A 'View' without Barbara Walters after this week
When Barbara Walters came on the scene, John F. Kennedy was in the White House, a motorist could fill up for three bucks, and no one had heard of the Beatles.
NEW YORK - When Barbara Walters came on the scene, John F. Kennedy was in the White House, a motorist could fill up for three bucks, and no one had heard of the Beatles.
On Friday, after a spectacular half-century run she began as the "Today Girl," Walters says goodbye to ABC's The View.
She will remain as an executive producer of the show she created 17 years ago and will make occasional ABC News appearances. "It's not as if I'm walking into the sunset," cautions Walters, who at 84 looks years younger.
On Thursday's The View, all 11 past and present cohosts will reunite to honor her. And Friday night, hours after her morning View farewell, Barbara Walters: Her Story airs as a two-hour retrospective at 9 p.m.
"Then on May 17," she pledges, "I'm going to be sleeping until noon. May 18, I'm going to sleep until noon." And then? "People ask me, 'How are you going to feel?' I don't know. It's a new chapter."
Not just for her. Since the early 1960s, Walters has served as a journalistic through-line for her viewers, connecting the dots during five decades of events, newsmakers, and stars at NBC's Today (1961 to '76), as the first female coanchor of ABC's World News Tonight, on her scores of "big get" specials, and a quarter-century cohosting 20/20.
Asked to speculate on what might land her name in history books, she cites the "many really wonderful young women now on television. If I helped to pave the way, that's more important than if anyone remembers my name."
"And my longevity on the air," she adds as a backup legacy: "That one can work as long as I've worked, and still be vital - it demonstrates there's no age limit for people. And there shouldn't be."
Walters announced her retirement more than a year ago, and emphasizes it was her choice, motivated because it just seemed time. But as her career has made clear, she has spent a a lifetime challenging assumptions and naysayers.
Just ask Bill Geddie, co-executive producer of The View with Walters in a decades-old partnership. Geddie acknowledges that, finally, Walters faces a profound change in her life. "But do I think we've seen the last of Barbara Walters? Absolutely not."