Barbra Walters Retires After A Career That Spanned 50 Years [Video]
Barbra Walters, the legendary US broadcaster, has decided to hang her cape after a successful career that spanned more than 50 years.
After being on–air for 52 years, Barbra Walters has decided to step down from the interviewer’s chair. This week, she gave her last appearance on her hit daytime show The View. The last show was participated by Hillary Clinton and media mogul Oprah Winfrey, who have been quite regulars on her show and needless to say, her avid fans. Evidently, it was Mrs. Clinton who was more emotional about Barbra stepping down, “I can’t believe this day has come, and I can’t believe it’s for real,” Mrs. Clinton told Walters.
Though Barbra has decided to stop being on–air and in front of audience, she will continue to be part of the media. Walters will continue to serve as executive producer of the program, reported ABC News.
Walters, now in her ripe–old age of 84, began her career in 1962 and instantly became well–known for her high-profile interviews with broadcaster ABC. She began her career on NBC’s Today, a daily morning program, before moving to ABC in 1976. There, she presented the evening news broadcast, news magazine program 20/20 as well as a series of standalone interview programs, including her yearly ‘Most Fascinating People’ special.
Barbara just might be one of the oldest and most actively listened to interviewers besides other icons like Larry King, Jay Leno, and the likes. She has managed to get almost anyone who is or was famous. However, her most actively pursued topic has to be politics, and Barbra could be a rare interviewer having openly chatted with every US President and First Lady since Richard Nixon.
But Barbra didn’t stop at US politicians, managing to shake hands with powerful foreign leaders like UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Cuban President Fidel Castro, and even arranged a joint interview with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat as well as Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, reported BBC.
Perhaps her penchant to discuss troubled world politics got the better of her as she discussed sensitive situations with people like Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, just after his country had witnessed a public uprising which later escalated to a full–fledged civil war.
Barbra Walters has been known as charming, calm, confident, and was supposed to have a personality that allowed inhibitions to simply melt away. Her simplistic, yet determined approach has been applauded by both the interviewees as well as the audience that kept the woman in the interviewer’s chair for over 50 years. But perhaps one of the biggest compliments she could have got came from Oprah on the last day, when Ms. Winfrey said to Barbra, “You’re the reason I wanted to be in television. You shattered the glass ceiling for so many women.”
[Image Credit | BBC]
