Posted on 12/30/2022 6:52:16 PM PST by shadowlands1960
Barbara Walters, the trailblazing television news broadcaster and longtime ABC News anchor and correspondent who shattered the glass ceiling and became a dominant force in an industry once dominated by men, has died. She was 93.
Walters joined ABC News in 1976, becoming the first female anchor on an evening news program. Three years later, she became a co-host of "20/20," and in 1997, she launched "The View." In a career that spanned five decades, Walters won 12 Emmy awards, 11 of those while at ABC News.
She made her final appearance as a co-host of "The View" in 2014, but remained an executive producer of the show and continued to do some interviews and specials for ABC News.
"I do not want to appear on another program or climb another mountain," she said at the time. "I want instead to sit on a sunny field and admire the very gifted women -- and OK, some men too -- who will be taking my place."
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Castro in hell welcomes her again to his bed.
Baba Wawa, the first major American TV news personality ... with s speech impediment.
Thank you for posting that video. đź‘Ť
Yup...another “meToo” hypocrite.....the Lord will be fair and just with her...
She called herself baabaawawa
Then they moved this empty headed ditz into more "serious" news which was way above her pay grade. As a "serious" news presenter, she read from a script of talking points prepared by others. As time went on she actually started to fancy herself "smart".
I remember her in front of a prison in Cuba interviewing dictator Fidel Castro. She loved tyrants.
Without Barbara Walters you will soon see Whoopi Goldberg fired.
#5 Fidel looked like Zelenskyy does.
Wow, nice. RIP.
[fires gun]
Ted Olson: As you can see, it completely destroys the Burt Reynolds interview, and everything from Bo Derek to Paul Newman - but only up to the point where Barbara asks him "is it difficult to love?" Now let me show you what happens when the gun is fired from three feet, which is the distance Sally claimed the shots were fired from.
[fires second gun]
Ted Olson: Notice, complete destruction, right up to the point where she asks Katharine Hepburn what kind of tree she'd like to be.
During a Carpenters Union strike in the 70s, she famously said on air, “no man is worth $25/hour,” while raking in, IIRC, $3M/year.
Seem to have been memory holed. I was an apprentice at the time. The $25 would have been top journeyman’s wage, and included the benefits.
I always remember my mom telling me that Harry Reasoner hated her.
It was said she got her start through her father, Lou Walter:
From Wikipedia: Lou Walters:
Lou Walters (1896 – 15 August 1977) was a British-born American booking agent, theatrical producer and the founder of the famed Latin Quarter nightclub in New York. He was the father of journalist Barbara Walters.
, , , ,
Early life
Lou Walters was born in London in 1898 [1] under the name Louis Abraham Warmwater to Abraham Isaac Warmwater (nee Waremwasser) and Lillian Schwartz.[2] He was one of 7 children, and the eldest son.[2] As a child, he lost one of his eyes, and thereafter wore a glass eye.[3] Abraham Warmwater was a tailor, and during a strike in the clothing business in 1906, he moved the family to Belfast. Three years later, Isaac and his sons moved to New York, with his wife and daughters following seven months later. There, the family changed their surname to Walters.[4]
Lou Walters found a job working as an office boy at a vaudeville booking office, and soon began booking acts himself. By his early 20s, Walters had opened his own booking agency in Boston, Massachusetts. His business originally booked only vaudeville acts, but as the popularity of vaudeville declined, he branched out to book acts into nightclubs and supper clubs.[5] According to the memoir of his daughter Barbara, Walters discovered comedians Fred Allen and Jack Haley.[6]
Walters was not an imposing man, standing at only 5’4 and weighing about 125 lbs.[5] In 1920, he married Dena Seletsky in Boston.[7] Over the next ten years, they had three children: Burton, who died of pneumonia as a toddler, Jacqueline, who had a mental disability (died from ovarian cancer in 1988), and Barbara, a television journalist and anchor.[5][8]
Latin Quarter
In 1937, Walters opened his first nightclub, Latin Quarter, with a partner, E.M. Loew.[5][9] The venture took his entire savings; on opening night he had only 63 cents to his name. The club was very successful, and within three years was grossing more than $500,000 per year. Walters moved his family to Miami Beach, Florida, where he took over the Palm Island Club from Earl Carroll and relaunched it as another Latin Quarter.[5] Two years later, in 1942, Walters opened a Latin Quarter nightclub on Times Square in New York City. The club was extremely popular, and in its first year grossed over $1.5 million. Over 5 million people visited the nightclub during its first ten years in operation.[5]
Walters’s nightclubs were known for their luxurious atmosphere and good food. Walter once told an interviewer that “’It’s a popular fallacy in this business ...to say that your money is made or lost in the kitchen. The man who goes to a nightclub goes in a spirit of splurging, and you’ve got to splurge right along with him.’”[5] The nightclubs offered three shows per evening, each featuring some of the top talent of the time, including Milton Berle, Frank Sinatra, Mae West, and Mickey Rooney, mixed with performances by chorus girls.[5][9] The chorus girls were cast after auditions in London, Paris, and major cities in the United States. The dancers wore skimpy costumes designed by leading fashion designers, including ErtĂ©.[9][8] During this time, Walters branched into producing theatrical shows. In 1943, Walters produced a successful revival of the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway, which ran for 553 performances.[10] He produced two other Broadway shows, Artists and Models, and Star Time, but neither were popular.[5]
Cafe de Paris
Walters sold his share of the Latin Quarter chain to Loew in 1956 for $500,000.[5][11] He was convinced that he could recreate his success with a new chain of clubs called Cafe de Paris.[5] He opened the first in Miami in 1957. A combination of a poor national economy and an unusually frigid Miami winter resulted in a sharp decline in the number of tourists who visited Miami that year. The Miami club failed to attract enough visitors and closed after its first season.[11]
A second version of the Cafe de Paris opened in New York in May 1958, in the former Arcadia Ballroom. It was the largest nightclub in New York, able to seat twelve hundred people.[11] Both of the Cafe de Paris locations were very close to the existing Latin Quarter nightclubs. Loew won an injunction that prevented Walters from advertising his ownership of either of the Cafe de Paris nightclubs.[12] Although opening week was successful, the club was too large, and the rent too high, for Walters to cover his expenses. Facing bankruptcy, Walters attempted suicide in June 1958.[13] His family covered this up, convincing the press that Walters had only had a heart attack.[14][5]
Following his release from the hospital, Walters moved his family back to Miami. All of their assets in New York were seized to pay creditors.[15] Walters was also sued by New York for failing to pay income or payroll taxes while he operated the Cafe de Paris. The court case lasted two years, and Walters began missing court appearances, claiming he did not have the funds to travel to New York. A judge issued a warrant for his arrest. According to the memoir of Walters’ daughter Barbara, she contacted her friend, powerful attorney Roy Cohn, to let him know about the charges, and within a week the charges were dropped and the case was settled.[16]
Las Vegas
In Miami, Walters regained his equilibrium. The Hotel Deauville hired him to produce their nightly shows. That work led to an offer from the Tropicana Las Vegas to manage their stage shows as Entertainment Director.[17] At the Tropicana, he introduced the Folies Bergère to Las Vegas.[5] This was the first time the Folies had been licensed outside of Paris.[18] This became the longest running theatrical production in the world.[9] Walters later produced entertainment for the Casino de Paris in Lake Tahoe, Nevada.[5] In 1965, Walters returned to managing the Latin Quarter chain, now as an employee rather than owner.[8][10]
Death and legacy
Walters retired in 1967.[8] He died of a heart attack in 1977.[5] In 1978, the Boston Center for the Arts named a rehearsal hall for Walters.[8]
In 2006, New York City renamed a street near the old Latin Quarter nightclub “Lou Walters Way”.[19]
Notes
Bloom, p. 549.
Walters, pp. 8-9.
Walters, p. 7.
Walters, p. 10.
Calta, Louis (August 16, 1977), “Lou Walters, Nightclub Impresario and Founder of Latin Quarter, Dies”, The New York Times, retrieved January 23, 2019
Walters, p. 13.
Walters, p. 8.
Jennes, Gail (December 4, 1978), “Back in Boston for a Tribute, Barbara Walters Recalls the ‘Ups’ and ‘Downs’ with Her Dad”, People, retrieved January 23, 2019
Brown, Joseph (May 16, 2004), “The Latin Quarter Nightclub”, South Beach Magazine, retrieved January 23, 2019
Bloom, p. 550.
Walters, p. 88.
Walters, p. 89.
Walters, p 91.
Walters, p. 92.
Walters, p. 93.
Walters, p. 103.
Walters, p. 102.
One Costume, “Sexier than Ever”, Nevada Public Radio, November 25, 2008, retrieved January 23, 2019
Paumgarten, Nick (May 8, 2006), “Still Kicking”, The New Yorker, retrieved January 23, 2019
References
Bloom, Ken (2013), Broadway:An Encyclopedia (2 ed.), Routledge, ISBN 978-1135950194
Walters, Barbara (2008), Audition, Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN 978-0-307-26646-0
Categories: 1896 births1977 deathsAmerican people of Polish-Jewish descent American theatre managers and producersBritish emigrants to the United StatesBritish people of Polish-Jewish descent
She came a long way, but could go no further.
I hope it was painful.
Her rack is why the Mad Men hired her in the first place.
I read this last night and woke up to see this had actually come to pass.
Creepy!
It’s what happens when you get old
Hope I live as long
“shattered the glass ceiling “
If she made it to the top then there was no glass ceiling.
If she indeed shattered the glass ceiling, then all the women who came after her have to stop claiming there’s a glass ceiling, because it has been broken into tiny pieces.
I don't think she knew that much of anything. Her interviews were usually superficial. She was way too impressed with celebrities and their "palatial estates." Her political attitudes seemed to be things she picked up from the people around her without thinking anything through. She did go far in the news business at a time when it wasn't that accepting of women but she didn't do that well with hard news, rather than lifestyle features and interviews.
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