Product Description

Young people starting out in television sometimes say to me: “I want to be you.” My stock reply is always: “Then you have to take the whole package.”

And now, at last, the most important woman in the history of television journalism gives us that “whole package,” in her inspiring and riveting memoir. After more than forty years of interviewing heads of state, world leaders, movie stars, criminals, murderers, inspirational figures, and celebrities of all kinds, Barbara Walters has turned her gift for examination onto herself to reveal the forces that shaped her extraordinary life.

Barbara Walters’s perception of the world was formed at a very early age. Her father, Lou Walters, was the owner and creative mind behind the legendary Latin Quarter nightclub, and it was his risk-taking lifestyle that gave Barbara her first taste of glamour. It also made her aware of the ups and downs, the insecurities, and even the tragedies that can occur when someone is willing to take great risks, for Lou Walters didn’t just make several fortunes—he also lost them. Barbara learned early about the damage that such an existence can do to relationships—between husband and wife as well as between parent and child. Through her roller-coaster ride of a childhood, Barbara had a close companion, her mentally challenged sister, Jackie. True, Jackie taught her younger sister much about patience and compassion, but Barbara also writes honestly about the resentment she often felt having a sister who was so “different” and the guilt that still haunts her.

All of this—the financial responsibility for her family, the fear, the love—played a large part in the choices she made as she grew up: the friendships she developed, the relationships she had, the marriages she tried to make work. Ultimately, thanks to her drive, combined with a decent amount of luck, she began a career in television. And what a career it has been! Against great odds, Barbara has made it to the top of a male-dominated industry. She was the first woman cohost of the Today show, the first female network news coanchor, the host and producer of countless top-rated Specials, the star of 20/20, and the creator and cohost of The View. She has not just interviewed the world’s most fascinating figures, she has become a part of their world. These are just a few of the names that play a key role in Barbara’s life, career, and book: Yasir Arafat, Warren Beatty, Menachem Begin, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Roy Cohn, the Dalai Lama, Princess Diana, Katharine Hepburn, King Hussein, Angelina Jolie, Henry Kissinger, Monica Lewinsky, Richard Nixon, Rosie O’Donnell, Christopher Reeve, Anwar Sadat, John Wayne . . . the list goes on and on.

Barbara Walters has spent a lifetime auditioning: for her bosses at the TV networks, for millions of viewers, for the most famous people in the world, and even for her own daughter, with whom she has had a difficult but ultimately quite wonderful and moving relationship. This book, in some ways, is her final audition, as she fully opens up both her private and public lives. In doing so, she has given us a story that is heartbreaking and honest, surprising and fun, sometimes startling, and always fascinating.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #98 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-06
• Released on: 2008-05-06
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 624 pages

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com

Reviewed by Kathleen Matthews

Breaking news: Barbara Walters wears fake eyelashes, is afraid to drive, gave up her black married lover to save her career (while his went down the tubes).

These and other true confessions provide the tabloid interest through 600 pages of the network diva's new memoir, Audition. But it's her heartfelt candor that lifts this book above mere titillation. Finally we learn why Walters is so relentless. It's a question I've often pondered watching her on television after beginning my own TV news career 30 years ago. In this engaging and chatty look back at a life largely lived in public view, Walters provides the answer.

As Walters explains it, relentlessness is what comes from a nomadic youth spent following her father's roller-coaster show business career from Boston to New York and Miami. Lou Walters's night club, the Latin Quarter, made him a Broadway legend, but he died in a Florida nursing home, leaving his wife and developmentally disabled adult daughter to be supported by Barbara, who was a single mom. Seeing her own career through the lens of show business, living "just one bad review from closing," Walters admits she always feared her hard-fought success would be taken away. Hence, for all her stellar achievements, we understand her compulsion to prove herself in a never-ending audition.

But blended with this personal drama is a delightful tale of the golden age of television, including the stomach-churning contract negotiations and network rivalries. Through 50-plus chapters, you feel as though you've enjoyed a year of weekly lunches with Walters at Café des Artistes, the famed New York hangout for ABC stars. She regales you with juicy behind-the-scenes details of the celebrities she's interviewed, mixed in with stories of her own trials and tribulations. In the end, you envy her a little less and admire her more.

There are moments when you're tempted to groan -- she has a sycophantic weakness for royalty and at times writes about herself as she would about the Hollywood celebs she relentlessly profiles -- but she quickly corrects course with unexpected candor that is completely disarming. When I opened the chapter "Special Men in My Life," I was tempted to say, "Spare me, please." But, honestly, who can resist hearing what it was like to have "a long and rocky affair" with the elegant, married African American senator Edward Brooke or date the future Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan ("a very nice dancer") and John Warner, the Southern senator once married to Elizabeth Taylor?

By the time you finish reading Audition, Walters has won you over, and you suspect she might be pleasantly surprised, like Sally Field winning her Oscar: "You like me. . . . You like me!"

What you don't expect, after watching Walters's sometimes cloying interview style and well-crafted TV personality for so many years, is her self-reflection and self-effacement. You also don't expect such breezy and clear writing. If Walters really wrote this memoir -- and I suspect she did -- I'm impressed.

Her career began in the 1950s, when she worked behind the scenes at the NBC TV affiliate in New York. She met other people who eventually became media legends: ABC News chief Roone Arledge, CBS's Andy Rooney and New York Times columnist Bill Safire. We watch Walters's ascent from glorified tea pourer to "Today Show" co-host. Recalling relentless public criticism from the critics and her male colleagues, she notes with a chuckle an early Newsweek review of her interviewing style as "dumdum bullets swaddled in angora."

More hurtful was the critique from legendary "60 Minutes" producer Don Hewitt, who once told her, "You don't have the right looks. And besides, you don't pronounce your r's right." Walters's speech impediment was immortalized in 1976 on "Saturday Night Live" when Gilda Radner proclaimed, "Hewwo! This is Baba Wawa." What really stung was not Radner's caricature, but Time magazine noting that Walters was being paid $100 for each minute of her "weadily wecognizable delivewy" as the million-dollar co-anchor of ABC News. (She admits to trouble with her r's but not her l's and says she went to a speech specialist early in her career but couldn't shed the remnants of what she describes as a Boston accent.) As for Radner's impersonation, Walters admits it was dead-on and she was glad to have a chance to compliment the comedian later.

Her years on the "Today Show" with Hugh Downs and Joe Garagiola were among her best in television. But what followed was perhaps her worst. NBC management paired her with Frank McGee and dictated that she jump in only on the fourth question for big news interviews after he'd asked the first three. Soured, she left to become the first woman network news co-anchor for ABC, but this provided little relief as she faced the big chill from co-anchor Harry Reasoner. She eventually found her oasis in the "Barbara Walters Specials" and later "20/20" where her tenacity to score the big interview was rewarded. Always the overachiever, she created her own TV show, "The View," and, now in her 70s, she continues her Academy Award and "10 Most Fascinating People" specials.

The best part of Audition is that Walters takes us with her on all the big interviews. It's a bit like walking through her office or New York apartment and hearing the stories behind the photos (many included here) that showcase her with the biggest names from the past 50 years of politics and entertainment: Judy Garland, Princess Grace, the Shah of Iran, Golda Meir, Richard Nixon, Fidel Castro, Anwar Sadat, Menachem Begin, the Dalai Lama, Cher. She shares the struggle of getting a good interview with Warren Beatty and Mel Gibson. She admits her regret that she never interviewed Jackie Kennedy, Princess Di, Queen Elizabeth or the current and past popes.

Perhaps so many years of prying into the personal lives of others and probing for vulnerabilities compel Walters to pull away the scabs of the insults and injuries she's endured. Quite matter-of-factly, she re-lives the heartbreak of three unsuccessful marriages. More poignantly, she recalls the disappointments of several failed pregnancies and the ecstasy of adopting Jackie, whom she named after her disabled sister. "The Hardest Chapter to Write" describes her daughter's rebellious teen years, when Jackie was derailed by drug use and ran away from home. Walters shares these confidences with the blessing of her now happy adult daughter to "give hope to other parents who are struggling with their own adolescents' hard-to-understand emotions and rebellion." For someone who lived her life on television, sharing these most painful years, "which, in truth," she says, "I would rather not remember," is perhaps the best therapy.

This, we now understand, is what Walters means when she tells aspiring young people that if they want to pursue a career like hers, "Then you have to take the whole package." I must admit, I was one of those young women who cheekily wrote Walters a letter asking for advice after college. I also rejected her well-known admonition that women "can't have it all -- a great marriage, successful career, and well-adjusted children -- at least not at the same time." In Audition, Walters shows us the challenges she faced as a trailblazing, mostly single, working mom. But she also inspires and entertains us with a life of accomplishment.

Rose Kennedy once told her in an interview, "I know not age or weariness of defeat," which aptly captures Walters's own sentiments as she faces retirement. And that leads me to my last question: After writing this book, has Walters done her last audition? Somehow, I think not.

Copyright 2008, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Review
“Audition is brutally honest, both about Walters and those she's worked with. Readers won't be left wondering what she thinks of anything, or anyone, for that matter. . . . It's a fascinating look at a woman who has lived a fascinating life.”
–Laura L. Hutchison, The Free Lance-Star

“[Walters’] heartfelt candor lifts this book above mere titillation. . . . blended with this personal drama is a delightful tale of the golden age of television . . . Through 50-plus chapters, you feel as though you’ve enjoyed a year of weekly lunches with Walters . . . She regales you with the juicy behind-the-scenes details of the celebrities she’s interviewed, mixed in with stories of her own trials and tribulations. In the end, you envy her a little less and admire her more.”
–Kathleen Matthews, Washington Post

“…the book is a triumph!”
—Caitlin Flanagan, The Atlantic

“…the grande dame of TV news has written a blockbuster. . . . Readers will gobble up the excerpts from scores of interviews with world leaders, politicians, celebrities and murderers.”
–Kathleen Daley, New York Sun

“an indispensable book along with a surefire monster best seller…intensely readable…She’s TV’s original monarch and superstar where power, show business and journalism converge. It’s Barbara Walters’ world, and the rest of us just live in it. [Her] mammoth memoir, doesn’t just touch chords, it’s a 600-plus page oratorio.”
–Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News

“…compulsively entertaining…”
–Rebecca Traister, Salon.com

“Ms. Walters’s story is greatly humanized by the family memoir that colors her long litany of professional successes.”
–Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“an unusually ambitious and successful book. …suffused with an emotional intensity…it belongs to a part of American culture that Walters helped invent.”
–Nicholas Lemann, The New Yorker

“She doesn’t shy from the tough stuff… Nor does Walters, an entertainer as much as a ground-breaking journalist, skimp on the fun bits.”
–Allison Adato, People

“…the crowning glory of a remarkable career…”
–Liz Smith, New York Post

“…sizzling…”
–Jo Piazza, New York Daily News

“…compulsively readable… [Walters] gives us an entertaining panorama of a full life lived and recounted with humor and bracing honesty. Alternating between tales of her personal struggles, professional achievements and insider anecdotes about the celebrities and world leaders she's interviewed, this mammoth memoir's energy never flags.”
–Publishers Weekly (starred)
 
“A smart, funny, fascinating book in which Walters captures possibly her most elusive subject: herself.” 
–Ilene Cooper, Booklist (starred)

About the Author
Barbara Walters is the first woman ever to cohost a network news program. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. An ABC News correspondent, she is also host of The Barbara Walters Specials and the creator, cohost, and co–executive producer of ABC Daytime’s The View. She lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews

Love Barbara
I've never been a great fan of Barbara, but this book made me one. Loved her view of the past 40 years of encounters. Her determination made a difference for women.
Extremely well written; couldn't put it down.

I couldn't put this book down!
I absolutely adored this book!

I wasn't aware that Barbara Walters played such a "ground breaking" role for women in the communications industry! Not to mention all of the diplomats, celebrities and real people she interviewed. What a resume!

It was extremely interesting to me to hear about "the story" behind the interview. As well as how she worked extremely hard to get where she is today.

I would highly recommend this book!

Open mouth; insert foot!
If you like Barbara Walters and want to continue to like her; DO NOT READ this book. If I could have selected zero stars, I would have. I am totally turned off to someone I thought was a wonderful journalist and a powerful woman in her field. I cannot imagine what she was thinking when she wrote this book. First of all, it is not written well at all. It follows no chronological order what-so-ever and it is often very difficult to determine if we are talking about something that happened last year or in 1972. I found myself constantly re-reading and revisiting earlier chapters to determine what period in time I was reading about. I know you can't really know someone from a written account but by her own words, she lost any respect I might have had for her. Her affairs with married men, her arrogance at her abilities, her lack of parenting that caused her daughter many years of hardship, her selfishness with regard to her parents and her mentally challenged sister... it all disgusts me. I found myself actually getting angry at her cold heartedness and lack of humanity. Since I really can't find a single nice thing to say about this book and I don't want to give away any of the daunting details for anyone who might be looking for an awful book to read, I'll leave it as that.