AUDASE

The 11th Most Fascinating Person Ever

Lorne Manley NY TIMES

　

On May 16, when Barbara Walters signs off from "The View" for the final time, one of the more remarkable careers in television will come to an (apparent) end.

In thousands of interviews over the years, Ms. Walters, 84, has sat down with heads of state, movie stars and murderers. She’s challenged the shah of Iran and Bashar al-Assad and quizzed the likes of Liam Neeson and Patrick Dempsey about losing their virginity.

That sometimes uncomfortable flitting between the serious and the silly has made her the object of parody (most famously in the form of Gilda Radner’s Baba Wawa on the early years of "Saturday Night Live") and occasionally derision.

But what can get overshadowed in the criticism about her emotional interviewing style, blurring of the lines between news and entertainment and chumminess with some sources are the accomplishments of a half-century run in the television business.

It’s not just the firsts — the first woman to co-host "Today" and to be co-anchor of a nightly network news program — as she fought the industry’s entrenched sexism. It’s the real journalistic chops underpinning her rise and reign.

Ms. Walters with Harry Reasoner in 1976, when she became his co-anchor on ABC’s evening newscast. Credit ABC Photo Archives

Time and again, she’s elicited revealing answers from people who manage their public images with great care. Richard M. Nixon, asked by Ms. Walters during a live interview whether he’d burn the Oval Office recordings if he had to live through Watergate again, said he would.

Ms. Walters did it again in early May, proving she’s not coasting into retirement (and may be back with another "get" before we know it). She nabbed the first interview with V. Stiviano, the visor-wearing woman whose voice is heard on a leaked tape on which Donald Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, utters racist comments. Ms. Walters did not disappoint. Ms. Stiviano’s description of her relationship with Mr. Sterling set the agenda for the weekend’s ravenous news cycle. "I’m Mr. Sterling’s everything," she told Ms. Walters. "I’m his confidante, his best friend, his silly rabbit."

Here are some of the other memorable moments in Ms. Walters’s television life.

MOST SURPRISING TEARS

No moment in a Walters interview is as integral as the crying jag. First comes a personal question, or five. The tears begin to well. Her quarry may try to suppress the urge to cry with a sniffle, but resistance proves futile. A few more probing questions, and the tears descend, occasionally escalating into full-scale blubbering.

The likes of Ringo Starr, Patrick Swayze, Ellen DeGeneres, Courtney Love and Oprah Winfrey have succumbed. The Walters-induced cry has even acquired a term of its own: "Go ahead and glerg," a fake Barbara Walters, played by Rachel Dratch, tells her helpless subject on an episode of "30 Rock."

But no subject’s tears were as surprising as those of Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf. Interviewed toward the end of the first gulf war, General Schwarzkopf became a little weepy while reminiscing about his father. Ms. Walters expressed her astonishment. "Generals don’t cry," she said.

General Schwarzkopf replied, "Sure they do."

MOST DIFFICULT INTERVIEW

Ms. Walters has dealt with her share of problematic interview subjects over the years. Dictators or celebrities — sometimes it was difficult to determine who were more controlling and demanding. Barbra Streisand insisted on, and received, final cut of a 1976 interview, set to coincide with the release of her remake of "A Star Is Born." The editing process was such a nightmare that Ms. Walters vowed never again to cede control over what went on the air to anyone else.

Ms. Streisand, however, doesn’t win the contest for the "absolutely worst interview I ever conducted." Warren Beatty captures the honor, for an appearance on "Today" in 1966 to promote "Kaleidoscope," a comic crime movie. As Ms. Walters recounts in her 2008 memoir, "Audition," he showed up "rumpled and bleary-eyed," and grunted monosyllabic answers as he slumped in his chair. At wit’s end, Ms. Walters trotted out a default question: What was the movie about? His answer: "Well, that’s really a difficult question." Fed up, Ms. Walters said: "Mr. Beatty, you are the most difficult interview I’ve ever had. We’ll go to a commercial."

Like many of her interview subjects, Mr. Beatty later became a "very good friend."

MOST RIDICULED QUESTION

Ms. Walters’s interviewing style, with its emphasis on feelings and personal lives, has long rankled critics. Though her approach seems de rigueur today, in 1976, her querying President-elect Jimmy Carter about whether he and his wife, Rosalynn, slept in a double bed or separately set off some clucking. Morley Safer excoriated her in a radio commentary, pronouncing that the journalism career of the recently named co-anchor of "ABC Evening News" had come to an ignominious end in the Carters’ Plains, Ga., home.

Yet it was a question delivered five years later that Ms. Walters says still invites ridicule. After Katharine Hepburn described herself as feeling like "a tree" in her old age, Ms. Walters responded with the obvious follow-up question: "What kind of tree are you?"

That exchange took on a life of its own; Johnny Carson even heckled (her word) Ms. Walters on "The Tonight Show" a few years later.

Ms. Walters with Monica Lewinsky in 1999. Credit Virginia Sherwood/ABC, via Getty Images

But Ms. Hepburn had gamely taken the bait. Her choice: A sturdy oak.

MOST COMMON INTERVIEW SETTING

Ms. Walters has ridden with Fidel Castro in a patrol boat across the Bay of Pigs and sat down with the murderous Menendez brothers in a Los Angeles County jail.

Yet the signature location for the up-close-and-personal Walters interview was the subject’s home. When she moved from NBC to ABC in 1976 to be co-anchor of "ABC Evening News" with Harry Reasoner, part of the deal (and half her $1 million salary) called for her to do four "Barbara Walters Specials" each year. The debut installment featured the aforementioned interviews with Ms. Streisand and the Carters: one at a sprawling Malibu ranch, the other at a modest Georgia brick house. The formula was a keeper.

Typically, there was a couch to sit on. Though sometimes not. At Eddie Murphy’s new house, for the 1983 installment of her annual Oscars special, the two sank into the shag carpeting, Mr. Murphy cross-legged in his red leather pants.

"He had no furniture," Ms. Walters told Entertainment Weekly in 2010.

BIGGEST GET

The competition for that exclusive first interview with newsmakers — the all-important "get" — is a fierce one. And Ms. Walters has played the game as well and as hard as anyone. Among the more notable: She conducted the first joint interview with Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, in 1977, much to Walter Cronkite and CBS’s chagrin.

But one "get" looms over all the others: landing Monica Lewinsky for a sit-down interview after the revelations about her affair with President Bill Clinton. After asking Ms. Lewinsky about showing the president her thong, the infamous blue dress and the toll that the Starr investigation and the media circus had taken on her and her family, Ms. Walters’s last question epitomized her ability to wrest memorable lines out of her subjects. What, she asked, would Ms. Lewinsky tell her future children about the whole tawdry affair? "Mommy made a big mistake."

Ms. Walters then turned to the camera: "And that is the understatement of the year."

Nearly 50 million watched the two-hour interview on March 3, 1999. No television news broadcast on a single network has ever drawn more viewers.