Barbara Walters

American broadcaster, the first woman to co-anchor network news at a whopping salary of one-million dollars per year in 1975. She was a successful, cool and intelligent woman with a sympathetic demeanor who conversed equally well with heads of state and movie stars.

As the daughter of a vaudeville booking agent with a flamboyant personality, Barbara Walters was raised in the environment of entertainers and witnessed the opening of Boston's first Latin Quarter nightclub, which made her dad wealthy within two years. She learned at the same time that fame and money come and go. When her dad went bankrupt, she was able to help with the family finances. She had an older brother who died when she was three years old and an older sister who was born handicapped. Through their ups and downs, her family remained extremely close. After the advantage of a Sarah Lawrence education, Walters graduated with a bachelor's in English and toured the continent.

She was drawn to the news business and began work in the publicity department of WRCA-TV in New York, soon moving up to a writer-producer slot. Moving to CBS, she wrote material for talk shows. In 1961 Walters joined NBC's "Today" show as a writer, and when given air-time, she shone on camera. Her career began to soar.

She signed her lucrative one-million dollar contract in 1975 and began anchoring the ABC news in 1976. In 1984 she became an anchor on the network’s news magazine "20/20." Since 1997, she was host of her own daytime discussion show, "The View." Her casual yet probing style of asking questions stood her in good stead, giving her the clout to gain interviews with every president since Richard Nixon as well as outstanding public figures. In 1990 she was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame.

Walters married four times to three husbands. First to businessman Robert Katz on 20 June 1955. They had it annulled in less than a year, divorcing in 1958.