The rulebreaker : the life and times of Barbara Walters / Susan Page.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Page, Susan, 1951- author.

Contributor:

Rosengarten Family Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Walters, Barbara, 1929-2022.

Walters, Barbara.

Television journalists--United States--Biography.

Television journalists.

Women journalists--Biography.

Women journalists.

Broadcasters--United States--Biography.

Broadcasters.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xvii, 444 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm

Edition:

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.

Other Title:

Rule breaker

Life and times of Barbara Walters

Place of Publication:

New York : Simon & Schuster, 2024.

Summary:

"The definitive biography of the most successful female broadcaster of all time--Barbara Walters--a woman whose personal demons fueled an ambition that broke all the rules and finally gave women a permanent place on the air, written by bestselling author Susan Page. Barbara Walters was a force from the time TV was exploding on the American scene in the 1960s to its waning dominance in a new world of competition from streaming services and social media half a century later. She was not just a groundbreaker for women (Oprah announced when she was seventeen that she wanted to be Barbara Walters), but also expanded the big TV interview and then dominated the genre. By the end of her career, she had interviewed more of the famous and infamous, from presidents to movie stars to criminals to despots, than any other journalist in history. Then at sixty-seven, past the age many female broadcasters found themselves involuntarily retired, she pioneered a new form of talk TV called The View. She is on the short list of those who have left the biggest imprints on television news and on our culture, male or female. So, who was the woman behind the legacy?In The Rulebreaker, Susan Page conducts 150 interviews and extensive archival research to discover that Walters was driven to keep herself and her family afloat after her mercurial and famous impresario father attempted suicide. But she never lost the fear of an impending catastrophe, which is what led her to ask for things no woman had ever asked for before, to ignore the rules of misogynistic culture, to outcompete her most ferocious competitors, and to protect her complicated marriages and love life from scrutiny. Page breaks news on every front--from the daring things Walters did to become the woman who reinvented the TV interview to the secrets she kept until her death. This is the eye-opening account of the woman who knew she had to break all the rules so she could break all the rules about what viewers deserved to know"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction: Million-dollar baby

A glass eye and a British accent

Roots

Lou and Dena

Never young

"The strongest influence in my life"

The fifth-grader and the bootlegger

Another opening, another show

The ostrich

The speedwriting secretarial school

The most forgettable husband; the most notorious friend

Catastrophe

"A halo of fear"

Sunrise

A godfather of the mafia sort

Becoming Barbara Walters

The runaway bride

The "pushy cookie"

"It's a girl!"

A melody played in a penny arcade

McGee's law

When love is not enough

Careful what you wish for

Failure

Fidel

Comeback

The man she married (but only once)

The runaway daughter

The honeymoon and the arms dealer

Loss

Diane

You can't have it all

The yin and the yang

The Barbara Walters interview

Bette Davis and the Dalai Lama

The View

Monica

Trump

One more time

The fall

The end

Epilogue: The rulebreaker

Acknowledgments

Source notes

Notes

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [347]-422) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Rosengarten Family Fund.

ISBN:

9781982197926

1982197927

OCLC:

1393242963