|
|
Post by yanceycravat on Dec 31, 2022 3:04:24 GMT
Barbara Walters Dead at 93
|
|
|
|
Post by nipkowdisc on Dec 31, 2022 3:20:50 GMT
I already thought thought she was dead,
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Dec 31, 2022 16:25:11 GMT
Back in 2008 I bought a copy of Barbara Walters' memoir 'Audition' which I always felt was strangely titled, since that seems like what an actress might call an autobiography. Though I think in the beginning of her career, Barbara did have ambitions to be an actress.
In the book and in subsequent interviews, she talked about how her greatest regret was not having more children. She had adopted a girl in 1968 during one of her marriages.
My parents had a home in northern Idaho in the mid-1980s. And I remember we were in Bonners Ferry for the holidays in late 1984. Bonners, as it is affectionally termed, is a small old pioneer town 20 miles south of the Canadian border and 14 miles west of the Montana border. It's located in the upper part of the Idaho panhandle. At the time, there were only about 2,000 people who lived in Bonners, and it is not much more populated than that now. It's a place where everyone pretty much knows everyone else.
Down on Main Street, there was a dime store that folks went to for little items you couldn't get at the grocery store. Anyway, I mention this because in late 1984, Barbara's daughter Jackie was 16 and Barbara had sent her to a boarding school slash reform school that was located in the middle of the woods, in a nearby unincorporated village called Naples, Idaho.
The school that Barbara's daughter attended was called the Rocky Mountain Academy. Per a blurb I found on the internet, "Rocky Mountain Academy, which opened in 1982, was the first CEDU emotional growth boarding school in North Idaho, and the catalyst to an industry of behavioral schools for troubled teens in the Panhandle and neighboring Sanders County, Montana...the academy housed as many as 140 students from all over the nation."
Once a year Barbara would fly in on a private jet (there was a small airstrip outside of town). She'd go to that dime store on Main Street in Bonners to buy things for her daughter, then go to visit Jackie at the school. We knew about this, because as I said, it was a small community and everyone knew who Barbara Walters was and when she flew in and went shopping in town, she was very noticeable and people talked about it.
From my understanding, Jackie had gotten into some serious trouble back east and Barbara had to send her somewhere (basically off the grid in the middle of nowhere) to straighten her out. Jackie did not go back east for Christmas. She stayed at the academy where she lived and received her education and had these yearly visits from Barbara.
So I found it interesting that in her memoir Barbara wished she'd had more children. She had a lot of problems with Jackie growing up, and quite frankly, I think Barbara was probably too focused on her career to be an attentive mother during those years Jackie needed her most...and Jackie was probably rebelling and acting out as a cry for attention.
To be fair, in later years, Barbara and Jackie had a stronger relationship after Jackie straightened out and especially after Jackie had kids of her own...since Barbara enjoyed becoming a grandmother. But I always felt sorry for teenaged Jackie who had been sent far away from home, so she wouldn't be an embarrassment for her world-famous mom.
|
|
|
|
Post by sepiatone on Dec 31, 2022 18:06:06 GMT
I think it's best we concentrate on MS. Walters and her career and contributions as a newscaster and public figure. And judge her on that instead of personal problems.
Her breaking that proverbial "glass ceiling" to become the first woman news anchor did open the gates for more women to succeed and excel in that field. But then too, she unwittingly helped an aspiring young comedienne to add another character in her stable of comic parodies. I'm speaking of the late Gilda Radner's BA-BA WAWA on SNL.
Many enjoyed MS. Walter's interview shows and her notoriety did much to get many top shelf celebrities to agree to do them. She may have very well been a frustrated actress. But many frustrated actors, actresses, directors usually become film critics(as many frustrated musicians become music critics) and I recall MS. Walters as usually celebrating film stars rather than being critical of their success. She too, was one of a kind. And I hope she rests in peace.
Sepiatone
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Dec 31, 2022 18:27:29 GMT
I think it's best we concentrate on MS. Walters and her career and contributions as a newscaster and public figure. And judge her on that instead of personal problems. Her breaking that proverbial "glass ceiling" to become the first woman news anchor did open the gates for more women to succeed and excel in that field. But then too, she unwittingly helped an aspiring young comedienne to add another character in her stable of comic parodies. I'm speaking of the late Gilda Radner's BA-BA WAWA on SNL. Many enjoyed MS. Walter's interview shows and her notoriety did much to get many top shelf celebrities to agree to do them. She may have very well been a frustrated actress. But many frustrated actors, actresses, directors usually become film critics(as many frustrated musicians become music critics) and I recall MS. Walters as usually celebrating film stars rather than being critical of their success. She too, was one of a kind. And I hope she rests in peace. Sepiatone
She was said to be one of the models for Candice Bergen's portrayal of Murphy Brown.
She also was very close to Joan Rivers, which I found an interesting friendship, though she was ironically somewhat critical of Joan Rivers in statements made after Joan's death. I guess she just really had a judgmental streak in her that was hard to let go. She might have felt judged a lot as a woman striving to succeed in a male-dominated field. She did open a lot of doors for others who followed. And as she aged, I think she mellowed. But she was a career driven woman who probably would not have done well with a whole brood of kids, unless she had given up her career just to be a mom.
So ultimately I see her as a woman who was tremendously successful but also had a fantasy or an ongoing illusion of who she wanted to be, but never quite became. That makes her a fascinating character to study.
For years she did those annual year-end segments, 'Barbara Walters' 10 Most Fascinating People.' It's timely that she died at the end of the year. She was always the 11th Most Fascinating Person in those annual specials.
Rest in peace. |
|
|
|
Post by Andrea Doria on Jan 1, 2023 13:56:11 GMT
That's a very interesting story about Jackie. The once a year visit and the dime store gifts are curious to say the least.
I've always followed her career and I can even remember how ground breaking it was to see a woman as the anchor of the evening news, when we all had a Walter Cronkite image of what a broadcast news person should look like.
I see ABC will have a two hour special about her tonight which I plan to watch.
I didn't know she was friends with Joan Rivers but I did know she and Judge Judy were pals who went on vacations together. Boy would I like to be a silent servant on their yacht!
|
|
|
|
Post by sepiatone on Jan 1, 2023 17:24:50 GMT
TOP, try as can, I can't think of ONE human being who WASN'T flawed. But I guess it's because I've heard too many a-holes in my lifetime show up at funeral homes and constantly(and loudly) rag on the deceased in front of their family and other loved ones that I might be a bit touchy in that respect.
And not knowing MS Walters personally and never having met her, I can't in reacting to her death be concerned about her personal shortcomings or other facets that have no bearing on the person I'm familiar with. That she tried to reveal those things about others was just her job as I don't necessarily consider interviews to be about kissing the a ss of the interviewee. Now, after a certain amount of time passes I might take interest in all the facts about her shortcomings as a Mother or human being. But I just personally feel that so close to her death is inappropriate.
Sepiatone
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Jan 1, 2023 22:35:33 GMT
This story (which I am excerpting), by writer Jeryl Brunner, appeared in Parade yesterday. It's interesting that Jackie refers to her time in Idaho as helpful.
***
Barbara Walters wanted 'to be remembered by my daughter as a good and loving mother'.
Barbara Walters, the pioneering broadcast journalist died on Friday December 30, 2022 at 93. The first woman to co-host both network morning and evening broadcasts, she interviewed every president and first lady from Richard Nixon onwards. Over her 50-year career, she became as famous as the people she talked to.
With all her accolades, one of her proudest legacies is her only daughter Jacqueline Dena Guber. Named for Walters’ older sister, Walters and then-husband Lee Guber adopted Jackie in 1968 after Walters suffered several miscarriages.
Like many parent-child relationships, especially during her teenage years, Walter’s and Guber’s was complicated. Jackie had no interest in anything to do with celebrity. She didn't fit in with classmates and struggled with her identity and the fact that she had been adopted.
“I did marijuana,” Jackie told Jane Pauley in 2008. "It was called crank then, but it’s now methamphetamines. Quaaludes were all over the place. Valium. And the drugs numbed all the other feelings. But it didn’t take away the issues that I had. They got bigger and bigger. I was more and more isolated from my mom’s world. And I thought running would solve all my problems.”
Jackie was missing for a month before Barbara Walters found her 800 miles from home. She sent an ex-Green Beret to get Jackie and take her to a treatment facility in Idaho, where she spent three years. Jackie credits the program for saving her life.
Walters admitted that she wished that she spent more time with Jackie. “I was so busy with a career. It’s the age-old problem,” said Walters on the 2014 news special Barbara Walters: Her Story. “…on your deathbed, are you going to say, ‘I wish I spent more time in the office?’ No. You’ll say, ‘I wish I spent more time with my family,' and I do feel that way.“
In 2014, during an interview with ABC News when Walters was asked how she wanted to be remembered she said, "I want to be remembered by my daughter as a good and loving mother.”
|
|
