircraft bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981. In usual style, he denounced Israel and its existence. She was not surprised. “I guess one might ask how I, being Jewish, felt hearing these remarks. The truth is that I felt great concern for Israel but nothing personal. I’d heard similar remarks from Arabs before and would again.”
She closes on a high note, saying she had the good fortune to hit her peak during what she describes as “the golden age” of TV: “I am probably happier and more at peace than I have ever been. I know I had a fantastic career. I know I travelled everywhere and met almost every important person there was to meet. I achieved more than I could ever have imagined.”