Barbara Walters in 2004. (Photo by John Mathew Smith & www.celebrity-photos.com via Wikipedia Commons)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
ABC News, where Walters regularly appeared on shows such as \u201c20\/20\u201d and \u201cThe View,\u201d shared the news without giving a cause of death.<\/p>\n
Before becoming one of the most enduring and talked about news hosts in the world from the 1970s through the 2000s, Walters was raised by parents descended from Jewish immigrants who fled antisemitism in Eastern Europe. Her father Lou founded a chain of nightclubs and moved the family from Boston to Miami to New York, gaining and losing fortunes along the way.<\/p>\n
In 2006, Walters told The Washington Post that her parents were not religious, and she never celebrated Jewish holidays while growing up. But she noted that her father would always come home from his Latin Quarter clubs on Friday nights, which she saw as a nod to a family Shabbat tradition. As an adult, she began buying Christmas trees each year, proclaiming she loved the holiday.<\/p>\n
Walters was married four times, to three different Jewish men. She had one child, with theater impresario Lee Guber, who demanded that their daughter attend Hebrew school. While married to producer Merv Adelson \u2014 from 1981-84 and then from 1986-92 \u2014 they celebrated Jewish holidays \u201cbecause it was important to him,\u201d she told the Post.<\/p>\n
Walters worked her way up through the ranks at NBC in the early 1970s, becoming the first female co-host of \u201cThe Today Show\u201d in 1974. In 1976, she moved to co-host what was then the \u201cABC Evening News.\u201d She became a longtime contributor to \u201c20\/20,\u201d ABC\u2019s primetime TV news magazine show that competed with CBS\u2019 \u201c60 Minutes,\u201d and co-founded and co-hosted \u201cThe View,\u201d starting in 1997.<\/p>\n
Walters was known for her candid interviewing style \u2014 \u201cShe invented intimacy on television,\u201d an ABC producer once said \u2014 but also hit her subjects with blunt, cutting questions. Some of her most famous interviews included Jewish figures, including Monica Lewinsky, who Walters called her biggest \u201cget.\u201d She asked Lewinsky if she would tell any future children about her affair with President Bill Clinton, which rattled Washington in a way few other scandals have.<\/p>\n
\u201cMommy made a big mistake,\u201d Lewinsky replied.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that,\u201d Walters said in an often-quoted response, \u201cis the understatement of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Walters also scored the first joint interview with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, before they finished negotiating a historic peace agreement in 1979. In 1977, she had also interviewed Sadat on his flight to meet with Begin in Israel.<\/p>\n
Her style was often debated, including by some critics who thought she ushered in the era of news as entertainment, and parodied by the likes of Gilda Radner on \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d In 2014, she appeared on \u201cSNL,\u201d proclaiming that it was an honor \u201cto see my groundbreaking career in journalism be reduced to a cartoon character with a ridiculous voice.\u201d<\/p>\n
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