Barbara Walters signs off

That sometimes uncomfortable flitting between the serious and the silly has made her the object of parody 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 programme — as she fought the industry’s entrenched sexism. It’s the real, journalistic chops underpinning her rise and reign.

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

Walters did it again in early May. She nabbed the first interview with V Stiviano, the woman whose voice is heard on a leaked tape on which Donald Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, utters racist comments. “I’m Mr Sterling’s everything,” she told Walters. “I’m his confidante, his best friend, his silly rabbit.”

Some of the other memorable moments from 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. Her quarry may try to suppress the urge to cry, but resistance proves futile. A few more 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 even acquired a term of its own: “Go ahead and glerg,” a fake Walters says on an episode of 30 Rock.
But no subject’s tears were as surprising as those of General H Norman Schwarzkopf. Interviewed towards the end of the first Gulf War, Schwarzkopf became a little weepy while reminiscing about his father. Walters expressed her astonishment. “Generals don’t cry,” she said. Schwarzkopf replied, “Sure, they do.”

Most difficult interview

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. The editing process was such a nightmare that Walters vowed never again to cede to anyone else control over what went on the air.

Streisand, however, doesn’t win the contest for the “absolutely worst interview I ever conducted”. Warren Beatty captures the honour, for an appearance on Today in 1966 to promote Kaleidoscope, a comic crime movie. As Walters recounts in her 2008 memoir, Audition, he showed up

“rumpled and bleary-eyed”, and grunted monosyllabic answers.
At wit’s end, Walters trotted out a default question: What was the movie about? His answer: “Well, that’s really a difficult question.”

Most ridiculed question

Walters’s interviewing style, with its emphasis on feelings and personal lives, has long rankled critics. In 1976, her querying President-elect Jimmy Carter about whether he and his wife slept in a double bed or separately set off some clucking.

Yet, it was a question delivered five years later that Walters says still invites ridicule. After Katharine Hepburn described herself as feeling like “a tree” in her old age, Walters responded: “What kind of tree are you?”

That exchange took on a life of its own; Johnny Carson even heckled (her word) Walters on The Tonight Show a few years later. But Hepburn had gamely taken the bait. Her choice: A sturdy oak.

Biggest ‘get’

Competition for that exclusive first interview with newsmakers — the all-important “get” — is fierce. And Walters has played the game as well as anyone. Among the more notable: She conducted the first joint interview with Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, in 1977.

But one “get” looms over all the others: landing Monica Lewinsky for an interview after the revelations about her affair with President Bill Clinton. Walters’s last question epitomised her ability to wrest memorable lines out of her subjects. What, she asked, would Lewinsky tell her children about the whole tawdry affair? “Mommy made a big mistake.” Walters turned to the camera: “And that is the understatement of the year.”