Barbara Walters, TV Icon, Passes Away

Barbara Walters was that rarest of TV personalities: a cultural fixture. For more than a half-century, she was on the air, placing in front of her audience world figures, big shots and celebrities whose names and faces might have changed from year to year. But hers never did, Frazier Moore wrote in an obituary for the Associated Press (AP).

Photo Insert: Walters interviewing then-US President Barrack Obama

Walters, whose death at age 93 was announced Friday (Saturday, Dec. 31, 2022, in Manila), was a heroic presence on the TV screen, leading the way as the first woman to become a TV news superstar during a career remarkable for its duration and variety.

She first found her way to prominence in a visually oriented business where, typically, women were adornments or otherwise secondary.

And there she stayed, stayed so long and reliably she came to serve as a trusted reference point: What Barbara thought, what she said, and, especially, what she asked the people she interviewed.

“I do think about death,” she told The Associated Press in 2008 as she was closing out her eighth decade. But if death got the last word, Walters had the nation’s ear in the meantime, she made clear, with amusement, as she recalled the zany Broadway hit “Spamalot,” based on a Monty Python film.

“You know the scene where they’re collecting dead bodies during a plague, and there’s a guy they keep throwing in the heap, and he keeps saying, ‘I’m not dead yet’? Then they bash him on the head, and he gets up again and says, ‘I’m not dead yet!’ “He’s my hero,” Walters said with a smile.

Late in her career, she gave infotainment a new twist with “The View,” a live ABC weekday kaffee klatsch with an all-female panel for whom any topic was on the table and who welcomed guests ranging from world leaders to teen idols.

A side venture and unexpected hit, Walters considered “The View” the “dessert” of her career. Walters made headlines in 1976 as the first female network news anchor, with an unprecedented $1 million salary that drew gasps.

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