Audition

by Barbara Walters

  Hugh wanted and got top billing. That was fine with me. (I remembered Bing Crosby’s advice.) Hugh therefore opened the program and I closed it. “We’re in touch, so you be in touch,” was our warm and cozy sign-off. The show was undeniably stronger with the two of us. “I don’t know when I’ve been happier to have been wrong,” Hugh told me.

  In time 20/20 became one of ABC’s most successful weekly programs. On occasion we even topped 60 Minutes in the ratings, although 20/20, first on Thursdays, then on Fridays, was in a much more competitive time slot.

  I also continued to do four prime-time Specials a year. They were so time consuming that I wanted to fold them into 20/20, but they were too popular for ABC to give up. Instead Roone took them away from the entertainment division and put them under ABC News, where they remain to this day. This meant increased revenue in Roone’s budget.

  My permanent place on 20/20 and the continued Specials meant more hard work. But at long last I felt I could stop auditioning week to week or, more often, day by day.

  Things were smoother professionally, but they were more complicated at home.

  Heartbreak and a New Beginning

  MY MOTHER AND MY SISTER continued to live in Miami after my father died. Their life without my father should have been peaceful, but they were more and more alone, totally dependent on each other, and, I think, frightened as well. My mother worried constantly about what would happen to Jackie when she died. Jackie, I think, worried too, and the unspoken question was whether I would take her to live with me.

  I ached, knowing that I just couldn’t do to myself what my sister, unwittingly, had done to my mother. The two women, instead of cherishing each other, constantly argued—tears from Jackie, doors slamming, phone calls to me, each complaining about the other. Their discontent tore at me. One of the problems was their isolation. My mother would not go out without Jackie, which meant she was rarely invited anywhere. Other widows and single women lived in their building in Miami, and I urged my mother to make some coffee, buy some danishes, and invite a few of them to the apartment to watch my Specials. She’d reply, “It’s too much effort,” or “They want to play cards,” or “They don’t want to come.” So she and my sister would watch the Specials alone.

  There’s an old joke that every woman in television knows: You do an interview with the president of the United States and your mother says, “I didn’t really like your hair.” My mother was true to form. But to her credit, she was no stage mother. As proud as she was of me, she never said to friends or acquaintances, “Did you see my daughter on TV last night?” or told me that “so and so wants a picture for her niece.” She never used me to enhance her life.

  I did my best, however, to enhance her and Jackie’s life. I visited them whenever I could, and if I went to Florida for work I would try to include them in whatever I was doing. I was a guest on a show Phil Donahue did in Florida, for example, and I took my mother and my sister. They had a wonderful day, and Donahue could not have been kinder to them. I enjoyed opening the world up to them, even if just a little bit.

  I also invited them regularly to New York, but that was often a trial. My mother didn’t want to pack and make the trek for less than three weeks. So this meant a stretch of almost a month of hearing them argue and cry, while I became the unwilling referee. They were each right. They were each wrong. And they were both so sad. I hated to come home at the end of the day.

  At least we had more room at home. In 1978, thanks to the job at ABC, I bought an apartment on Park Avenue and Sixty-second Street and hired Angelo Donghia, a brilliant and much-sought-after interior designer, to decorate it. Since my old apartment had been so dark, I asked him to make everything white—my bedroom, the living room, everything white. The apartment was lovely and airy and bright, except for the kitchen. The prior owners had painted the kitchen bright orange. It would have taken four coats of white paint to cover it up, and I didn’t want to spend the money. So orange it stayed.

  It was the first home I’d ever owned and, the kitchen aside, I loved it. My daughter, Jackie, finally had a proper bedroom, and there were large rooms for Icodel and Zelle. We also had a guest room where my mother and sister slept when they visited.

  The high point of everything for my mother was seeing her granddaughter, whom she adored. By 1981 Jackie was entering a very troubled adolescence, but to my mother she could do no wrong. Where some people talk about the problems or complications that may arise with adopted children, I never, ever, heard my judgmental mother say anything but the most wonderful things about Jackie. This was her grandchild. Period.

  It was during one of my mother’s visits to see us that she had a terrifying health scare. She woke me up in the middle of the night because she was having difficulty breathing. We rushed her to the hospital to discover that her heart was failing and she had fluid in her lungs. She spent some time in the hospital and eventually recovered, but for a long time she was frail and depressed.

  When she was released from the hospital, I couldn’t let her go back to Florida, so I experimented with putting her in what I thought was a nice home for senior citizens in nearby Riverdale, New York. She and my sister had their own little apartment and any supervised care that was needed. The bonus was that the director of the facility found work for my sister at the nursing home on the grounds. Bless him. He told Jackie that she was to be a “secretarial assistant,” and she seemed quite happy spending a few hours a day running errands, filing, whatever she was capable of doing.

  I thought this might be a perfect solution for my sister in the future. If anything happened to my mother, Jackie could continue to live in the residence. All her meals were served in the dining room. She had begun to make friends among the women she worked with. She would have a life there and still be close to me. I never discussed this with my mother, but I hoped she would realize the possibilities on her own. She didn’t. My mother disliked the home, and that killed any chance for the conversation to take place. She insisted there was no one there with whom she had the slightest thing in common. What she really wanted to do was live with me and, in retrospect, perhaps I should have found them a small apartment nearby. But then, what would happen to Jackie if my mother died?

  Then came the second health scare. My sister had a small lump in her breast, and it turned out to be malignant. My mother and I decided not to tell Jackie she had cancer. The diagnosis would have terrified her. We told her that the lump was harmless but should be taken out. Jackie was fine with that and asked very few questions. I took her to the best doctors to determine the course of treatment. One suggested a mastectomy. Another said a lumpectomy would be just as effective, and there seemed to be growing evidence that that was true. I could not discuss any of this with Jackie. I thought it would have frightened and confused her. My mother left the decision entirely in my hands, so I decided on the lumpectomy.

  It was terrifying to hold my sister’s health in my hands. My decision could literally be a matter of life or death for her. To my everlasting relief the treatment worked out. Jackie had the lumpectomy at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, the world-renowned cancer center in New York, and followed it up with radiation. The hospital suggested a very fine and understanding radiologist in Riverdale near where Jackie and my mother were living, and my mother took her there every day for the many weeks of the treatment. Things went smoothly and Jackie never realized that she had had breast cancer.

  My mother continued to be unhappy in New York, though I suspect she would have been unhappy anywhere. What she saw as the burdens of her life had robbed her of any joy. She had been such a loving mother when I was growing up, and I still loved her dearly, so I kept trying to find things that would give her pleasure. It was a difficult task. One Thanksgiving I put together a dinner at the Friars Club. There were twelve of us at the table: my daughter, some cousins, and a few of my friends who were alone for the holiday. I had bought new dresses for my mother and sister, and they looked lovely. Henny Youngman
and Red Buttons, two comedians who were old friends of my father, came over to our table and made a big fuss over my mother. I thought she was having a good time until I suggested that everyone at the table tell the rest of us in turn what he or she was most thankful for. When it came to my mother, she looked around the table and said: “I have nothing to be thankful for.” My heart sank.

  My mother missed the warm weather in Florida and, after Jackie’s radiation treatments ended, they returned to Miami. I found them very nice accommodations at a small spalike residence that provided meals and social programs. Jackie loved it and happily attended painting and dancing classes. My mother, too, seemed more or less satisfied.

  Although I often thought, when I heard them arguing with each other, that I would never be free, I felt now that perhaps I could relax. But over the next months, when I telephoned my mother, she often seemed disoriented. Sometimes she didn’t recognize my voice or even my name. My sister said Mother was often like that, and spent more and more time in bed. I called Aunt Lena, my mother’s sister, who was still living in Miami Beach, and she confirmed that my mother was forgetting things. She did not even want to get up for meals and seemed to be losing track of time and place. My aunt had been worried but didn’t want to bother me, hoping that my mother would get better on her own.

  I phoned my mother’s doctor. He also confirmed what Aunt Lena had told me. One thing was clear: My mother needed full-time care. I flew down to Florida. I took her in my arms and brought her to the same nursing home to which she had brought my father. My mother barely knew what was going on.

  Could I have brought her to New York and, with nurses, kept her with me? Of course. But I didn’t. I struggled with that decision. I remembered when I was a child telling my mother that when I grew up, I would build her a house and we would all live together. That house was not a nursing home. I knew other children of aging parents were facing this kind of terrible predicament, but their dilemma didn’t help mine. Shirley also tried to make me feel better. She reminded me of what I knew, that my mother had put my father in a nursing home, and Shirley had put her own mother, my aunt Rose, in a nursing home. “She wouldn’t have gotten the level of care at home with me, the outcome would have been the same, and it would have destroyed my life,” Shirley said. “It will destroy your life, too.”

  Shirley’s advice was particularly apt. My personal life had entered a new stage. I was in my early fifties and had been single for twelve years. My work was stable, and I was going out more and more with Alan “Ace” Greenberg, now the CEO of Bear Stearns. He wanted very much to marry me. He was dear to me and I felt I should take the plunge and marry him. The problem was that although he was the nicest, smartest man, I didn’t think I was in love. Then, in the summer of 1984, I unexpectedly met another man, Merv Adelson. Wham! I thought, at last this is it. I was really attracted to Merv and knew that if he felt the same way, my indecision would be over. It soon was.

  We met on a blind date. Our Cupid was an advertising man named Leo Kelmenson, my neighbor in Westhampton, where I rented a summer house. Leo told me he had just sold his advertising agency to a very successful man from California. He was one of the founders and owners of Lorimar Productions, a television company that had a string of huge hit shows like Dallas, Knots Landing, and The Waltons. He’d also cofounded La Costa, a fabled spa and resort in Carlsbad, California.

  “Merv is going to have to come to New York often now for the agency,” Leo told me. “He’s recently separated from his wife and very attractive. Would you like to meet him?”

  Why not?

  Merv called and we had dinner. Leo was right. He was very attractive. His hair was silver, his eyes were blue, and he had a year-round tan. He was sexy, funny and charming and, to me, very California—just the sort of man I’d seen in Vegas when my parents were living there and who didn’t have any interest in me. Nor, I’m sure, would Merv have been interested if I hadn’t become Barbara Walters. Not that he was interested in celebrities. He was after all in the television and movie business and had dozens of beautiful actresses working for him. But I was something different, not an actress, yet someone who understood his world.

  No sooner had we sat down than Merv, to my surprise, launched into a confession. The money that he and his partner had used to develop La Costa, he told me, had come in part from the Teamsters Union Pension Fund. The Teamsters Union at the time had a reputation of being involved with organized crime. Penthouse magazine had run an article in 1975 that implied that Merv, too, was associated with the Mob. That charge was untrue, Merv insisted, and he had sued Penthouse for libel. He had lost the libel suit in 1982, two years before our dinner, but the judge had granted him a new trial. He wanted me to know this up front because the legal issue was not yet resolved and the rumored Mafia connection was a blot on his reputation.

  All this before the main course. I appreciated his frankness. I also found it endearing that Merv was being protective of me and my reputation when his libel case didn’t really affect me. We were just having dinner, after all, a delightful dinner, which ended on a funny note.

  Merv had no cash for a taxi to get back to the Pierre Hotel, so I loaned him five dollars. I guess he was so used to having his car and driver pick him up in Los Angeles that, like Queen Elizabeth II, he didn’t have to carry any money. A week later he sent my five dollars back with a cute note. And we made another date.

  We began to see each other a lot over the summer, and I realized I was falling in love. It was a wonderful, rare emotional experience, and despite my family problems, I was happy. Merv seemed bigger than life. He skied, rode horses, played golf and tennis, sailed. He wore jeans and T-shirts when every man I knew in New York was wearing navy blue suits and ties. And he lived as if there were no tomorrow.

  Merv had a beautiful estate in Bel Air which I visited and where, later, we would live. We spent time at his ranch, called the Lazy Z, in Aspen and his house on the beach in Malibu. He also owned an apartment in a hotel in New York, though more and more often he stayed with me. Which is the major reason I didn’t bring my mother to New York to live with me. I anguished about it but decided there was no way I could continue my new relationship with Merv and have my mother along, with round-the-clock nurses in the apartment. And what would I do with my sister?

  So, in the summer of 1984, my failing mother went into the nursing home in Florida while my sister continued to live at the small residence with the social programs. I tried to find Jackie a roommate as a companion, but it proved close to impossible. I then approached the Hope School for the intellectually impaired (which they were now called), where Jackie had done some limited work years before. The school had opened a residential home where she could live in one of several two-bedroom suites and be supervised and cared for. Jackie could also resume her activities at the Hope School, filing and running errands for the assistant to the principal. That’s where Jackie went.

  She didn’t like it. She wanted her own apartment in Miami Beach. “Why can’t you find me a roommate, Barbara?” she would ask over and over again. I would try to explain the difficulties, but she wouldn’t listen. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way, Barbara,” she’d tell me.

  They were always on my mind, my mother and sister, but I didn’t discuss it very much with Merv. We were beginning a romance, and I didn’t want to inflict all this on him. From the little I did tell him, he was very kind and supportive. He also was developing a special relationship with my daughter. When Jackie met him, she instantly adored him. Merv was fun and hip and outdoorsy, as was she. He had three children himself, one of whom, Ellie, wasn’t too much older than Jackie. There was the possibility—dare I say it?—that we might become a family.

  I had met Merv in May. That October, after I moderated the first presidential debate between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale, we went on safari to Africa with another couple who were dear friends of his, JoAnne and Gil Segel. We laughed our way all through Africa. Never in my wil
dest dreams did I imagine I would be camping in a tent in the African bush—for fun!—but there I was. And it was magical. Elephants, wildebeests (I’d never heard of a wildebeest before), zebras, and lions by day; vodka in our tent by night. Who wouldn’t have fallen in love?

  Merv and I got engaged while walking on the beach in Malibu in June 1985, a year after we met. By this time I had eased out of my relationship with Alan Greenberg. He is now married to a terrific woman, and remains my friend to this day.

  So there I was in 1985, engaged to be married, with more than a full-time job at ABC, a rebellious adolescent daughter, and an ailing mother and dissatisfied sister always on my mind.

  “My stomach hurts,” my sister told me one day over the phone. I didn’t think much of it. Jackie tended to exaggerate a cold into pneumonia. Nonetheless I called the school and asked them to make sure she saw a doctor. The second call from Florida was devastating. Jackie’s test results had come back. She had advanced ovarian cancer.

  I was heartsick. It had never occurred to me that Jackie might die before my mother. I flew immediately to Florida. To my relief the doctors told me that this cancer had nothing to do with her breast cancer. I don’t know how I could have borne it if it had turned out that this cancer was a result of the decision I had made when she had her lumpectomy.

  Ovarian cancer is a secret killer. There are some tests you can take, but they’re often inconclusive. A woman rarely knows in advance if she has the disease. The doctor told me that he wanted to operate right away to remove Jackie’s ovaries. Her condition was that serious. I quickly called my friend Dr. Paul Marks at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. My instinct was to have my sister flown to New York to be operated on, but I was torn. The doctor who was treating her in Florida had a warm bedside manner and had established a rapport with Jackie. She would need more than medical care, and I thought she was more likely to get loving personal attention in Florida than at the large, more impersonal Sloan-Kettering. Paul Marks agreed. He knew Jackie and understood that she needed a doctor she trusted to supervise her postoperative care and the intense chemotherapy she would require. So we went with the doctor in Florida.