In "Audition" (Knopf, 624 pages, $29.95), Barbara Walters has written an intelligent, thoughtful, often kind and even revealing autobiography. But with few exceptions (like the affair with former Sen. Edward Brooke), hers is a long career played before the public eye. We already know the narrative well.
That, however, does not mean that Walters did not have a few surprises left. Here, in chronological order, are the 10 things about Walters I didn't know, and perhaps you didn't, either:
Her father, nightclub impresario Lou Walters, attempted suicide in 1958. His newest club had failed, and he fell into a deep depression.
Walters was hitched/divorced three times. Of her second marriage, to producer Lee Guber, she writes, "I felt trapped and restless. Perhaps I just wasn't cut out for marriage."
She had several miscarriages.
She is almost certainly a Republican. In these pages, she is sympathetic to Richard Nixon, and has a real fondness for George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. She and Henry Kissinger are old pals. John Wayne? A hero as only the Duke can be. Democrats? This line about Hillary Rodham Clinton, at their first interview, makes one wonder: "She looked great. Mrs. Clinton is quite small on top but rather large in the hips."
Frank Sinatra despised Walters. She had attempted to confirm his betrothal to the future Pamela Harriman by calling him at home. Unforgivable. "For the next 30 years, Sinatra took a hate to me." She wrote a letter of apology -- he "tore it up, unopened."
Her "Today" co-host, Frank McGee, despised her, too. She reveals he had an office romance, a drinking problem and, finally, went kind of nuts. Yes, revenge is served best ice-cold.
