Liz Smith: Barbara-Walters-Affair Headlines Made Me Laugh

Barbara Walters’s new memoir titled "Audition" is a bang-up read by one of the world’s most famous women. It is full of candor and surprises – mostly about Barbara’s unceasing guilt and anxiety. This ongoing worry was fueled by having to care for her anxious mother, her entrepreneur gambling father, a somewhat challenged sister and her daughter, Jackie.

Liz Smith

Last night when we were young! Raquel Welch, Kathleen Turner, Helen Gurley Brown, Liz and Barbara Walters

Much of this revolves around the single-working-mother conundrum.
Another surprise for the reader will be the long list of men, well-known and otherwise, who attracted, married or loved our Barbara through the years. Although she has worked ambitiously and unceasingly for the last sixty years and has reached many pinnacles of super success, I am happy to say that the woman who paved the way for so many others also had a succession of high-level, not always fulfilling romances to her credit. (We must tip our hats to the scalps on Barbara’s belt!)

Liz Smith

Only weeks ago at a salute to Tom Cruise: Tommy Tune, Liz, Mort and Linda Janklow and Barbara, looking better than ever!

I laughed the other day when I read of her long-ago romance with the distinguished black Sen. Edward Brooke of Virginia. I told her, "If I had only realized this was a front-page tabloid story, I could have printed the scoop two decades ago." (Barbara liked those Virginians; she also romanced Sen. John Warner after he had been wed to Elizabeth Taylor.)

Because B.W. has always been a bellwether of breath-taking journalistic achievement and woman-against-all-male-odds-victory, I was fascinated to ferret out her ideas for ending up on top. I don’t know if Barbara meant to give it as a "recipe," but here it is from page 111 of "Audition":

The Barbara Walters List for Success
1. Work harder than anyone else.
2. Accept most every assignment.
3. Do your homework.
4. Keep your complaints to yourself.
5. Finish the job.
6. Move on.

Not a bad formula? I’ll say! It’s one we could all aspire to. And although B.W. was viewing these precepts through the limited prism of her journalistic life as she clawed her way to the top in what was then – and sometimes is now – a man’s world … well, they are excellent general rules.

Liz Smith

Barbara on one of her 40th birthdays sandwiched between two "waiters" — her pals Suzanne Goodson and Liz Smith — at Le Cirque

As you read Barbara’s "Audition" – or listen to her reading it on compact disc – you’ll be amazed to find that through the years, and even today, she has always felt she had to audition for a job, a position, a fulfilled idea or dreamed-up creation, one after another. For Barbara there has never been, any resting on her laurels.

This is a fascinating work even in its most neurotic aspects as Miss Super Star wrestles with sexism, narcissism, ego, ambition, jealousy, backbiting, guilt, heartbreak and triumph.

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