Ladies Who Punch

by Ramin Setoodeh

  For a theme song, Gentile tapped Edd Kalehoff, who had penned the anthems to Monday Night Football and World News Tonight. His jingle for The View was just as catchy, with an upbeat melody that brought to mind a circus act, for a troupe of women about to attempt the flying trapeze. At jam sessions, the lead guitarist proudly rocked out with his tattoos and nose rings. “I used to always say, ‘Man, if Barbara ever saw the guy doing the music, she’d shit a brick,’” Gentile mused.

  Like presidential candidates preparing for a debate, the ladies of The View spent the two weeks prior to launch practicing in real time, even faking the commercials. The show would open with the so-called Hot Topics, a name that Barbara coined, before going to a celebrity interview and closing on a musical act or a self-help segment, such as improving your finances or sex life.

  Even when she wasn’t supposed to be there, Barbara crashed some of the rehearsals—leaving her cohosts aghast that they hadn’t worn any makeup. It was one thing to attend a scrimmage just among themselves. But it was another to be with TV royalty. “It would throw us all off our game, because everyone was still so scared of Barbara,” Debbie said.

  As ABC started to promote the show, the executives looked at the cohosts as the backup singers for a band. Barbara’s name was prominently displayed on early posters, but not theirs—the other cohosts were so anonymous, they were simply identified by their professions (lawyer, comedian, journalist, etc.). Yet there was no need to despair. Barbara pulled them aside with an upbeat career forecast: “If this show is successful, none of you ladies will be able to walk down the street without people stopping you.”

  They all laughed it off at the time. “That’s exactly what happened,” said Debbie. “It gives me chills even saying it. Within six months, it was insane.”

  3

  Barbara Does Daytime

  It was like a college seminar in which the students don’t know whether they would get along with their new professor—Barbara Walters. On August 11, 1997, on the first episode of The View, Meredith Vieira admitted she had trouble sleeping the night before. Debbie Matenopoulos broke out into hives on her neck. Star Jones piped up about the importance of using the word allegedly whenever possible.

  In its original incarnation, The View looked different. The Hot Topics debates, soon mimicked by most cable-TV producers (“Now everything is a Hot Topic,” Barbara lamented), lasted for only a single segment, as Meredith shuffled through print copies of the morning newspapers, pulling out the best headlines. The celebrity interviews were such an integral part of the show that the stage was reconfigured and the other cohosts disappeared to make room for an intimate one-on-one. “Originally, I was supposed to be the key interviewer because Barbara was taking a backseat,” Meredith said.

  The atmosphere felt like 20/20 meets Live with Regis and Kathie Lee. In fact, Barbara borrowed a touch of Regis Philbin’s flair, after guest cohosting on his show for a string of days. On The View’s pilot, she had asked Philbin to pitch in as the pretend celebrity. “It had never been done on TV before by a great team of girls like that,” remembered Philbin, who dropped in over the years from his flashier studio. “They were terrific together, and they had respect for each other.”

  That was true early on. Since Barbara didn’t want her extracurricular activity to distract from her news jobs, The View wasn’t conceived as a hotbed for controversy. “It wasn’t as political then,” said Barbara, who as a journalist couldn’t reveal whom she’d voted for or where she stood on issues such as abortion. Just take the premiere: Tom Selleck was the first guest, promoting his role—which he claimed to have modeled after Barbara—as a reporter in the gay romantic comedy In & Out.

  “You are such a nice guy for coming here on the first show,” Meredith greeted him. “And so smart, to know that this is going to be such a hit.”

  “I did it because Barbara asked,” Selleck responded stiffly.

  In the next segment, the ladies (“my pals,” Barbara called them) reemerged for the Question of the Day: “If your house was burning, what is the one thing you would grab on your way out?” Selleck picked his shotgun, a response that wasn’t as polarizing in the pre-Columbine era, while Star nailed the biggest laughs with her answer, “My fur coat,” as she flashed a brown frock straight out of Cruella de Vil’s closet. After that, an earnest author offered tips on how to talk to your man. Then Joy Behar snuck out at the very end, to mutter a quick hello, as the substitute. “They’ve been keeping me in the broom closet all this time, but now I’m here,” she joked on air. It was an awkward and forgettable hour of TV.

  When the cameras stopped, the youngest cohost made a run for it. “I walked off the stage and I almost threw up,” Debbie told me. “My nerves were so bad. I was sick to my stomach the whole time, like almost hyperventilating, because I was so scared. I’d never done live TV before.”

  If that weren’t hard enough, the Hot Topics debates required keeping up with Barbara. “I didn’t understand why there was nothing substantive in daytime,” Geddie said. “We really wanted to break the mold.”

  The premiere opened on a political note, as Meredith detailed a story involving a supposed spat in the Kennedy family. Then she turned her attention to even saucier terrain. “It feels like the summer of infidelity,” Meredith cheekily observed, citing such high-profile scandals as Paula Jones’s civil suit against Bill Clinton, Bill Cosby’s having to testify in an extortion trial in which he revealed he’d had an affair, and Frank Gifford’s being caught cheating on Kathie Lee with a flight attendant. The studio crowd was asked by Barbara to cheer if they cared about a politician’s private life (half did), while the cohosts piled on. “That’s Hillary’s problem,” Star said, fourteen minutes into The View, about the president’s rumored cheating, the first mention of a name that would soon become a Hot Topics staple.

  On Tuesday (“They kept us on another day,” Meredith said, exhaling), the ladies argued about who should portray Hillary in a biopic about the White House couple. The president had suggested Meryl Streep, but Debbie brought up another idea: “I think Cybill Shepherd should play Hillary.”

  “The Republicans would rather have … Roseanne,” Barbara said, chuckling.

  On Wednesday, The View set its sights on a man who would eventually become the show’s biggest villain. Donald Trump was in the news as a result of his nasty separation from his second wife, Marla Maples. “You know what? They name a kid after a jewelry store,” Joy said, referring to the three-year-old Tiffany. “Give me a break!” The conversation shifted to the new fashion trend, adopted by Calvin Klein, of women showing their bra straps in public. “This bothers me,” Star protested.

  On Friday, Trump managed to make more headlines, with a sexist comment about the Miss America beauty pageant allowing its contestants to wear a two-piece bikini in the swimsuit competition. “Thank you, Donald,” Meredith shot back. “I can judge an ass when he’s fully dressed.”

  * * *

  The View got off to an inauspicious start by design. Barbara and Bill Geddie debuted the show in mid-August, during a quiet period on TV when most women were on vacation with their families, to get out ahead of the splashy fall premieres. “We sort of snuck it on,” Barbara said, “because we figured it would give us time to get into shape. So when people finally tuned in, we would be there.”

  The show wasn’t bolstered by an aggressive advertising campaign. Nor did it have a team of caffeinated publicists working overtime to secure press. At a small party for reporters, Barbara craftily observed that a rainbow in the sky was a good omen, and Debbie (described by The New York Times the next day as “a bit like Deborah Norville by way of Cameron Diaz”) bawled on cue while telling the story of how she got hired.

  As a mazel tov, all the cohosts had received a bouquet of flowers from Disney’s then CEO Michael Eisner. Yet there were no illusions. The View’s future rested solely on Barbara’s shoulder pads—fortunately, they were formidable. Her wardrobe mirrored that of a stateswoma
n, with colorful pantsuits and shimmering brooches, while her unpierced ears restricted her to costume earrings. (She used to complain that her lobes sagged.) Barbara recorded a soon-to-be-iconic introduction in the opening credits, explaining the conceit (“I’ve always wanted to do a show with women of different generations, backgrounds, and views…”), and she took her job as the executive producer seriously.

  Barbara showed up at her View office early each morning, traveling mostly by foot, if the weather permitted, with a posse that included her hairdresser, Bryant Renfroe; makeup artist, Lori Klein; and housekeeper, Icodel Tomlinson, who had been with Barbara for thirty-five years. Renfroe would take a car to Barbara’s apartment, arriving at 8:00 a.m. She’d dump her belongings in the vehicle, trudge through Central Park with her team, and meet the driver on the other side. “I miss those walks,” Renfroe said. “We’d talk about everything. My life. Her life. Not so much the cohosts.”

  Barbara would get back into the car for the last blocks, as they inched forward in traffic to West End Avenue. Didn’t she get recognized? Barbara liked to quip that she could disappear in public if she wasn’t wearing any makeup or didn’t utter a word, because her distinct Boston accent gave away her identity.

  Once she was in the building, she’d thumb through a folder with the juiciest stories of the day, which had been compiled by an overnight producer. She didn’t choose them by herself. She wanted all the ladies to agree on what they’d talk about, inviting them to take part. At 9:00 a.m., Geddie oversaw the Hot Topics meeting in the communal makeup room, with the other cohosts—often minus Meredith, who called in on speakerphone because she was dropping off her kids at school in Westchester. If the scene resembled a sleepover, it was because the ladies wore their wet hair in towels, with their faces still unmade. These discussions were so exclusive that not even the publicists of the guests were allowed to eavesdrop. Admission was reserved for high-tier View staff, the cohosts, and Renfroe.

  After Meredith arrived, she worked with a writer so that all her lines sounded like words she’d actually say. “I used to drive Barbara crazy because I would take time,” Meredith said. “It was literally up to the wire. I was always just making it to set.”

  In preparing for The View, Barbara had several ironclad broadcasting rules, which she passionately imparted to her staff. She loved to lecture on the value of research—watching a TV show or a movie before an interview, so that her cohosts would ask informed questions. “Even when we were doing a cooking segment, I read the cookbook,” Barbara said years later in her dressing room, while nibbling on an egg sandwich. “I like to do homework.”

  Barbara didn’t allow for any preshow arguments about the Hot Topics before they went on TV so that their debates wouldn’t sound canned. She worried about targeting Middle America, and not just the elite coasts, with the stories they selected. “Do they care in Wyoming?” was a favorite refrain. “I have an expression that I use,” Barbara explained. “And I say, ‘It’s great for New York, but I live in Wyoming.’” But she was comically unaware that she had wielded this retort so often, it had lost meaning.

  “Nobody cares about the Kardashians in Wyoming,” Barbara would pipe up, in the later seasons.

  “Yes, they do,” her producers would push back. “Barbara, they have newspapers in Wyoming.”

  On TV, Barbara wasted no time and tried to familiarize viewers with her new protégées. At first, her aggressive reporting style sounded strange for the leisurely pace of daytime. Even at her most relaxed, Barbara seemed like a QVC host trying to convince housewives to buy the latest accessories—her cohosts. Barbara kept pushing Debbie to do impressions of her immigrant mother, a hairstylist from Greece. Barbara branded Star “a combination of Cinderella and Perry Mason” (or, better yet, “a star in every sense of the word!”) and sent Joy to get a fancy haircut at Bergdorf Goodman with the cameras trailing along. And Barbara tried to hand the reins—as much as possible—to Meredith.

  “I’m supposed to be the normal one in this group, which isn’t hard,” Meredith teased that first week. Her soothing cadence offered viewers a point of entry. Joy played the comedic foil with zingers, and Debbie did her best to keep up, although her favorite stories centered on college loans and her gross car. “I was a little too young,” Debbie said. “I had no idea about the majority of things happening in the world.” Star quickly grew into the MVP. For the target demographic of stay-at-home moms, she sounded the most relatable, eagerly dishing about her dream husband, career ambitions, and fashion obsessions (she owned three hundred pairs of shoes). “Live television never makes me nervous,” Star said. “Do you know why? That’s the litigator training. When you do a closing statement, you only get one shot.”

  In the tradition of other ensemble morning shows, such as GMA or Today, The View tried to mimic a family in which all the sisters got along with their mom. On the second episode, Meredith turned to her boss and asked, “Do you feel like a proud mama?”

  “Yes,” Barbara responded on TV. Asked years later about a maternal connection to her cohosts, she bristled. “No, I chose these women.” She was their Svengali, and each costar, depending on her own background, had a different relationship with Barbara.

  “My experience was like a fairy godmother,” Debbie said. “She plucked me out of obscurity and put me in a world I wouldn’t have been in.” By picking someone so green, Barbara had set her up for failure. “I was so scared, so young, and so in over my head,” Debbie said. (“Maternal isn’t a word I’d use to describe Barbara,” one producer snickered.)

  Star wasn’t intimidated, but she felt that she never got to see Barbara without her armor. “I was awestruck because of what she had accomplished,” Star said. “She was tough.” For Star, attending the Barbara Walters journalism school was like wandering through the Louvre. “I sometimes describe her as a version of the Mona Lisa. Most people don’t realize the painting is very small, encased in feet of glass on all sides, so you can’t really get to it. She was right there, someone I appreciated and loved. I wasn’t sure if I could ever really see her.”

  Meredith, having worked side by side with Barbara at ABC, approached her as a peer. “When there was a big news story, you knew Barbara was going to take over,” Meredith said. “Sometimes I would be frustrated because I’m a journalist, too.” She relished knocking down the Barbara mystique by pushing her buttons, calling her Babs and bringing up sex whenever possible. “She’s kind of a bawdy person behind the scenes. She told dirty jokes. I think she liked it because we humanized her.”

  The cohost who regarded Barbara most like an actual girlfriend was the closest to her age. “I’ve been able to tease Barbara,” said Joy, who attended potluck dinners at Barbara’s house. Barbara realized she wouldn’t need to worry about an uprising, where Joy would steal the show. Joy wasn’t a conniving rival, nor was she a wide-eyed ingénue. “I don’t consider her some mother figure,” Joy said. “I’m not afraid of her.”

  * * *

  The View didn’t catch on as a cultural phenomenon until much later. “When it came on, it was not a gung-ho success,” Barbara said. The show only drew about 1.5 million viewers, a fraction of Oprah’s or Rosie’s numbers. That was due, in part, to the cold reality of daytime. The View didn’t air in all the major markets, since the affiliates were making more money with their own local programming. Barbara, who hadn’t been aware of this fine-print complication, rolled up her sleeves and used her star power to her advantage. She’d call up the station managers herself, pleading with them to try out her new program. She had no shame about going on the road, taking the Amtrak to Boston or Philadelphia, with a rolling luggage stuffed with VHS tapes to pitch The View. Who could turn down a face-to-face interaction with Barbara Walters? “I was a real pain in the ass,” she said.

  Every time a new station agreed to program The View, Meredith announced it on TV, to a roar of applause. “We were all aware of the numbers,” Meredith said. “We all knew that the show would hav
e probably gone away without her.” Yet the prospect of an early cancellation didn’t keep Meredith up at night: “It would have been okay with me one way or another. I don’t want to be cavalier; I was just finding my way. After a few more years, then I was invested.”

  When Wendy Williams launched her talk show in 2008, with a shamelessly plagiarized opening segment called Hot Topics, she struggled to get celebrities to pop by. “If you’re a new show, you don’t get those guests you dream of,” Williams told me. But Barbara overcame that barrier through her A-list Rolodex. “The first few guests I remember with great affection because they came on this cockamamy show,” said Barbara, who wasn’t above haggling for favors with actors she’d known socially or through her specials. The first week of The View featured an impressive lineup for the era: Sylvester Stallone, Michael J. Fox, Elle Macpherson, and Ray Liotta.

  In September, a fifteen-year-old Ivanka Trump ventured over from boarding school to plug her modeling career. “I’ve had boyfriends before, but at this point, I don’t expect anything serious,” she giggled, when pressed about her personal life. Her dad, never one to turn down a chance for self-promotion, scheduled his first View sit-down in November. Barbara, in a tan suit with an orange sweater tied around her neck like a cape, asked the real estate mogul if he believed in monogamy. “I hope so,” Trump said. “I love the institution of marriage. Someday, perhaps, I’ll get it right.” Two days later, “the trivia-spouting darling of daytime,” Rosie O’Donnell, made a generous gesture to her competitors by doing an interview. She couldn’t turn down an invitation from the icon she grew up watching on TV with her mom in Long Island.

  “It was Barbara’s name and reputation that we had to sell it on,” said The View’s longtime booker, Donald Berman. That wasn’t to say there weren’t difficulties. The View had a different audience from Barbara’s prime-time shows, which the staff learned the hard way when a full hour with Ringo Starr tanked in the ratings. Many publicists initially only promised their top clients on days when Barbara was confirmed to be there. “I think they felt it would be a little more prestigious,” said Berman, who had come from Entertainment Tonight and focused on movies, music, and TV. Sue Solomon, a producer with a long TV career with Joan Rivers, Dick Cavett, and Montel Williams, pursued politicians and authors. “There would be no show without Barbara Walters,” she said. “Her vision, her drive, her clout were key.”