Name	Oprah Winfrey
Caption	Winfrey at her 50th birthday party at Hotel Bel-Air, Los Angeles, in 2004
Birth name	Orpah Gail Winfrey
Birth date	January 29, 1954
Birth place	Kosciusko, Mississippi, United States
Occupation	Talk show host, media proprietor, actress
Residence	Chicago, Illinois, United States
Years active	1983–Present
Party	Democratic Party
Website	www.Oprah.com
Partner	Stedman Graham
Signature	Oprah Winfrey Signature.svg

Oprah Winfrey (born Orpah Gail Winfrey; January 29, 1954) is an American television host, actress, producer, and philanthropist, best known for her self-titled, multi-award winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history. She has been ranked the richest African American of the 20th century, the greatest black philanthropist in American history, and was once the world's only black billionaire. She is also, according to , the most influential woman in the world.

Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother and later raised in an inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood. She experienced considerable hardship during her childhood, including being raped at the age of nine and becoming pregnant at 14; her son died in infancy. she is thought to have popularized and revolutionized By the mid 1990s, she had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, and spirituality. Though criticized for unleashing confession culture and promoting controversial self-help aids, she is often praised for overcoming adversity to become a benefactor to others. From 2006 to 2008, her support of Barack Obama, by one estimate, delivered over a million votes in the close 2008 Democratic primary race.

Early life

Winfrey was originally named "Orpah" after the Biblical character in the Book of Ruth. Her family and friends' inability to pronounce "Orpah" caused them to put the "P" before the "R" in every place else other than the birth certificate.

Winfrey was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi to unmarried teenage parents. She later said that her conception was due to a single sexual encounter and the couple broke up not long after. Her mother, Vernita Lee (born c. 1935) was a housemaid. Winfrey had believed that her biological father was Vernon Winfrey (born 1933), a coal miner turned barber turned city councilman who had been in the Armed Forces when she was born. Decades later, Mississippi farmer and World War II veteran Noah Robinson Sr. (born c. 1925) claimed to be her biological father. Winfrey had her DNA tested for the 2006 PBS program African American Lives. The genetic test determined that her maternal line originated among the Kpelle ethnic group, in the area that today is Liberia. Her genetic make up was determined to be 89 percent Sub-Saharan African, 8% Native American, and 3% East Asian however the East Asian may actually be Native American markers however due to the limitations of genetic testing this is unsure. After her birth, Winfrey's mother traveled north and Winfrey spent her first six years living in rural poverty with her grandmother, Hattie Mae Lee (April 15, 1900 - February 27, 1963), who was so poor that Winfrey often wore dresses made of potato sacks, for which the local children made fun of her. Her grandmother taught her to read before the age of three and took her to the local church, where she was nicknamed "The Preacher" for her ability to recite Bible verses. When Winfrey was a child, her grandmother would take a switch and would hit her with it when she didn't do chores or if she misbehaved in any way. At age six, Winfrey moved to an inner-city neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with her mother, who was less supportive and encouraging than her grandmother had been, due in large part to the long hours Vernita Lee worked as a maid. Winfrey has stated that she was molested by her cousin, her uncle, and a family friend, starting when she was nine years old, something she first revealed to her viewers on a 1986 episode of her TV show, when sexual abuse was being discussed. She once commented that she had chosen not to be a mother because she had not been mothered well.

At 13, after suffering years of abuse, Winfrey ran away from home. When she was 14, she became pregnant, her son dying shortly after birth. She later said she felt betrayed by her family member who had sold the story to the National Enquirer in 1990. She began high school at Lincoln High School; but after early success in the Upward Bound program was transferred to the affluent suburban Nicolet High School, where her poverty was constantly rubbed into her face as she rode the bus to school with fellow African-Americans, some of whom were servants of her classmates' families. She began to steal money from her mother in an effort to keep up with her free-spending peers, to lie to and argue with her mother, and to go out with older boys.

Her frustrated mother sent her to live with Vernon in Nashville, Tennessee. Vernon was strict, but encouraging and made her education a priority. Winfrey became an honors student, was voted Most Popular Girl, joined her high school speech team at East Nashville High School, placing second in the nation in dramatic interpretation. She won an oratory contest, which secured her a full scholarship to Tennessee State University, a historically black institution, where she studied communication. Her first job as a teenager was working at a local grocery store. At age 17, Winfrey won the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant. She also attracted the attention of the local black radio station, WVOL, which hired her to do the news part-time. Working in local media, she was both the youngest news anchor and the first black female news anchor at Nashville's WLAC-TV. She moved to Baltimore's WJZ-TV in 1976 to co-anchor the six o'clock news. She was then recruited to join Richard Sher as co-host of WJZ's local talk show People Are Talking, which premiered on August 14, 1978. She also hosted the local version of Dialing for Dollars there as well.

Television

In 1983, Winfrey relocated to Chicago to host WLS-TV's low-rated half-hour morning talk show, AM Chicago. The first episode aired on January 2, 1984. Within months after Winfrey took over, the show went from last place in the ratings to overtaking Donahue as the highest rated talk show in Chicago. The movie critic Roger Ebert persuaded her to sign a syndication deal with King World. Ebert predicted that she would generate 40 times as much revenue as his television show, At the Movies. It was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show, expanded to a full hour, and broadcast nationally beginning September 8, 1986. Winfrey's syndicated show brought in double Donahue's national audience, displacing Donahue as the number one day-time talk show in America. Their much publicized contest was the subject of enormous scrutiny. Time magazine wrote, "Few people would have bet on Oprah Winfrey's swift rise to host of the most popular talk show on TV. In a field dominated by white males, she is a black female of ample bulk. As interviewers go, she is no match for, say, Phil Donahue [...] What she lacks in journalistic toughness, she makes up for in plainspoken curiosity, robust humor and, above all empathy. Guests with sad stories to tell are apt to rouse a tear in Oprah's eye [...] They, in turn, often find themselves revealing things they would not imagine telling anyone, much less a national TV audience. It is the talk show as a group therapy session." TV columnist Howard Rosenberg said, "She's a roundhouse, a full course meal, big, brassy, loud, aggressive, hyper, laughable, lovable, soulful, tender, low-down, earthy and hungry. And she may know the way to Phil Donahue's jugular." Newsday's Les Payne observed, "Oprah Winfrey is sharper than Donahue, wittier, more genuine, and far better attuned to her audience, if not the world" In addition to her talk show, Winfrey also produced and co-starred in the 1989 drama miniseries The Women of Brewster Place, as well as a short-lived spin-off, Brewster Place. As well as hosting and appearing on television shows, Winfrey co-founded the women's cable television network Oxygen. She is also the president of Harpo Productions (Oprah spelled backwards). On January 15, 2008, Winfrey and Discovery Communications announced plans to change Discovery Health Channel into a new channel called . It was scheduled to launch in 2009, but was delayed, and actually launched on January 1, 2011.

Celebrity interviews

In 1993, Winfrey hosted a rare prime-time interview with Michael Jackson, which became the fourth most watched event in American television history as well as the most watched interview ever, with an audience of 36.5 million. On December 1, 2005, Winfrey appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman to promote the new Broadway musical The Color Purple, of which she was a producer, joining the host for the first time in 16 years. The episode was hailed by some as the "television event of the decade" and helped Letterman attract his largest audience in more than 11 years: 13.45 million viewers. Although a much-rumored feud was said to have been the cause of the rift, both Winfrey and Letterman balked at such talk. "I want you to know, it's really over, whatever you thought was happening", said Winfrey. On September 10, 2007, David Letterman made his first appearance on "The Oprah Winfrey Show", as its season premiere was filmed in New York City.

In 2006, rappers Ludacris, 50 Cent and Ice Cube criticized Winfrey for what they perceived as an anti-hip hop bias. In an interview with GQ magazine, Ludacris said that Winfrey gave him a "hard time" about his lyrics, and edited comments he made during an appearance on her show with the cast of the film Crash. He also claimed that he wasn't initially invited on the show with the rest of the cast. Winfrey responded by saying that she's opposed to rap lyrics that "marginalize women", but enjoys some artists, including Kanye West, who appeared on her show. She said she spoke with Ludacris backstage after his appearance to explain her position, and said she understood that his music was for entertainment purposes, but that some of his listeners might take it literally. In September 2008, Winfrey received criticism after Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report reported that Winfrey refused to have Sarah Palin on her show allegedly due to Winfrey's support for Barack Obama. Winfrey denied the report, maintaining that there never was a discussion regarding Palin appearing on her show. Critics have also suggested that Winfrey is not tough enough when questioning celebrity guests or politicians that she appears to like. Lisa de Moraes, a media columnist for The Washington Post, stated, "Oprah doesn't do follow-up questions unless you're an author who's embarrassed her by fabricating portions of a supposed memoir she's plugged for her book club."

Other media

Film

]] In 1985, Winfrey co-starred in Steven Spielberg's The Color Purple as distraught housewife, Sofia. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance. The film went on to become a Broadway musical which opened in late 2005, with Winfrey credited as a producer. In October 1998, Winfrey produced and starred in the film Beloved, based on Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name. To prepare for her role as Sethe, the protagonist and former slave, Winfrey experienced a 24-hour simulation of the experience of slavery, which included being tied up and blindfolded and left alone in the woods. Despite major advertising, including two episodes of her talk show dedicated solely to the film, and moderate to good critical reviews, Beloved opened to poor box-office results, losing approximately $30 million. While promoting the movie, co-star Thandie Newton described Winfrey as "a very strong technical actress and it's because she's so smart. She's acute. She's got a mind like a razor blade." In 2005, Harpo Productions released a film adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston's 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. The made-for-television film was based upon a teleplay by Suzan-Lori Parks, and starred Halle Berry in the lead female role.

In late 2008, Winfrey's company Harpo Films signed an exclusive output pact to develop and produce scripted series, documentaries and movies for HBO. Oprah voiced Gussie the goose for Charlotte's Web (2006) and the voice of Judge Bumbleden in Bee Movie (2007) co-starring the voices of Jerry Seinfeld and Renee Zellweger. In 2009, Winfrey provided the voice for the character of Eudora, the mother of Princess Tiana, in Disney's The Princess and the Frog and in 2010, narrated the US version of the BBC nature program Life for Discovery.

Publishing and writing

Winfrey has co-authored five books. At the announcement of a weight loss book in 2005, co-authored with her personal trainer Bob Greene, it was said that her undisclosed advance fee had broken the record for the world's highest book advance fee, previously held by the autobiography of former U.S. President Bill Clinton.

Winfrey publishes two magazines: O, The Oprah Magazine and O at Home. In 2002 Fortune called O, the Oprah Magazine the most successful start-up ever in the industry. Although its circulation had declined by more than 10 percent (to 2.4 million) from 2005 to 2008, the January 2009 issue was the best selling issue since 2006. The audience for her magazine is considerably more upscale than for her TV show, the average reader earning US $63,000 a year (well above the median for U.S. women).

Online

Winfrey's company created the Oprah.com website to provide resources and interactive content relating to her shows, magazines, book club, and public charity. Oprah.com averages more than 70 million page views and more than six million users per month, and receives approximately 20,000 e-mails each week. Winfrey initiated "Oprah's Child Predator Watch List", through her show and website, to help track down accused child molesters. Within the first 48 hours, two of the featured men were captured.

Radio

On February 9, 2006, it was announced that Winfrey had signed a three-year, $55 million contract with XM Satellite Radio to establish a new radio channel. The channel, Oprah Radio, features popular contributors to The Oprah Winfrey Show and O, The Oprah Magazine including Nate Berkus, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Bob Greene, Dr. Robin Smith and Marianne Williamson. Oprah & Friends began broadcasting at 11:00 am ET, September 25, 2006, from a new studio at Winfrey's Chicago headquarters. The channel broadcasts 24 hours a day, seven days a week on XM Radio Channel 156. Winfrey's contract requires her to be on the air thirty minutes a week, 39 weeks a year. The thirty-minute weekly show features Winfrey with friend Gayle King.

Personal life

Homes

estate]] Winfrey currently lives on "The Promised Land", her 42-acre (170,000 m²) estate with ocean and mountain views in Montecito, California. Winfrey also owns a house in Lavallette, New Jersey, an apartment in Chicago, an estate on Fisher Island, Florida, a house in Douglasville, Georgia, a ski house in Telluride, Colorado, and property on Maui, Hawaii and Antigua. Her base during filming of Winfrey's show is Chicago, so she spends time in the neighborhood of Streeterville.

Romantic history

A self-described promiscuous teen who was a victim of sexual abuse, Winfrey gave birth at the age of 14, to a boy who died shortly after. Her high school sweetheart Anthony Otey recalled an innocent courtship that began in Winfrey's senior year of high school, from which he saved hundreds of love notes; Winfrey conducted herself with dignity and as a model student. The two spoke of getting married, but Otey claimed to have always secretly known that Winfrey was destined for a far greater life than he could ever provide. She broke up with him on Valentine's Day of her senior year. In 1971, several months after breaking up with Otey, Winfrey met William "Bubba" Taylor at Tennessee State University. According to CBS journalist George Mair, Taylor was Winfrey's "first intense, to die for love affair". Winfrey helped get Taylor a job at WVOL, and according to Mair, "did everything to keep him, including literally begging him on her knees to stay with her." Taylor however was unwilling to leave Nashville with Winfrey when she moved to Baltimore to work at WJZ-TV in June 1976. "We really did care for each other", Winfrey would later recall. "We shared a deep love. A love I will never forget."

In the 1970s, Winfrey had a romantic relationship with John Tesh. Biographer Kitty Kelley claims that Tesh split with Winfrey over the pressure of having an interracial relationship. In 1997, former boyfriend named Randoph Cook tried to sue Winfrey for $20 million for allegedly blocking a tell-all book where he claimed they lived together for several months in 1985 and did drugs. Cook's claims mark the second time reports surfaced about Winfrey's involvement in a drug related love affair. In 1995 Winfrey herself confessed to smoking crack cocaine. "And I've often said over the years...in my attempts to come out and say it, I've said many times I did things in my 20s that I was ashamed of, I did things I felt guilty about, but that is my life's great big secret that's always been held over my head", she explained on her show. "I always felt that the drug itself is not the problem but that I was addicted to the man." She added: "I can't think of anything I wouldn't have done for that man."

When WJZ-TV management criticized Winfrey for crying on the air while reporting tragedies and were unhappy with her physical appearance (especially when her hair fell out as the result of a bad perm), Winfrey turned to reporter Lloyd Kramer for comfort. "Lloyd was just the best", Winfrey would later recall. "That man loved me even when I was bald! He was wonderful. He stuck with me through the whole demoralizing experience. That man was the most fun romance I ever had." According to Mair, when Kramer moved to NBC in New York Winfrey had a love affair with a married man who had no intention of leaving his wife. Winfrey would later recall: "I'd had a relationship with a man for four years. I wasn't living with him. I'd never lived with anyone—and I thought I was worthless without him. The more he rejected me, the more I wanted him. I felt depleted, powerless. At the end I was down on the floor on my knees groveling and pleading with him". "That suicide note had been much overplayed" Winfrey told Ms. magazine's Joan Barthel. "I couldn't kill myself. I would be afraid the minute I did it; something really good would happen and I'd miss it." Winfrey also dated movie critic Roger Ebert, whom she credits with advising her to take her show into syndication. According to Winfrey, her emotional turmoil gradually led to a weight problem: "The reason I gained so much weight in the first place and the reason I had such a sorry history of abusive relationships with men was I just needed approval so much. I needed everyone to like me, because I didn't like myself much. So I'd end up with these cruel self-absorbed guys who'd tell me how selfish I was, and I'd say 'Oh thank you, you're so right' and be grateful to them. Because I had no sense that I deserved anything else. Which is also why I gained so much weight later on. It was the perfect way of cushioning myself against the world's disapproval." "I've told nearly everything there is to tell. All my stuff is out there. People think I'd be so ashamed of being gay that I wouldn't admit it? Oh, please." Winfrey considers Maya Angelou, author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings her mentor and close friend; she calls Angelou her "mother-sister-friend" Winfrey hosted a week-long Caribbean cruise for Angelou and 150 guests for Angelou's 70th birthday in 1998, and in 2008, threw her "an extravagant 80th birthday celebration" at Donald Trump's Mar-A-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.

Personal wealth

Born in rural poverty, then raised by a mother on welfare in a poor urban neighborhood, Winfrey became a millionaire at age 32 when her talk show went national. Winfrey was in a position to negotiate ownership of the show and start her own production company because of the success and the amount of revenue the show generated. At age 41, Winfrey had a net worth of $340 million and replaced Bill Cosby as the only African American on the Forbes 400. Although black people are just under 13% of the U.S. population, Winfrey has remained the only African American to rank among America's 400 richest people nearly every year since 1995. With a 2000 net worth of $800 million, Winfrey is believed to be the richest African American of the 20th century. Due to her status as a historical figure, Professor Juliet E.K. Walker of the University of Illinois created the course "History 298: Oprah Winfrey, the Tycoon." Winfrey was the highest paid TV entertainer in the United States in 2006, earning an estimated $260 million during the year, five times the sum earned by second-place music executive Simon Cowell. By 2008, her yearly income had increased to $275 million.

Forbes' international rich list has listed Winfrey as the world's only black billionaire from 2004 to 2006 and as the first black woman billionaire in world history. and has overtaken former eBay CEO Meg Whitman as the richest self-made woman in America.

Influence

Rankings

Winfrey was called "arguably the world's most powerful woman" by CNN and Time.com, "arguably the most influential woman in the world" by the American Spectator, "" and "one of the most influential people" from 2004 to 2010 by Time. Winfrey is the only person in the world to have appeared in the latter list on all eight occasions.

At the end of the 20th century Life listed Winfrey as both the most influential woman and the most influential black person of her generation, and in a cover story profile the magazine called her "America's most powerful woman". In 2007 USA Today ranked Winfrey as the most influential woman and most influential black person of the previous quarter century. Ladies Home Journal also ranked Winfrey number one in their list of the most powerful women in America and senator Barack Obama has said she "may be the most influential woman in the country". In 1998 Winfrey became the first woman and first African-American to top Entertainment Weekly's list of the 101 most powerful people in the entertainment industry. Forbes named her the world's most powerful celebrity in 2005, 2007, 2008 In 2010 Life magazine named Winfrey one of the 100 people who changed the world, along side such luminaries as Jesus Christ, Elvis Presley and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Winfrey was the only living woman to make the list.

Columnist Maureen Dowd seems to agree with such assessments: "She is the top alpha female in this country. She has more credibility than the president. Other successful women, such as Hillary Clinton and Martha Stewart, had to be publicly slapped down before they could move forward. Even Condi has had to play the protegé with Bush. None of this happened to Oprah — she is a straight ahead success story. Vanity Fair wrote: "Oprah Winfrey arguably has more influence on the culture than any university president, politician, or religious leader, except perhaps the Pope. Bill O'Reilly said: "this is a woman that came from nothing to rise up to be the most powerful woman, I think, in the world. I think Oprah Winfrey is the most powerful woman in the world, not just in America. That's — anybody who goes on her program immediately benefits through the roof. I mean, she has a loyal following; she has credibility; she has talent; and she's done it on her own to become fabulously wealthy and fabulously powerful. Biographer Kitty Kelley states that she has always been fascinated by Winfrey: "As a woman, she has wielded an unprecedented amount of influence over the American culture and psyche,...There has been no other person in the 20th Century whose convictions and values have impacted the American public in such a significant way.... I see her as probably the most powerful woman in our society. I think Oprah has influenced every medium that she's touched.

In 2005 Winfrey was named the greatest woman in American history as part of a public poll as part of The Greatest American. She was ranked #9 overall on the list of greatest Americans, however polls estimating Winfrey's personal popularity have been inconsistent. A November 2003 Gallup poll estimated that 73% of American adults had a favorable view of Winfrey. Another Gallup poll in January 2007 estimated the figure at 74%, although it dropped to 66% when Gallup conducted the same poll in October 2007. A December 2007 Fox News poll put the figure at 55%. According to Gallup's annual most admired poll, Americans consistently rank Winfrey as one of the most admired women in the world. Her highest rating came in 2007 when she was statistically tied with Hillary Clinton for first place. In a list compiled by the British magazine New Statesman in September 2010, She was voted 38th in the list of "The World's 50 Most Influential Figures 2010".

'Oprahfication'

The Wall Street Journal coined the term "Oprahfication", meaning public confession as a form of therapy. By confessing intimate details about her weight problems, tumultuous love life, and sexual abuse, and crying alongside her guests, Time magazine credits Winfrey with creating a new form of media communication known as "rapport talk" as distinguished from the "report talk" of Phil Donahue: "Winfrey saw television's power to blend public and private; while it links strangers and conveys information over public airwaves, TV is most often viewed in the privacy of our homes. Like a family member, it sits down to meals with us and talks to us in the lonely afternoons. Grasping this paradox, ...She makes people care because she cares. That is Winfrey's genius, and will be her legacy, as the changes she has wrought in the talk show continue to permeate our culture and shape our lives."

Observers have also noted the "Oprahfication" of politics such as "Oprah-style debates" and Bill Clinton's empathetic speaking style. Columnist Maureen Dowd commented on the symbolism of Bill Clinton seeking an "Oprah-style" talk show when he left the presidency, "There is a delicious symmetry in Clinton's exploring the idea of a daytime syndicated talk show: the man who brought Oprah-style psychobabble and misty confessions to politics taking the next step and actually transmogrifying into Oprah." Newsweek stated: "Every time a politician lets his lip quiver or a cable anchor 'emotes' on TV, they nod to the cult of confession that Oprah helped create. Winfrey's disclosures about her weight (which peaked at 108 kg (238 lb)) also paved the way for other plus-sized women in media such as Roseanne Barr, Rosie O'Donnell and Star Jones. The November 1988 Ms. magazine observed that "in a society where fat is taboo, she made it in a medium that worships thin and celebrates a bland, white-bread prettiness of body and personality [...] But Winfrey made fat sexy, elegant — damned near gorgeous — with her drop-dead wardrobe, easy body language, and cheerful sensuality."

Mainstream acceptance of gays and lesbians

While Phil Donahue has been credited with pioneering the tabloid talk show genre, Winfrey's warmth, intimacy and personal confession, popularized and changed it. Her success at popularizing of the tabloid talk show genre, had opened up a thriving industry that has included Ricki Lake, The Jenny Jones Show, and The Jerry Springer Show. Sociologists such as Vicki Abt criticized tabloid talk shows for redefining social norms. In her book Coming After Oprah: Cultural Fallout in the Age of the TV talk show, Abt warned that the media revolution that followed Winfrey's success was blurring the lines between "normal" and "deviant" behavior. In the book Freaks Talk Back, Gamson credits the tabloid talk show with making alternative sexual orientations and identities more acceptable in mainstream society. Examples include a Time magazine article describing early 21st century gays coming out of the closet younger and younger and gay suicide rates plummeting. Gamson also believes that tabloid talk shows caused gays to be embraced on more traditional forms of media. Examples include sitcoms like Will & Grace, primetime shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Oscar nominated feature films like Brokeback Mountain.

During a show in the 1980s, members of the studio audience stood up one by one, gave their name and announced that they were gay. Also in the 1980s Winfrey took her show to West Virginia to confront a town gripped by AIDS paranoia because a gay man living in the town had HIV. Winfrey interviewed the man who had become a social outcast, the town's mayor who drained a swimming pool in which the man had gone swimming, and debated with the town's hostile residents. "But I hear this is a God fearing town", Winfrey scolded the homophobic studio audience; "where's all that Christian love and understanding?" During a show on gay marriage in the 1990s, a woman in Winfrey's audience stood up to complain that gays were constantly flaunting their sex lives and she announced that she was tired of it. "You know what I'm tired of", replied Winfrey, "heterosexual males raping and sodomizing young girls. That's what I'm tired of." Her rebuttal inspired a screaming standing ovation from that show's studio audience. Winfrey promotes openly gay celebrities on her show, such as her hairdresser Andre Walker, makeup artist Reggie Wells, and decorator Nate Berkus, who inspired an outpouring of sympathy from middle America after grieving the loss of his partner in the 2004 tsunami on the show. In April 1997, Winfrey played the therapist on the sitcom Ellen to whom the character (and the real-life Ellen DeGeneres) said she was a lesbian. In 1998, Mark Steyn in the National Review wrote of Winfrey "Today, no truly epochal moment in the history of the Republic occurs unless it is validated by her presence. When Ellen said, 'Yep! I'm gay,' Oprah was by her side, guesting on the sitcom as (what else?) the star's therapist."

'The Oprah Effect'

The power of Winfrey's opinions and endorsement to influence public opinion, especially consumer purchasing choices, has been dubbed "The Oprah Effect". The effect has been documented or alleged in domains as diverse as book sales, beef markets, and election voting. Late in 1996, Winfrey introduced the Oprah's Book Club segment to her television show. The segment focused on new books and classics, and often brought obscure novels to popular attention. The book club became such a powerful force that whenever Winfrey introduced a new book as her book-club selection, it instantly became a best-seller; for example, when she selected the classic John Steinbeck novel East of Eden, it soared to the top of the book charts. Being recognized by Winfrey often means a million additional book sales for an author. In Reading with Oprah: The book club that changed America (2005), Kathleen Rooney describes Winfrey as "a serious American intellectual who pioneered the use of electronic media, specifically television and the Internet, to take reading — a decidedly non-technological and highly individual act — and highlight its social elements and uses in such a way to motivate millions of erstwhile non-readers to pick up books."

When author Jonathan Franzen's book was selected for the Book Club, he reportedly "cringed" and said selected books tend to be "schmatzy",. After James Frey's A Million Little Pieces was found to contain fabrications in 2006, Winfrey confronted him on her show over the breach of trust. In 2009, Winfrey apologized to Frey for the public confrontation. During a show about mad cow disease with Howard Lyman (aired on April 16, 1996), Winfrey exclaimed, "It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger!" Texas cattlemen sued her and Lyman in early 1998 for "false defamation of perishable food" and "business disparagement", claiming that Winfrey's remarks sent cattle prices tumbling, costing beef producers $12 million. On February 26, after a two month trial in an Amarillo, Texas court, a jury found Winfrey and Lyman were not liable for damages. After the trial, she received a postcard from Roseanne Barr reading, "Congratulations, you beat the meat!" During the lawsuit, Winfrey hired Phil McGraw's company Courtroom Sciences, Inc. to help her analyze and read the jury. Dr. Phil made such an impression on Winfrey that she invited him to appear on her show. He accepted the invitation and was a resounding success. McGraw appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show for several years before launching his own show, Dr. Phil, in 2002, which was created by Winfrey's production company, Harpo Productions, in partnership with CBS Paramount, which produced the show. Winfrey's ability to launch other successful talk shows such as Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz and Rachael Ray has also been cited as examples of "The Oprah Effect". and Michelle Obama on the campaign trail (December 10, 2007).]]

Winfrey endorsed presidential candidate Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, testing the power of the 'Oprah Effect' in politics. This is the first time she publicly made such an endorsement. Winfrey held a fundraiser for Obama on September 8, 2007, at her Santa Barbara estate. In December 2007, Winfrey joined Obama for a series of rallies in the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. The Columbia, South Carolina event on December 9, 2007, drew a crowd of nearly 30,000, the largest for any political event of 2007. An analysis by two economists at the University of Maryland, College Park estimated that Winfrey's endorsement was responsible for between 423,123 and 1,596,995 votes for Obama in the Democratic primary alone, based on a sample of states that did not include Texas, Michigan, North Dakota, Kansas, or Alaska. The results suggest that in the sampled states, Oprah's endorsement was responsible for the difference in the popular vote between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, reported being so impressed by Winfrey's endorsement that he considered offering Winfrey Obama's vacant senate seat describing Winfrey as "the most instrumental person in electing Barack Obama president", with "a voice larger than all 100 senators combined". Winfrey responded by stating that although she was absolutely not interested, she did feel she could be a senator.

Spiritual leadership

In 2002, Christianity Today published an article called "The Church of O" in which they concluded that Winfrey had emerged as an influential spiritual leader. "Since 1994, when she abandoned traditional talk-show fare for more edifying content, and 1998, when she began 'Change Your Life TV', Oprah's most significant role has become that of spiritual leader. To her audience of more than 22 million mostly female viewers, she has become a post-modern priestess—an icon of church-free spirituality." Since the mid 1990s, Winfrey's show has emphazied uplifting and inspirational topics and themes and some viewers claim the show has motivated them to perform acts of altruism such as helping Congolese women and building an orphanage. A scientific study by psychological scientists at the University of Cambridge, University of Plymouth, and University of California used an uplifting clip from the Oprah Winfrey Show in an experiment that discovered that watching the 'uplifting' clip caused subjects to become twice as helpful as subjects assigned to watch a British comedy or nature documentary.

On the season premier of Winfrey's 13th season Roseanne Barr told Winfrey "you're the African Mother Goddess of us all" inspiring much enthusiasm from the studio audience. The animated series Futurama alluded to her spiritual influence by suggesting that "Oprahism" is a mainstream religion in 3000 AD. Twelve days after the September 11th attacks, New York mayor Rudy Guliani asked Winfrey to serve as host of a Prayer for America service at New York city’s Yankee stadium which was attended by former president Bill Clinton and New York senator Hillary Clinton. Leading up to the U.S.-led 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, less than a month after the September 11 attacks Winfrey aired a controversial show called “Islam 101” in which she portrayed Islam as a religion of peace, calling it “the most misunderstood of the three major religions". In 2002, George W. Bush invited Winfrey to join a US delegation that included adviser Karen Hughes and Condoleezza Rice, planning to go to Afghanistan to celebrate the return of Afghan girls to school. The 'Oprah strategy' was designed to portray the war on terror in a positive light, however when Winfrey refused to participate, the trip was postponed.

Leading up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Winfrey's show received criticism for allegedly having an anti-war bias. Ben Shapiro of Townhall.com wrote: "Oprah Winfrey is the most powerful woman in America. She decides what makes the New York Times best-seller lists. Her touchy-feely style sucks in audiences at the rate of 14 million viewers per day. But Oprah is far more than a cultural force, she's a dangerous political force as well, a woman with unpredictable and mercurial attitudes toward the major issues of the day." In 2006, Winfrey recalled such controversies: "I once did a show titled Is War the Only Answer? In the history of my career, I've never received more hate mail - like 'Go back to Africa' hate mail. I was accused of being un-American for even raising the question." Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore came to Winfrey's defence, praising her for showing antiwar footage no other media would show and begging her to run for president. A February 2003 series, in which Winfrey showed clips from people all over the world asking America not to go to war was interrupted in several east coast markets by network broadcasts of a press conference in which President George W. Bush and Colin Powell summarized the case for war.

In 2007, Winfrey began to endorse the self-help program The Secret. The Secret claims that people can change their lives through positive thoughts, which will then cause vibrations that result in good things happening to them. Peter Birkenhead of Salon magazine argued that this idea is pseudoscience and psychologically damaging, as it trivializes important decisions and promotes a quick-fix material culture, and suggest Winfrey's promotion of it is irresponsible given her influence. In 2007, skeptic and magician James Randi accused Winfrey of being deliberately deceptive and uncritical in how she handles paranormal claims on her show. In 2008 Winfrey endorsed author and spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle and his book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, which sold several million copies after being selected for her book club. During a Webinar class, in which she promoted the book, Winfrey stated "God is a feeling experience and not a believing experience. If your religion is a believing experience [...] then that's not truly God." Frank Pastore, a Christian radio talk show host on KKLA, was among the many Christian leaders who criticized Winfrey's views, saying "if she's a Christian, she's an ignorant one, because Christianity is incompatible with New Age thought." Winfrey also refuses to wear fur or feature it in her magazine. In 2009 Winfrey filmed a series of interviews in Denmark highlighting its citizens as the happiest people in the world. In 2010 Bill O'Reilly of Fox News criticised these shows for promoting a left-wing society.

Fan base

In 1998, Winfrey's show had an estimated 14 million daily viewers, dropping to approximately 9 million in 2005 and to around 7.3 million viewers in 2008, though it remained the highest rated talk show. In 2008, Winfrey's show was airing in 140 countries internationally and seen by an estimated 46 million people in the US weekly. According to the Harris poll, Winfrey was America's favorite television personality in 1998, 2000, 2002–2006, and 2009. Winfrey was especially popular among women, Democrats, political moderates, Baby Boomers, Generation X, Southern Americans and East Coast Americans.

Outside the U.S., Winfrey has become increasingly popular in the Arab world. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2007 that MBC 4, an Arab satellite channel, centered its entire programming around reruns of her show because it was drawing record numbers of female viewers in Saudi Arabia. In 2008 the New York Times reported that The Oprah Winfrey Show, with Arabic subtitles, was broadcast twice each weekday on MBC 4. Winfrey's modest dress, combined with her triumph over adversity and abuse has caused some women in Saudi Arabia to idealize her.

Philanthropy

In 1998, Winfrey created the Oprah's Angel Network, a charity that supported charitable projects and provided grants to nonprofit organizations around the world. Oprah's Angel Network raised more than $80,000,000 ($1 million of which was donated by Jon Bon Jovi). Winfrey personally covered all administrative costs associated with the charity, so 100% of all funds raised went to charity programs. The charity stopped accepting donations in May 2010 and was later dissolved. Winfrey's show raises money through promotion of her public charity and she personally donates more of her own money to charity than any other show-business celebrity in America. In 2005 she became the first black person listed by Business Week as one of America's 50 most generous philanthropists, having given an estimated $303 million. Winfrey was the 32nd most philanthropic. She has also been repeatedly ranked as the most philanthropic celebrity.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Oprah created the Oprah Angel Network Katrina registry which raised more than $11 million for relief efforts. Winfrey personally gave $10 million to the cause. Homes were built in Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama before the one year anniversary of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Winfrey has also helped 250 African-American men continue or complete their education at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Winfrey was the recipient of the first Bob Hope Humanitarian Award at the 2002 Emmy Awards for services to television and film. To celebrate two decades on national TV, and to thank her employees for their hard work, Winfrey took her staff and their families (1065 people in total) on vacation to Hawaii in the summer of 2006.

South Africa

In 2004, Winfrey and her team filmed an episode of her show, Oprah's Christmas Kindness , in which Winfrey, her best friend Gayle King, her partner Stedman Graham, and some crew members travelled to South Africa to bring attention to the plight of young children affected by poverty and AIDS. During the 21-day trip, Winfrey and her crew visited schools and orphanages in poverty-stricken areas, and distributed Christmas presents to 50,000 children, with dolls for the girls and soccer balls for the boys, a backpack full of school supplies and two full sets of school uniforms. Throughout the show, Winfrey appealed to viewers to donate money to Oprah's Angel Network for poor and AIDS-affected children in Africa, and pledged that she personally would oversee where that money was spent. From that show alone, viewers around the world donated over $7,000,000. Winfrey invested $40 million and some of her time establishing the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in Henley on Klip south of Johannesburg, South Africa. The school opened in January 2007 with an enrollment of 152 pupils and features such amenities as a beauty salon and yoga studio. Nelson Mandela praised Winfrey for overcoming her own disadvantaged youth to become a benefactor for others and for investing in the future of South Africa. Others, including Allison Samuels of Newsweek, remarked on the "extravagance" of the school and questioned whether the $40 million might have been spent to benefit a far greater number of students, had the money been spent with less emphasis on luxurious surroundings and more emphasis on practicality. Winfrey insists that beautiful surroundings will inspire greatness in the future leaders of Africa.

Winfrey, who has no surviving biological children, described maternal feelings towards the girls at Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls: I never had children, never even thought I would have children. Now I have 152 daughters; expecting 75 more next year. That is some type of gestation period! [...] I said to the mothers, the family members, the aunts, the grannies — because most of these girls have lost their families, their parents — I said to them, 'Your daughters are now my daughters and I promise you I'm going to take care of your daughters. I promise you.' " Winfrey teaches a class at the school via satellite.

Bibliography

Cooper, Irene (2007) Oprah Winfrey Viking ISBN 067006162X

Mair, George (2001) Oprah Winfrey: The Real Story Citadel Press ISBN 1559722509

Moore, Michael (2003) Dude, Where's My Country? by Warner Books ISBN 0446532231

References

External links

Oprah's official website. Accessed 2010-09-17

Oprah Channel on YouTube. Accessed 2010-09-17

NPR "Oprah: The Billionaire Everywoman". Audio file, video and biography. Accessed 2010-09-17

Oprah Winfrey's Date Safe Project. Accessed 2010-09-17

Oprah Winfrey 's OWN Network - Video

Category:1954 births Category:African American actors Category:African American television personalities Category:African American writers Category:American billionaires Category:American Christians Category:Tennessee State University alumni Category:American Congregationalists Category:American magazine publishers (people) Category:American mass media owners Category:American people of Native American descent Category:American philanthropists Category:American self-help writers Category:American television producers Category:American television talk show hosts Category:Baltimore, Maryland television anchors Category:Chicago, Illinois television anchors Category:Daytime Emmy Award winners Category:Female billionaires Category:Living people Category:Native American writers Category:Peabody Award winners Category:People from Chicago, Illinois Category:People from Kosciusko, Mississippi Category:Spingarn Medal winners Category:Miss Black America delegates Category:American people of Liberian descent

Name	Swizz Beatz|Img = Swizz beatz at hot 97 summer jam 2007.jpg
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Kasseem Dean
Born	August 30, 1978 The Bronx, New York, United States
Instrument	Keyboard, sampler
Occupation	Record producer, rapper, record executive, painter, artist
Years active	1998–present
Genre	Hip hop
Label	Full Surface, Ruff Ryders, Atlantic
Associated acts	DMX, Alicia Keys, Eve, Jay-Z, Beyonce, Drag-On, Cassidy, T.I., G-Unit
Url	http://swizzbeatzonline.com

Kasseem Daoud Dean (born August 30, 1978), better known by his stage name, Swizz Beatz, is an American record producer, DJ, and rapper. At the age of 17, he gained attention in the hip-hop world through his friendship with rapper DMX. Grady Spivey and rapper Cassidy helped launch his label Full Surface Records.

Early life

Kasseem Daoud Dean was born to an African American Muslim father and a Puerto Rican Christian mother. Dean didn't see much of his father, a postal worker, due to his parents being separated, and was raised by his mother. He was born and raised in the southwestern area of the New York City borough of The Bronx. It was there where he spent most of his childhood, first encountered Hip hop and began deejaying. He began deejaying after he got some equipment from his stepfather and his uncles. He later relocated to Atlanta as a teenager due to having too many fights at Harry S. Truman High School; there he started to work for his uncles, Joaquin and Darrin Dean, who were co-CEOs of the Ruff Ryders label. Forgoing the practice of using samples, he mostly used the Korg Trinity and Triton Keyboards and tried to accentuate the performance aspect of his music. The next five years would find him landing hit after hit and becoming more in demand with each production.

Career

1998-2002: Ruff Ryders and Full Surface

With his uncles (Chivon, Dee, and Waah Dean) involved with the Ruff Ryders label, he began to produce tracks at the age of 16. He sold his first beat at 17 which became DMX's hit single "Ruff Ryders' Anthem". In 2001 at the age of 23 he established his own record label, Full Surface, in a joint venture with Clive Davis of J Records. The first artist signed was Philadelphia-based rapper Cassidy. But it wasn't until Swizz's first compilation album, 2002's Swizz Beatz Presents G.H.E.T.T.O. Stories, that he started to get notices for his production style and interesting ideas and Cassidy began to get attention. He released two singles "Guilty" and "Bigger Business", both charted on the Hot R&B;/Hip-Hop Songs and were accompanied by music videos.

2003-2006: Super producer status and mainstream success

Swizz Beatz along with being associated with Ruff Ryders & Roc-A-Fella Records, began to produce for artists from labels such as Elektra Records, Atlantic Records, Epic Records, Def Jam Recordings, and Bad Boy Entertainment and his career largely grew from that point. Swizz Beatz produced hit songs for many elite rap, hip-hop soul and R&B; artists of that time, such as DMX ("Party Up (Up in Here)"), Beyoncé ("Check on It", "Ring the Alarm"), T.I. ("Bring 'Em Out"), Styles P ("Good Times"), Cassidy ("Hotel", "I'm a Hustla"), Busta Rhymes ("Touch It") and many more.

In 2003 he began to expand his label; Big Tigger, Keith Sweat, Bounty Killer and Yung Wun were all in talks to signing with Full Surface but in the end only Yung Wun was signed. Yung Wun, whom Swizz took under his wing and was executive producer of his album, The Dirtiest Thirstiest and co-produced the lead single "Tear It Up''.

In 2006 he became a partner involved in the popular clothing company Kidrobot, a creator and retailer of limited-edition art toys and apparel.

2007–present: One Man Band Man, new ventures and Haute Living

In February 2007, the producer mixed the music for design duo Heatherette's Fall 2007 New York Fashion Week runway show. On August 21, 2007, Swizz Beatz released his second solo album, titled One Man Band Man. The album sold 45,000 records in its first week and includes singles "It's Me Bitches" and "Money in the Bank".

In 2007 Swizz Beatz signed longtime friend Drag-On, legendary Cleveland-based rap group Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, and former Ruff Ryder member Eve to his label.

April 24, 2009 Swizz Beatz did a promo song for Hennessy Black, entitled "When I Step In The Club". A video was made and was directed by Hype Williams.

In 2009, Swizz Beatz produced many popular singles including "Nasty Girl" by Ludacris featuring Plies, "Who's Real" by Jadakiss featuring OJ da Juiceman, "Million Bucks" by Maino, "Million Dollar Bill" by Whitney Houston, "I Can Transform Ya" by Chris Brown featuring Lil Wayne and "On to the Next One" by Jay-Z .

Although in 2010 on his twitter Swizz Beatz renamed his album three times. He first announced he was calling it King Issues but later on that day settled on The Perception of Greatness, and on August 23 while in a studio session with Mary J. Blige in New York City, Swizz unveiled his new album title Haute Living, stating that it's the perfect phrase to represent what he's all about. The album will be released under his actual contract with Everest Entertainment/Atlantic/Warner, who signed the rapper in August 2010. Confirmed guest appearances include Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, Bono, Lenny Kravitz, Alicia Keys, Mary J. Blige and John Legend.

Swizz Beatz also was named the first "Producer in Residence" at New York University. This will last from the 2010-2011 academic year.

In 2010, inspired by Kanye West's G.O.O.D. Fridays series, Swizz Beatz launched his own series of free weekly mp3s titled Monster Monday. The first song, "DJ Play that Beat" featuring Estelle, was released on October 25. Other Monster Monday tracks include features from Rakim, Pusha T, DMX, Busta Rhymes and Pharrell.

On twitter in 2010, Swizz Beatz revealed his new sneaker line with Reebok.

Personal life

In 2004, he married R&B; singer Mashonda Tifrere, together they have two children, Prince Nasir Dean (born 2000), Kassem Dean Jr. (born 2007). In April 2008, they announced their plans to divorce after four years of marriage. Rumors have since surfaced online suggesting singer Alicia Keys was involved in the break-up, but Swizz has since then stated this is not true. In May 2009, Swizz Beatz admitted to having a relationship with Alicia Keys. He explained that he's kept their relationship under wraps because he didn't want to upset Mashonda and says that what he and Keys have is "so precious." Beatz' divorce from Mashonda was finalized on May 7, 2010.

In May 2008, singer and producer Jahna Sebastian gave birth to a daughter, Nicole, whom Swizz Beatz had fathered. In May 2010 Beatz confirmed he was engaged to singer Alicia Keys, and that Keys was pregnant with Beatz' fourth, and her first child. During the time of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the couple took part of a union and had the unborn child blessed in a Zulu ceremony, which took place in the Illovo suburb of South Africa. Keys and Swizz Beatz held a wedding celebration on the French island of Corsica on July 31, 2010. Alicia Keys gave birth to their son, Egypt Daoud Ibarr Dean, on October 14, 2010.

Swizz Beatz not only collects paintings but also paints on his own free time. He donates the money he earns from his paintings to the Children's Cancer & Blood Foundation.

Awards and nominations

2009: Urban Music Awards Best Producer (won)

Grammy Awards

*2010, Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group "On to the Next One" [Nominated]

*2010, Best Rap Song "On to the Next One" [Nominated]

*2010, Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group "Fancy" [Nominated]

Discography

; Studio Albums

One Man Band Man (2007)

Haute Living (TBA)

; Compilation Albums

G.H.E.T.T.O. Stories (2002)

Ryde or Die Vol. 1 (1999)

References

External links

Official website

Interview, HitQuarters Jun 02

Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz Engaged? PopEater, January 27, 2010

Meet Alicia Keys' secret boyfriend, Swizz Beats NY Daily News, May 17, 2009

Category:1978 births Category:African American rappers Category:African American Muslims Category:American record producers Category:African American record producers Category:American hip hop record producers Category:American Muslims Category:Living people Category:People from the Bronx Category:Ruff Ryders artists Category:2000s rappers Category:2010s rappers

Name	Shania Twain
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Eilleen Regina Edwards
Alias	Eilleen Twain (1967-1992)
Born	August 28, 1965Windsor, Ontario, Canada
Genre	Country, pop, soft rock, dance, rock
Years active	1993–present
Occupation	Singer-songwriter
Label	Mercury Nashville
Url	www.shaniatwain.com

Shania Twain, OC (; born Eilleen Regina Edwards; August 28, 1965) is a Canadian country pop singer-songwriter. She rose to fame in the mid 1990s with her album The Woman In Me (1995), and achieved worldwide success with her 1997 album Come On Over, which became the best-selling album of all time by a female musician, and the best selling country album of all time. It has sold over 39 million copies worldwide and is the 9th bestselling album in the U.S.

A five-time Grammy Award winner, Twain has also achieved major success as a songwriter, winning 27 BMI Songwriter awards. Twain is one of the first country artists to achieve major crossover success in pop music. She is the only female musician to have three albums certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America and is also the second best-selling artist in Canada, behind fellow Canadian Céline Dion, with three of her studio albums being certified double diamond by the Canadian Recording Industry Association. Twain has sold over 80 million albums worldwide, including 48 million in the U.S. She is ranked as the 10th best-selling artist of the Nielsen SoundScan era, with approximately 33.5 million in sales through April 2008. She was also ranked the 72nd Artist of the 2000–10 decade by Billboard.

Early years

Shania Twain was born Eilleen Regina Edwards in Windsor, Ontario, daughter of Clarence and Sharon Edwards. Her parents divorced when she was two, and her mother then moved with Eilleen and her sister Jill to Timmins, Ontario, where she married Jerry Twain, an Ojibwa. He adopted the girls, legally changing their last name to Twain. Because of her connection to her stepfather, in the past, people had presumed Twain's ancestry was Ojibwa, but she stated in an interview that her biological father was part Cree. Through her mother she is a descendant of Zacharie Cloutier. Her maternal grandmother, Eileen Pearce, emigrated from Newbridge, Kildare, Ireland.

One of five children, Eilleen Twain had a hard childhood in Timmins. Her parents earned little, and there was often a shortage of food in the household. At one point, while Jerry was at work, her mother drove the rest of the family to a Toronto homeless shelter for assistance. She did not confide her situation to school authorities, fearing they might break up the family. In the remote, rugged community, she learned to hunt and to chop wood. Aside from working at an Ontario McDonald's restaurant, Twain began to earn money by singing in local clubs and bars from a very young age to support her family. She was singing in bars starting at the age of eight to try to make ends meet, often earning twenty dollars between midnight and one in the morning performing for remaining customers after the bar had finished serving. Although she has expressed a dislike for singing in such a smoky atmosphere at such a young age, Shania believes that this was her performing arts school on the road to becoming a successful singer. Twain has said of the ordeal, "My deepest passion was music and it helped. There were moments when I thought 'I hate this'. I hated going into bars and being with drunks. But I loved the music and so I survived".

Twain wrote her first songs at the age of ten, Is Love a Rose and Just Like the Storybooks which were fairy tales in rhyme. As a child, Twain has been described by a close childhood friend Kenny Derasp as "a very serious kid who spent a lot of time in her room." The art of creating, of actually writing songs, "was very different from performing them and became progressively important".

Music career

Career as Eilleen Twain

At 13, Eilleen Twain, the future "Shania" Twain, was invited to perform on CBC television's Tommy Hunter Show. While attending Timmins High and Vocational School in Timmins, she was the singer for a local band called "Longshot" which covered Top 40 music.

After graduating from Timmins High in July 1983, Twain was eager to expand her musical horizons. After the demise of her band Longshot, Twain was approached by a covers band led by Diane Chase called "Flirt" and toured all over Ontario. In the autumn of 1984 Twain's talents were noticed by a Toronto DJ Stan Campbell who wrote about her in a Country Music News article, "Eileen possesses a powerful voice with an impressive range. She has the necessary drive, ambition and positive attitude to achieve her goals". Bailey later said "She sang a few songs that she had written, and I thought to myself, this kid is like nineteen years old, where does she get this? This is from a person who's lived sixty years". where Twain spent much time practicing in 1985.]] Mary Bailey bought the contract from Stan Campbell and Twain moved into Bailey's home on Lake Kenogami where she practiced her music every day for hours. In the fall of 1985, Bailey took Twain down to Nashville to stay with a friend, record producer Tony Migliore, who at the time was producing an album for fellow Canadian singer Kelita Haverland and Twain featured on the backing vocals to the song Too Hot to Handle. She also demoed songs with Cyril Rawson but without success, partly due to Twain's wish to become a rock singer, not a country artist and after five months she returned to Canada and moved in with Bailey in a flat in downtown Kirkland Lake. There she met a rock keyboardist Eric Lambier and drummer Randy Yurko and formed a new band, moving three months later to Bowmanville, near Toronto. In late summer 1986 Mary Bailey had arranged Twain to meet John Kim Bell, a half Mohawk, half American conductor who had close contacts with the directors of the Canadian Country Music Association. Bell recognised Twain's ability as well as looks and the two began secretly dating, despite their clash of backgrounds.

On November 1, 1987, Twain's mother and adoptive father died in a car accident. Twain took care of her siblings, moving with her half-brothers Mark and Darryl and half-sister Carrie Ann to Huntsville, Ontario, where she supported them by earning money performing at the nearby Deerhurst Resort.

1993–1994: Shania Twain

After Twain's siblings moved out on their own, she assembled a demo tape of her songs, and her manager set up a showcase for Twain to present her material to record executives. Twain caught the attention of a few labels, including Mercury Nashville Records, who signed her within a few months. During this time, she changed her name to Shania, an Ojibwa word which means "on my way".

Twain's self-titled debut album was released in 1993 in North America, garnering audiences outside of her own country. The album only reached #67 on the US Country Albums Chart, but it gained many positive reviews from critics. The album yielded two minor hit singles in the United States with "What Made You Say That" and "Dance with the One That Brought You". It was more successful in Europe, where Twain won Country Music Television Europe's "Rising Video Star of the Year" award.

The Woman in Me was released in the spring of 1995. The album's first single, "Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?" went to #11 on the Billboard Country Chart. This was followed by her first Top 10 and #1 hit single, "Any Man of Mine". Twain had further hits from the album, including the title track which peaked at #14 and three additional #1 hits: "(If You're Not in it for Love) I'm Outta Here!", "You Win My Love", and "No One Needs to Know". The album was a quick breakthrough. Shania performed selected international venues and television shows with Nashville guitarist Randy Thomas (co-writer of the song "Butterfly Kisses") and Stanley T., formerly with the Beach Boys. Mercury Record's promotion of the album was based largely upon a series of sexy music videos. The Woman in Me won the Grammy Award for Best Country Album as well as the Academy of Country Music award for Album of the Year; the latter group also awarded Twain as Best New Female Vocalist.

Worldwide success

1997–2000: Come on Over

In 1997, Twain released her follow-up album, Come on Over. This was the album that would establish her as a successful crossover singer. Slowly, the album started racking up sales. It never hit the top spot, but with the multi-chart hit single "You're Still the One", sales skyrocketed. Other songs like "Don't Be Stupid", "You've Got A Way", "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!", "That Don't Impress Me Much" and "From This Moment On" joined the 12 songs that eventually saw release as singles. "From This Moment On" is a duet with singer Bryan White and even a pop version as well solo.

The album stayed on the charts for the next two years and Come on Over went on to sell 39 million copies worldwide, making it the biggest-selling album of all time by a female musician. It is also the eighth biggest-selling album by any type of artist in the US.

2002–2004: Up!

After a change in management — QPrime replaced Landau — and a two year break, Twain and Lange returned to the studio. Up! was released on November 19, 2002. About a year later, Twain kicked off the Up! Tour in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada on September 25, 2003.

Up! was released as a double album, with three different discs—pop (a red CD), country (a green CD), and international (a blue CD). For North American markets, the pop disc was paired with the country disc and in international markets, the pop disc was paired with the world music disc. Up! was given four out of five stars by Rolling Stone magazine, and debuted at #1 on the Billboard albums chart, selling 874,000 in the first week alone. It remained at the top of the charts for five weeks. Up! reached #1 in Germany, #2 in Australia and the Top Five in the UK and France. In Germany, Up! was certified 4x platinum and stayed in the Top 100 for one and a half years.

The international music disc was remixed with Bollywood-style orchestral and percussion parts recorded in Mumbai, India. The new versions were produced by Simon and Diamond Duggal, brothers from Birmingham, England. They were originally invited to contribute parts to the pop version of "I'm Gonna Getcha Good!" which retained the Bollywood influence.

Twain's popularity in UK was reflected by numerous appearances on the long-running music show Top of the Pops, performing singles from Come on Over from 1999. In 2002 an entire special show was dedicated to her on sister show TOTP2, in which Twain herself introduced some past performances of her greatest hits and new singles from Up!

The first single from the album, "I'm Gonna Getcha Good!" became a top 10 country hit in the US, after debuting at an impressive #24 after only five days of airplay; but only made the Top 40 on the pop charts. It was a much bigger hit on the other side of the Atlantic, released in a pop version, the single hit the Top Five in the UK and Australia as well as the Top 15 in Germany and France. The follow-up single "Up!" reached the Top 15 in the US country charts but failed to reach the pop Top 40.

The second European single became the mid-tempo song "Ka-Ching!" (which was never released as a single in North America) with lyrics where Twain was criticizing unchecked consumerism. The song eventually became another smash hit in the important European markets, reaching #1 in Germany and Austria and other European countries, the UK Top 10 and the Top 15 in France.

The third single from the album would be the most successful in the US. The romantic ballad "Forever and For Always" was released as a single in April 2003 and peaked at #4 on the country chart and #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart, and made as well the Billboard Top 20. Again success was even bigger on the other side of the Atlantic with "Forever and For Always" again reaching the Top 10 in both, the UK and Germany. Further singles were "She's Not Just a Pretty Face" a country Top 10 hit, while the last US single, "It Only Hurts When I'm Breathing", made the Top 20 on both Country and AC.

Due to the enormous European success of Up! and its first three singles, two more singles were released in the second half of 2003 with up-tempo "Thank You Baby" (#11 in the UK, Top 20 in Germany) and just before Christmas the romantic, acoustic ballad "When You Kiss Me", at least a minor hit in both territories. The title track "Up!" also saw a single release in a limited edition of European countries, such as Germany, in early 2004. In January 2008, Up! had sold 5.5 million copies in the U.S. and was certified by the RIAA as 11x platinum (the organization counts double albums as two units).

On November 19, 2004, she appeared on the BBC charity telethon Children in Need. In addition to performing "Up!", she also acted as one of the celebrity assistants in an "all-star" magic act, in an illusion called "Clearly Impossible", in which she was sawed in half inside a clear-sided box.

In August 2005, she released the single "Shoes" from the Desperate Housewives soundtrack.

2006 onwards

At the Academy of Country Music Awards in Las Vegas on May 16, 2007, Twain said she was currently writing songs for a new album, and was doing a "lot of soul searching" and "indulging in the writing."

Twain joined Canadian singer Anne Murray on the song "You Needed Me" on Murray's album released November 13, 2007 in Canada, and on January 15, 2008 in the U.S. On November 12, 2008 Twain made her first television appearance since her split from ex-husband Robert "Mutt" Lange, where she appeared as a surprise presenter at the 42nd CMA Awards.

In early January 2009, Internet forums were reporting that Twain was planning to make an announcement regarding her new album on January 26, 2009 but on the 22nd a spokesperson from Mercury Nashville told Country Weekly that no new album would be coming "anytime soon".

In June 2009, Twain released a letter to her fans explaining the delays in the release of her next album. In August 2009, at a conference in Timmins, Ontario, a spokesman for Twain's label said a new record from the singer is still "nowhere in sight". On August 17, 2009, EW announced that Twain would be a guest judge on American Idol in Chicago, for the show's August 30 and 31 episodes. On January 1, 2010, Shania carried the Olympic Torch through her hometown as part of the 2010 Winter Olympics torch relay.

In April 2010, Twain announced plans for her own TV show, entitled Why Not? With Shania Twain. The show is scheduled to debut in April 2011 on . Twain returned to American Idol as a guest mentor for a week where the top 6 contestants showcased her songs.

In September 2010, it was confirmed that Twain was to release an as of yet untitled autobiography in Spring 2011.

Endorsements and other ventures

Twain's commercial ventures outside the music industry included a series of cosmetic ads in 1999 based on "Man! I Feel Like a Woman!" for Revlon. She also starred in ads for Candie's shoes and Gitano jeans, who also sponsored her 1998-1999 Come On Over Tour.

In January 2005, Twain joined Scentstories by Febreze to create a limited edition scent disc with the proceeds going to America's Second Harvest.

Late in 2005, Twain partnered COTY to produce her namesake fragrance "Shania by Stetson". A second fragrance was released in September 2007, called "Shania Starlight".

Personal life

Twain married music producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange on December 28, 1993, and they have a son, Eja D'Angelo (pronounced "Asia") who was born on August 12, 2001. On May 15, 2008, a spokesperson for Mercury Nashville announced that Twain and Lange were separating after Lange had an affair with Twain's best friend, Marie-Anne Thiebaud. Their divorce was finalized on June 9, 2010. On December 20, 2010, Twain's manager confirmed that Twain was engaged to Swiss business executive Frederic Thiebaud, the ex-husband of Marie-Anne Thiebaud. They married on January 1, 2011 in Rincón, Puerto Rico.

Twain practices Sant Mat, which calls for daily meditation and vegetarianism.

In a 2009 study to determine what measurable parameters create "beauty", scientists correlated a set of measures for the positions of various facial features in women with ratings of attractiveness. According to the study, beauty is a product of having as many features as close to the average measurement for each feature as possible. Shania Twain was noted in a BBC News article concerning the study due to the fact that her face is a close approximation to the ideal measurements found by the study.

One of Twain's practices for her skin is using ointment known as Bag Balm, which is applied to cows' udders during winter months to protect them from harsh weather. Twain says she uses it on her legs and face for softer skin.

Awards and honors

In addition to her various awards for her singles and albums, Twain has received a number of personal honors:

She was named the 1999 Entertainer of the Year by both the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association; Twain was the first non-US citizen to win the CMA award.

Twain was ranked #7 in Country Music Television's 40 Greatest Women of Country Music in 2002. In 2003, Twain was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame. The city of Timmins (located in Ontario, Canada) renamed a street for her, gave her the key to the city, and built the Shania Twain Centre in her honour. On November 18, 2005, Twain was invested as an Officer in the Order of Canada.

Discography

;Albums

1993: Shania Twain

1995: The Woman in Me

1997: Come On Over

2001: The Complete Limelight Sessions

2002: Up!

2004: Greatest Hits

See also

Music of Canada

List of best-selling music artists

References

Bibliography

External links

Shania Twain official website

Category:1965 births Category:1990s singers Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers Category:Living people Category:Canadian contraltos Category:Canadian country singer-songwriters Category:Canadian country singers Category:Canadian expatriates in New Zealand Category:Canadian expatriates in Switzerland Category:Canadian female singers Category:Canadian pop singers Category:Canadian vegetarians Category:Canadian people of English descent Category:Canadian people of First Nations descent Category:Canadian people of Irish descent Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Juno Award winners Category:Mercury Records artists Category:Musicians from Ontario Category:Officers of the Order of Canada Category:People from Timmins Category:People from Windsor, Ontario Category:World Music Awards winners

Name	Larry King
Caption	King in September 2010
Birth name	Lawrence Harvey Zeiger
Birth date	November 19, 1933
Birth place	Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Television/Radio personality
Years active	1957–2010| spouse = Freda Miller (1952–1953)Annette Kaye (1961)Alene Akins (1961–1963)Mickey Sutphin (1963–1967)Alene Akins (1967–1972)Sharon Lepore (1976–1983)Julie Alexander (1989–1992)Shawn Southwick (1997–present)

Lawrence Harvey "Larry" King (born November 19, 1933) is an American television and radio host.

He is recognized in the United States as one of the premier broadcast interviewers. He has won an Emmy Award, two Peabody Awards, and ten Cable ACE Awards.

King began as a local Florida journalist and radio interviewer in the 1950s and 1960s. He became prominent as an all-night national radio broadcaster starting in 1978, and then, in 1985, began hosting the nightly interview TV program Larry King Live on CNN.

On June 29, 2010, it was announced that he would step down as host of the show but would continue to host specials for CNN. In early September, CNN confirmed that he would be replaced by Piers Morgan. King's last show aired on December 16, 2010.

Early life

King was born in Brooklyn, New York City, to Edward Zeiger, a restaurant owner and defense plant worker, and his wife Jennie Gitlitz, a garment worker, who emigrated from Belarus. King grew up in a religious and observant Jewish home, but in adulthood became an agnostic. King's father died at 44 of heart disease, and his mother had to go on welfare to support her two sons. His father's death greatly affected King, and he lost interest in school. After graduating from high school, he worked to help support his mother. From an early age, however, he had wanted to go into radio.

Career

Miami radio and television

A CBS staff announcer, whom King met by chance, told him to go to Florida, a growing media market where openings still existed for inexperienced broadcasters. King rode a bus to Miami. After initial setbacks, King persisted and got his first job in radio. The manager of a small station, WAHR (now WMBM) in Miami Beach, hired him to clean up and perform miscellaneous tasks. When one of their announcers quit, they put King on the air. His first broadcast was on May 1, 1957, when he worked as the disc jockey from 9 a.m. to noon. He also did two afternoon newscasts and a sportscast. He was paid $55 a week. He acquired the name Larry King when the general manager Martial Cemen said that Zeiger was too ethnic and difficult to remember, so Larry chose the surname King, which he got from an ad in The Miami Herald for King's Wholesale Liquor, minutes before air. He started interviewing on a midmorning show for WIOD, at Pumpernik's Restaurant in Miami Beach. He would interview anyone who walked in. His first interview was with a waiter at the restaurant. Two days later, singer Bobby Darin, in Miami for a concert later that day, walked into Pumpernick's as a result of coming across King's show on his radio; Darin became King's first celebrity interview guest.

His Miami radio show launched him to local stardom. A few years later, in May 1960, he hosted Miami Undercover, airing Sunday nights at 11:30 p.m. on WPST-TV Channel 10 (now WPLG). On the show, he moderated debates on important issues of the time. King credits his success on local TV to the assistance of another showbiz legend, comedian Jackie Gleason, whose national TV variety show was being filmed in Miami Beach during this period. "That show really took off because Gleason came to Miami," King said in a 1996 interview he gave when inducted into the Broadcasters' Hall of Fame. "He did that show and stayed all night with me. We stayed till five in the morning. He didn't like the set, so we broke into the general manager's office and changed the set. Gleason changed the set, he changed the lighting, and he became like a mentor of mine." Jackie Gleason was instrumental in getting Larry a hard-to-get on air interview with Frank Sinatra during this time.

During this period, WIOD gave King further exposure as a color commentator for the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League, during their 1970 season and most of their 1971 season. However, he was dismissed by both WIOD and television station WTVJ as a late-night radio host and sports commentator as of December 20, 1971, when he was arrested after being accused of grand larceny by a former business partner. Other staffers covered the Dolphins' games into their 24–3 loss to Dallas in Super Bowl VI. King also lost his weekly column at the Miami Beach Sun newspaper. The charges were dropped on March 10, 1972, and King spent the next several years in reviving his career, including a stint as the color announcer in Louisiana for the Shreveport Steamer of the World Football League in 1974–75. For several years during the 1970s in South Florida, he hosted a sports talk-show called "Sports-a-la-King" that featured guests and callers.

King managed to get back into radio by becoming the color commentator for broadcasts of the Shreveport Steamer of the World Football League on KWKH. Eventually, King was rehired by WIOD in Miami.

National radio

In 1978, he went national, inheriting the nightly talk show slot on the Mutual Broadcasting System, broadcast coast-to-coast, that had been "Long John" Nebel's until his death, and had been pioneered by Herb Jepko. One reason King got the Mutual job is that he had once been an announcer at WGMA-AM in Hollywood, Florida, which was then owned by C. Edward Little. Little went on to become president of Mutual and was the one who hired King when Nebel died. King's Mutual show developed a devoted audience.

It was broadcast live Monday through Friday from midnight to 5:30 a.m. Eastern Time. King would interview a guest for the first 90 minutes, with callers asking questions that continued the interview for another 90 minutes. At 3 a.m., he would allow callers to discuss any topic they pleased with him, until the end of the program, when he expressed his own political opinions. That segment was called "Open Phone America". Some of the regular callers used the pseudonyms "The Portland Laugher", "The Miami Derelict", "The Todd Cruz Caller", "The Scandal Scooper", "Mr. Radio" and "The Water Is Warm Caller". "Mr. Radio" made over 200 calls to King during Open Phone America. The show was successful, starting with relatively few affiliates and eventually growing to more than 500. It ran until 1994.

For its final year, the show was moved to afternoons, but, because most talk radio stations at the time had an established policy of local origination in the time-slot (3 to 6 p.m. Eastern Time) that Mutual offered the show, a very low percentage of King's overnight affiliates agreed to carry his daytime show and it was unable to generate the same audience size. The afternoon show was eventually given to David Brenner and radio affiliates were given the option of carrying the audio of King's new CNN evening television program. The Westwood One radio simulcast of the CNN show continues.

CNN

He started his Larry King Live CNN show in June 1985, hosting a broad range of guests from controversial figures of UFO conspiracy theories and alleged psychics, to prominent politicians and leading figures in the entertainment industry, often doing their first or only interview on breaking news stories on his show.

program at the Pentagon in Arlington, VA in 2006]]

Unlike many interviewers, King has a direct, non-confrontational approach. His reputation for asking easy, open-ended questions has made him attractive to important figures who want to state their position while avoiding being challenged on contentious topics. His interview style is characteristically frank, but with occasional bursts of irreverence and humor. His approach attracts some guests who would not otherwise appear. King, who is known for his general lack of pre-interview preparation, once bragged that he never read the books of authors before making an appearance on his program.

In a show dedicated to the surviving Beatles, King asked George Harrison's widow about the song "Something", which was written about George Harrison's first wife. He seemed surprised when she did not know very much about the song.

Throughout his career King has interviewed many of the leading figures of his time. CNN claimed during his final episode that he had performed 60,000 interviews in his career.

King also wrote a regular newspaper column in USA Today for almost 20 years, from shortly after that newspaper's origin in 1982 until September 2001. The column consisted of short "plugs, superlatives and dropped names" but was dropped when the newspaper redesigned its "Life" section. The column was resurrected in blog form in November 2008 and on Twitter in April 2009.

Departure

On June 29, 2010, King announced that after 25 years, he would be stepping down from his nightly job hosting Larry King Live. However, he stated that he would remain with CNN to host occasional specials.

On September 8, 2010, CNN confirmed that Morgan would occupy King's 9:00 pm timeslot from January 2011 onward.

The final edition of Larry King Live aired on December 16, 2010.

Heart disease

On February 24, 1987, King suffered a major heart attack and then had quintuple-bypass surgery. King has written two books about living with heart disease. Mr. King, You're Having a Heart Attack: How a Heart Attack and Bypass Surgery Changed My Life (1989, ISBN 0-440-50039-7) was written with New York's Newsday science editor B. D. Colen. Taking On Heart Disease: Famous Personalities Recall How They Triumphed over the Nation's #1 Killer and How You Can, Too (2004, ISBN 1-57954-820-2) features the experience of various celebrities with cardiovascular disease including Peggy Fleming and Regis Philbin.

On February 12, 2010, Larry King revealed that he had undergone surgery 5 weeks earlier to place stents in his coronary artery to remove plaque from his heart. During the segment on Larry King Live which discussed Bill Clinton's similar procedure, King said he was "feeling great" and had been in hospital for just one day.

Charitable works

As a result of heart attacks, he established the Larry King Cardiac Foundation, an organization to which David Letterman, through his American Foundation for Courtesy and Grooming, has also contributed. King gave $1 million to George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs for scholarships to students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

On September 3, 2005, following the devastation to the Gulf Coast by Hurricane Katrina, King aired "How You Can Help", a three-hour special designed to provide a forum and information clearinghouse for viewers to understand and join nationwide and global relief efforts. Guest Richard Simmons, a native of New Orleans, told him, "Larry, you don't even know how much money you raised tonight. When we rebuild the city of New Orleans, we're going to name something big after you."

On January 18, 2010, in the wake of the devastation caused by the 2010 Haiti earthquake, King aired "Haiti: How You Can Help", a special two-hour edition designed to show viewers how to take action and be a part of the global outreach.

King serves as a member of the Board of Directors on the Police Athletic League of New York City, a nonprofit youth development agency serving inner-city children and teenagers.

On August 30, 2010, King served as the host of Chabad's 30th annual "To Life" telethon, in Los Angeles.

Controversial positions

On September 10, 1990, while on The Joan Rivers Show, Rivers asked King which contestant in the Miss America pageant was "the ugliest". King responded, "Miss Pennsylvania. She was one of the 10 finalists and she did a great ventriloquist bit [...] The dummy was prettier." King was a judge for the September 8, 1990 pageant. King later sent Miss Pennsylvania, Marla Wynne, a dozen long-stemmed roses and a telegram apologizing for saying she was the ugliest contestant in the pageant that year.

In 1997, King was one of 34 celebrities to sign an open letter to then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, published as a newspaper advertisement in the International Herald Tribune, which protested the treatment of Scientologists in Germany, comparing it to the Nazis' oppression of Jews in the 1930s. Other signatories included Dustin Hoffman and Goldie Hawn. He married high-school sweetheart Freda Miller in 1951 at age 18. King was later briefly married to Annette Kaye Larry Jr. and his wife, Shannon, have three children.

King met businesswoman Julie Alexander in summer 1989, and proposed to her on the couple's first date, on August 1, 1989. Alexander became King's sixth wife on October 7, 1989, when the two were married in Washington, D.C. The couple lived in different cities, however, with Alexander in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and King in Washington, D.C., where he worked. The couple separated in 1990 and divorced in 1992.

He married his seventh wife, Shawn Southwick, born in 1959 a former singer and TV host, in King's Los Angeles, California, hospital room three days before King underwent heart surgery to clear a clogged blood vessel. The couple has two children: Chance, born March 1999, and Cannon, born May 2000. He is stepfather to Danny Southwick. On King and Southwick's 10th anniversary in September 2007, Southwick boasted she was "the only [wife] to have lasted into the two digits". but have since stopped the proceedings, claiming "We love our children, we love each other, we love being a family. That is all that matters to us".

Shawn attempted suicide in May 2010 when she overdosed on prescription pills.

In July 2009, King appeared on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, where he told host O'Brien about his wishes to be cryogenically preserved upon death, as he had revealed in his book My Remarkable Journey.

Awards

King has received many broadcasting awards. He won the Peabody Award for Excellence in broadcasting for both his radio (1982) and television (1992) shows. He has also won 10 CableACE awards for Best Interviewer and for Best Talk Show Series.

In 1989, King was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame, and in 1996 to the Broadcasters' Hall of Fame.

in June 1998, King received an Honorary Degree from Brooklyn College, City University of New York, for his life achievements.

King was given the Golden Mike Award for Lifetime Achievement in January 2009, by the Radio & Television News Association of Southern California.

King is an honorary member of the Rotary Club of Beverly Hills. He is also a recipient of the President's Award honoring his impact on media from the Los Angeles Press Club in 2006.

King is the first recipient of the Arizona State University Hugh Downs Award for Communication Excellence, presented April 11, 2007, via satellite by Downs himself. Downs sported red suspenders for the event and turned the tables on King by asking "very tough questions" about King's best, worst and most influential interviews during King's 50 years in broadcasting.

References

External links

CNN profile

Larry King Cardiac Foundation - Foundation to fund treatments cardiac patients with little or no insurance

Clark lawsuit

Larry King Live - Transcripts of all interviews since 2000

Larry King interviewed by Gianluca D'Agostino

Larry King Archive of American Television video interview

Category:1933 births Category:Living people Category:American actors Category:American agnostics Category:American Jews Category:American talk radio hosts Category:American television talk show hosts Category:American people of Belarusian-Jewish descent Category:American people of Russian-Jewish descent Category:Jewish actors Category:Jewish agnostics Category:Miami Dolphins broadcasters Category:National Football League announcers Category:People from Brooklyn Category:World Football League announcers

Name	Elie Wiesel
Awards	Nobel Peace Prize,Presidential Medal of Freedom,Congressional Gold Medal
Caption	Elie Wiesel at the Time 100 Gala, May 4, 2010.
Birthname	Eliezer Wiesel
Birthdate	September 30, 1928
Birthplace	Sighet, Maramureş County, Romania
Occupation	Political activist, professor, novelist
Residence	Boston, Massachusetts

Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel KBE (; born September 30, 1928) is a Romanian-born Jewish-American Wiesel is also the Advisory Board chairman of the Algemeiner Journal newspaper.

When Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, the Norwegian Nobel Committee called him a "messenger to mankind", stating that through his struggle to come to terms with "his own personal experience of total humiliation and of the utter contempt for humanity shown in Hitler's death camps", as well as his "practical work in the cause of peace", Wiesel had delivered a powerful message "of peace, atonement and human dignity" to humanity.

Early life

Wiesel was born on September 30, 1928, in Sighet, Transylvania, (now Sighetu Marmaţiei), Maramureş, Kingdom of Romania, Wiesel had three sisters – older sisters Hilda and Beatrice, and younger sister Tzipora. Beatrice and Hilda survived the war and were reunited with Wiesel at a French orphanage. They eventually emigrated to North America, with Beatrice moving to Montréal, Canada. Tzipora, Shlomo and Sarah did not survive the war.

World War II

In 1940 Romania lost the town of Sighet following the Second Vienna Award. In 1944, Wiesel, his family and the rest of the town were placed in one of the two ghettos in Sighet. Wiesel and his family lived in the larger of the two, on Serpent Street. On May 16, 1944, the Hungarian authorities allowed the German army to deport the Jewish community in Sighet to Auschwitz Birkenau. While at Auschwitz, his inmate number, "A-7713", was tattooed onto his left arm. Wiesel was separated from his mother and sister Tzipora, who were, it is presumed, killed in the gas chambers upon arrival. Wiesel and his father were sent to the attached work camp Buna, a subcamp of Auschwitz III Monowitz. He managed to remain with his father for over eight months as they were forced to work under appalling conditions and shuffled between three concentration camps in the closing days of the war. On January 29, 1945, just a few weeks after the two were marched to Buchenwald, Wiesel's father was beaten by a Nazi as he was suffering from dysentery, starvation, and exhaustion. He was later sent to the crematorium, only months before the camp was liberated by the U. S. Third Army on April 11.

After the war

After World War II, Wiesel taught Hebrew and worked as a choirmaster before becoming a professional journalist. He learned French, which became the language he used most frequently in writing. He wrote for Israeli and French newspapers, including Tsien in Kamf (in Yiddish) L'arche. For ten years after the war, Wiesel refused to write about or discuss his experiences during the Holocaust. Like many survivors, Wiesel could not find the words to describe his experiences. However, a meeting with François Mauriac, the 1952 Nobel Laureate in Literature, who eventually became Wiesel's close friend, persuaded him to write about his experiences. Wiesel first wrote the 900-page memoir Un di velt hot geshvign (And the World Remained Silent), in Yiddish, which was published in abridged form in Buenos Aires. Wiesel rewrote a shortened version of the manuscript in French, and it was published as the 127-page La Nuit, and later translated into English as Night. Even with Mauriac's support, Wiesel had trouble finding a publisher for his book, and initially it sold few copies.

In 1960, Arthur Wang of Hill & Wang agreed to pay a $100 pro-forma advance, and published it in the US in September that year as Night. It sold just 1,046 copies over the next 18 months, but attracted interest from reviewers, leading to television interviews with Wiesel and meetings with literary figures like Saul Bellow. "The English translation came out in 1960, and the first printing was 3,000 copies", Wiesel said in an interview. "And it took three years to sell them. Now, I get 100 letters a month from children about the book. And there are many, many million copies in print." The 1979 book and play The Trial of God is said to have been based on Wiesel's real life Auschwitz experience of witnessing three Jews who, close to death, conduct a trial against God, under the accusation that He has been oppressive of the Jewish people.

"Night" has been translated into 30 languages. By 1997, the book was selling 300,000 copies annually in the United States alone. By March 2006, about six million copies were sold in the United States. On January 16, 2006, Oprah Winfrey chose the work for her book club. One million extra paperback and 150,000 hardcover copies were printed carrying the "Oprah's Book Club" logo, with a new translation by Wiesel's wife, Marion, and a new preface by Wiesel. On February 13, 2006, Night was no. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list for paperback non-fiction.

Life in the United States

In 1955, Wiesel moved to New York City, having become a US citizen: due to injuries suffered in a traffic accident, he was forced to stay in New York past his visa's expiration and was offered citizenship to resolve his status. In the US, Wiesel wrote over 40 books, both fiction and non-fiction, and won many literary prizes. Wiesel's writing is considered among the most important in Holocaust literature. Some historians credit Wiesel with giving the term 'Holocaust' its present meaning, but he does not feel that the word adequately describes the event and wishes it were used less frequently to describe significant occurrences as everyday tragedies (Wiesel:1999, 18). He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for speaking out against violence, repression, and racism. He has received many other prizes and honors for his work, including the Congressional Gold Medal in 1985, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1996. Wiesel also played a role in the initial success of The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski by endorsing it prior to revelations that the book was fiction and, in the sense that it was presented as all Kosinski's true experience, a hoax. He is also the recipient of The International Center in New York's Award of Excellence. Wiesel has published two volumes of his memoirs. The first, All Rivers Run to the Sea, was published in 1994 and covered his life up to the year 1969 while the second, titled And the Sea is Never Full and published in 1999, covered 1969 to 1999. Wiesel and his wife, Marion, started the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. He served as chairman for the Presidential Commission on the Holocaust (later renamed US Holocaust Memorial Council) from 1978 to 1986, spearheading the building of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.

Wiesel is particularly fond of teaching and holds the position of Andrew Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Boston University. From 1972 to 1976, Wiesel was a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York and member of the American Federation of Teachers. In 1982 he served as the first Henry Luce Visiting Scholar in Humanities and Social Thought at Yale University. He also co-instructs Winter Term (January) courses at Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, Florida. From 1997 to 1999 he was Ingeborg Rennert Visiting Professor of Judaic Studies at Barnard College. Wiesel has become a popular speaker on the subject of the Holocaust. As a political activist, he has advocated for many causes, including Israel, the plight of Soviet and Ethiopian Jews, the victims of apartheid in South Africa, Argentina's Desaparecidos, Bosnian victims of genocide in the former Yugoslavia, Nicaragua's Miskito Indians, and the Kurds. Conversely, he withdrew from his role as chair of the International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide, and made efforts to abort the conference, in deference to Israeli objection to the inclusion of sessions on the Armenian genocide.

He recently voiced support for intervention in Darfur, Sudan. He also led a commission organized by the Romanian government to research and write a report, released in 2004, on the true history of the Holocaust in Romania and the involvement of the Romanian wartime regime in atrocities against Jews and other groups, including the Roma. The Romanian government accepted the findings in the report and committed to implementing the commission's recommendations for educating the public on the history of the Holocaust in Romania. The commission, formally called the International Commission for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, came to be called the Wiesel Commission in honor of his leadership. Wiesel is the honorary chair of the Habonim Dror Camp Miriam Campership and Building Fund, and a member of the International Council of the New York–based Human Rights Foundation. On March 27, 2001, Wiesel appeared at the University of Florida for Jewish Awareness Month and was presented with an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from the University of Florida by Dr. Charles Young. In 2002, he inaugurated the Elie Wiesel Memorial House in Sighet in his childhood home.

Recent

, joined by the Dalai Lama and Wiesel, Oct. 17, 2007, to the ceremony at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., for the presentation of the Congressional Gold Medal to the Dalai Lama]] In early 2006, Wiesel traveled to Auschwitz with Oprah Winfrey, a visit which was broadcast as part of The Oprah Winfrey Show on May 24, 2006. Wiesel said that this would most likely be his last trip there. In September 2006, he appeared before the UN Security Council with actor George Clooney to call attention to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. On November 30, 2006 Wiesel received an honorary knighthood in London in recognition of his work toward raising Holocaust education in the United Kingdom. On April 25, 2007, Wiesel was awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters degree from the University of Vermont. During the early 2007 selection process for the Kadima candidate for President of Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reportedly offered Wiesel the nomination (and, as the ruling-party candidate and an apolitical figure, likely the Presidency), but Wiesel "was not very interested". Shimon Peres was chosen as the Kadima candidate (and later President) instead. In 2007, Wiesel was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize's Lifetime Achievement Award. On April 9, 2008, Wiesel was presented with an Honorary Degree, Doctor of Letters at the City College of New York.

In 2007 the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity issued a letter condemning Armenian genocide denial that was signed by 53 Nobel laureates including Wiesel. Wiesel has repeatedly called Turkey's 90-year-old campaign to cover up the Armenian genocide a double killing, since it strives to kill the memory of the original atrocities.

Wiesel is a member of the International Advisory Board of NGO Monitor

On September 29, 2008, the Rochester College President Rubel Shelly, on its 50th anniversary, bestowed Wiesel with a plaque conferring on him as an honorary visiting professor of humanities.

On November 17, 2008, he received an honorary doctorate from the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel.

In December 2008, the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity issued a press release stating that nearly all of the foundation's assets (approximately $15.2 million USD) had been lost through Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme, an experience he later spoke about at a Conde Nast roundtable.

In 2009, Wiesel criticized the Vatican over its lifting of the excommunication of controversial bishop Richard Williamson, a member of the Society of Saint Pius X.

On June 5, 2009, Wiesel accompanied US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel as they toured Buchenwald. Merkel and Wiesel each spoke about Buchenwald in personal terms, with Merkel considering the responsibility of Germans vis-à-vis National Socialist history, and Wiesel reflecting on the suffering and death of his father in the camp.

On May 4, 2010 Wiesel met with President Obama at the White House to discuss Middle East peace relations.

2007 attack on Wiesel

On February 1, 2007, Wiesel was attacked in a San Francisco hotel by 22-year-old Holocaust denier Eric Hunt, who tried to drag Wiesel into a hotel room. Wiesel was not injured and Hunt fled the scene. Later, Hunt bragged about the incident on a Holocaust denial website. Approximately one month later, he was arrested and charged with multiple offenses.

Hunt was convicted on July 21, 2008, and was sentenced to two years, but was given credit for time served and good behavior; he was released on probation and ordered to undergo psychological treatment. The jury convicted Hunt of three charges but dismissed the remaining charges of attempted kidnapping, stalking, and an additional count of false imprisonment, amid Hunt's withdrawal of his insanity plea. District Attorney Kamala Harris said: "Crimes motivated by hate are among the most reprehensible of offenses ... This defendant has been made to answer for an unwarranted and biased attack on a man who has dedicated his life to peace." At his sentencing hearing, Hunt apologized and insisted that he no longer denies the Holocaust; however, he continues to maintain and update a blog that denies the Holocaust and is critical of prominent Jewish people.

Controversies

Criticism by Norman Finkelstein

Wiesel is highly criticized by Norman Finkelstein in his book The Holocaust Industry. Finkelstein accuses Wiesel of promoting the "uniqueness doctrine" which holds, according to Finkelstein, the Holocaust as the paramount of evil and therefore historically incomparable to other genocides. Finklestein also accuses Wiesel of playing down the importance of other genocides, especially the Turkish Holocaust on the Armenians, and thwarting efforts of raising awareness of the genocide of the Romani people executed by the Nazis. These claims are exemplified by Wiesel's lobbying for commemorating Jews alone (not the Romani people) in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., in addition to his numerous other assertions on the "uniqueness of Holocaust".

Goldstone Report

In late February 2010, Wiesel stated that the report chaired by Richard Goldstone on the Gaza Conflict represents "a crime against the Jewish people," a comment for which he was criticized by political blogger Richard Silverstein.

Controversy over historical and religious rights to Jerusalem

On April 15, 2010, Wiesel took out full page ads in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and elsewhere, in which, among other things, while emphasizing Jewish rights to the city, he denied the Muslim connection to Jerusalem, saying that Jerusalem wasn't mentioned in the Koran. He said that: "For me, the Jew that I am, Jerusalem is above politics. It is mentioned more than six hundred times in Scripture — and not a single time in the Koran." He also claimed that Muslims can settle anywhere in Jerusalem. His position has been criticized by the Americans for Peace Now in an open letter: "Jerusalem is not just a Jewish symbol. It is also a holy city to billions of Christians and Muslims worldwide. It is Israel's capital, but it is also a focal point of Palestinian national aspirations." They also claimed that equal residential rights do not exist in the city. Wiesel has also been criticized in Israel. Haaretz published an article by Yossi Sarid which accused him of being out of touch with the realities of life in Jerusalem. Wiesel's ads, according to unnamed senior American officials, are "not a wise move".

Extended quotation from the text:

Wiesel's view on the Qur'an and Jerusalem is in contrast to Muslim interpretations of implied textual references to Quranic verses and subsequent Islamic tradition.

Works

Un di velt hot geshvign (Tsentral-Farband fun Poylishe Yidn in Argentine, 1956) ISBN 0-374-52140-9; (first version of Night)

Night (Hill and Wang 1958; 2006) ISBN 0-553-27253-5 (Personal account of the Holocaust)

Dawn (Hill and Wang 1961; 2006) ISBN 0-553-22536-7

Day, previously titled "The Accident" (Hill and Wang 1962; 2006) ISBN 0-553-58170-8

The Town Beyond the Wall (Atheneum 1964)

The Gates of the Forest (Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1966)

The Jews of Silence (Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1966) ISBN 0-935613-01-3

Legends of our Time (Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1968)(Artistically depicted memories)

A Beggar in Jerusalem (Random House 1970)(Novel)

One Generation After (Random House 1970)

Souls on Fire (Random House 1972) ISBN 0-671-44171-X (First book of portraits and legends of Hasidic Masters: many of the most famous)

Night Trilogy (Hill and Wang 1972)

The Oath (Random House 1973) ISBN 0-935613-11-0

Ani Maamin (Random House 1973)

Zalmen, or the Madness of God (Random House 1974)

Messengers of God (Random House 1976) ISBN 0-671-54134-X (Biblical portraits)

A Jew Today (Random House 1978) ISBN 0-935613-15-3 (Essays and imaginative works on Jewish identity)

Four Hasidic Masters-and their struggle against melancholy (University of Notre Dame Press 1978)(Portraits of Hasidic Masters)

Images from the Bible (The Overlook Press 1980)

The Trial of God (Random House 1979)(Play)

The Testament (Summit 1981)

Five Biblical Portraits (University of Notre Dame Press 1981)(Biblical figures reinterpreted)

Somewhere a Master (Further Hasidic portraits, after "Souls on Fire") (Summit 1982)

The Golem (illustrated by Mark Podwal) (Summit 1983) ISBN 0-671-49624-7 (Children's book on the Jewish legend)

The Fifth Son (Summit 1985)

Against Silence (Holocaust Library 1985)

Twilight (Summit 1988)

The Six Days of Destruction (co-author Albert Friedlander, illustrated by Mark Podwal) (Paulist Press 1988)

A Journey of Faith (Donald I. Fine 1990)

From the Kingdom of Memory (Summit 1990)(essays and depictions after "A Jew Today")

Evil and Exile (University of Notre Dame Press 1990)

Sages and Dreamers (Summit 1991)(Portraits of Biblical, Talmudic and Hasidic figures)

The Forgotten (Summit 1992) ISBN 0-8052-1019-9

A Passover Haggadah (illustrated by Mark Podwal) (Simon and Schuster 1993) ISBN 0-671-73541-1 (Jewish liturgy)

All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs, Vol. I, 1928–1969 (Knopf 1995) ISBN 0-8052-1028-8

Memoir in Two Voices, with François Mitterrand (Arcade 1996)

And the Sea is Never Full: Memoirs Vol. II, 1969 (Knopf 1999) ISBN 0-8052-1029-6

King Solomon and his Magic Ring (illustrated by Mark Podwal) (Greenwillow 1999)

Conversations with Elie Wiesel (Schocken 2001)

The Judges (Knopf 2002)

Wise Men and Their Tales (Portraits of Biblical, Talmudic and Hasidic figures) (Schocken 2003) ISBN 0-8052-4173-6

The Time of the Uprooted (Knopf 2005)

A Mad Desire to Dance (2009)

Rashi a biography (2009)

The Sonderberg Case (2010)

Additionally, as Wiesel has offered a unique and poetic articulation of traditional Jewish thought and identity today, other books sometimes carry introductions or reviews from him:

A Vanished World by Roman Vishniac, forward by Elie Wiesel (published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1986) ISBN 0-374-52023-2, ISBN 978-0-374-52023-6; classic photographs of Eastern European Jewish life from the 1930s

Critical analysis and appreciation of Wiesel's position in the history of literature:

Student Companion to Elie Wiesel (Student Companions to Classic Writers) Sanford Sternlicht (Greenwood Press, 2003) ISBN 0-313-32530-8, ISBN 978-0-313-32530-4 (Covers his personal and literary background, "Night", main novels, and one chapter on his most important non-fiction)

See also

List of Jewish Nobel laureates

The Boys of Buchenwald – A documentary about the orphanage in which he stayed after the Holocaust

God on Trial – A 2008 joint BBC / WGBH Boston dramatisation of his book The Trial of God, about a group of Auschwitz prisoners who place God on trial for breaching his contract with the Jewish people.

Notes

References

Berenbaum, Michael: The Vision of the Void. Theological Reflections on the Works of Elie Wiesel, Middletown, Connecticut, Wesleyan University Press, 1979 ISBN 0-8195-6189-4 PA

Fonseca, Isabel: Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey, London, Vintage, 1996

Fine, Ellen S. Legacy of Night: The Literary Universe of Elie Wiesel. State University of New York Press, 1982. ISBN 0-87395-590-0 (paperback)

Rota, Olivier. Choisir le français pour exprimer l'indicible. Elie Wiesel, in Mythe et mondialisation. L'exil dans les littératures francophones, Actes du colloque organisé dans le cadre du projet bilatéral franco-roumain « Mythes et stratégies de la francophonie en Europe, en Roumanie et dans les Balkans », programme Brâcuşi des 8-9 septembre 2005, Editura Universităţii Suceava, Suceava, 2006, pp. 47–55. Re-published in Sens, dec. 2007, pp. 659–668.

Wiesel, Elie. All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs. New York: Knopf, 1995.

Wiesel, Elie. And the Sea is Never Full: Memoirs 1969-. New York: Schocken, 1999.

External links

The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity

Elie Wiesel: First Person Singular PBS special on Elie Wiesel

New York Times - The Conversation with Elie Wiesel

Voices on Antisemitism Interview with Elie Wiesel from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Text and Audio of Wiesel's "Perils of Indifference" Speech

Text and audio of Elie Wiesel's famous speech on "The Perils of Indifference"

Ubben Lecture at DePauw University

Video of Ethics After the Holocaust speech

Elie Wiesel Video Gallery

Christopher Hitchens criticizes Elie Wiesel in the Nation Magazine

Author attacked in S.F. hotel

"Elie Wiesel on his Beliefs" ~ Toronto Star

Elie Wiesel's name pronunciation on TeachingBooks.net

Buchenwald ">Charlie Rose June 8, 2009 interview about President Obama's visit to Buchenwald

Did Oprah Pick Another Fibber? Truth and Fiction in Elie Wiesel's Night: Is Frey or Wiesel the Bigger Moral Poseur?, CounterPunch, April 1/2, 2006">Alexander Cockburn, "Did Oprah Pick Another Fibber? Truth and Fiction in Elie Wiesel's Night: Is Frey or Wiesel the Bigger Moral Poseur?, CounterPunch, April 1/2, 2006

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Name	Barbara Walters
Caption	Barbara Walters, 2008.
Birthname	Barbara Jill Walters
Birth date	September 25, 1929
Birth place	Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Occupation	JournalistTelevision talk show host
Years active	1961–present
Gender	Female
Status	Divorced (3 times)
Religion	Judaism
Spouse	Merv Adelson(1986–1992)Lee Guber(1963–1976)Robert Henry Katz(1955–1958)
Children	Jacqueline Dena Guber Danforth
Salary	$12 million (2007)

Barbara Jill Walters (born September 25, 1929) is an American broadcast journalist and author, who has hosted morning television shows (Today and The View), the television newsmagazine (20/20), and co-anchor of the ABC Evening News and correspondent on ABC World News (then ABC Evening News).

Walters was first known as a popular TV morning news anchor for over 10 years on NBC's Today, where she worked with Hugh Downs and later hosts Frank McGee and Jim Hartz. Walters later spent 25 years as co-host of ABC's newsmagazine 20/20. She was the first female co-anchor of network evening news, working with Harry Reasoner on the ABC Evening News and was later a correspondent for ABC World News Tonight with Charles Gibson.

Early life

Walters was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Louis "Lou" Walters and his wife, Dena Seletsky, both of whom were Jewish and descendants of refugees from the former Russian Empire, now Eastern Europe. Walters' paternal grandfather, Isaac Abrahams, was from what is now Łódź, Poland, and first immigrated to England, changing his name to Abraham Walters. In 1937, her father opened the New York version of the Latin Quarter; he also was a Broadway producer (he produced the Ziegfeld Follies of 1943). He also was the Entertainment Director for the Tropicana Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he imported the "Folies Bergere" stage show from Paris to the resort's main showroom. Walters' brother, Burton, died in 1932 of pneumonia. Walters' elder sister, Jacqueline, was born mentally retarded and died of ovarian cancer in 1985. Barbara has another half sister, Walda Walters Anderson born to a different mother and Barbara's father, Lou Walters. Walda is now a communications executive. Barbara and Walters Anderson are believed not to be in contact.

According to Walters, being surrounded by celebrities when she was young kept her from being "in awe" of them.

After attending Ethical Culture Fieldston School and Birch Wathen Lenox School private schools in New York City,

Career and accolades

After a brief period as a publicist with Tex McCrary Inc. and a job as a writer at CBS News, Walters joined NBC's The Today Show as a writer and researcher in 1961. Within a year she had become a reporter-at-large developing, writing, and editing her own reports and interviews. In 1984, she moderated a Presidential debate held at the Dana Center for the Humanities at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. Many of her regular and special programs are syndicated around the world. As of 2004, she is in semi-retirement as a broadcast journalist, but remains a correspondent for ABC News as well as a host of ABC's special programs.

On June 14, 2007, Walters received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She has won Daytime and Prime Time Emmy Awards, a Women in Film Lucy Award, and a GLAAD Excellence in Media award. Her impact on the popular culture is illustrated by Gilda Radner's "Baba Wawa" impersonation of her on Saturday Night Live,

In a November 2010 episode of The View, while interviewing Larry King on his retirement from CNN, Walters alluded to her impending retirement, stating, "I know when my time's coming."

Walters is known for "personality journalism" and her "scoop" interviews.

During a story about Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Walters claimed that "for Castro, freedom begins with education." Some critics point to her characterization of Castro as freedom-loving and argue that it painted an inaccurate picture of his government.

On March 3, 1999, her interview of Monica Lewinsky was seen by a record 74 million viewers, the highest rating ever for a journalist's interview. Walters asked Lewinsky, "What will you tell your children about this matter?" and Lewinsky replied, "I guess Mommy made some mistakes," at which point Walters brought the program to a dramatic conclusion, turning to the viewers, saying, "And that is the understatement of the century."

The View

Walters is a part-time host of the daytime talk show The View, of which she is also co-creator and co-executive producer with her business partner Bill Geddie. Walters described the show in its original opening credits as a forum for women of "different generations, backgrounds, and views". The show's current co-hosts are Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Sherri Shepherd. Previous co-hosts include Meredith Vieira, Lisa Ling, Rosie O'Donnell, Star Jones, and Debbie Matenopoulos.

In 2007 Barbara defended co-host Rosie O' Donnell after she made slanderous remarks against Donald Trump and the winner of the miss USA pageant. Donald firmly responded by saying, "Barbara is off the list"

Personal life

Walters has been married three times. "I'm convinced that you stay married when the days are bad, only because you really want to be," she told The New York Times in 1996. "But I always had an out. I had this job, and this life and enough money. I didn't have to fight the bad days."

Lee Guber, theatrical producer and theater owner. They married on December 8, 1963, and divorced in 1976. They have one daughter, Jacqueline Dena Guber (born 1968, adopted the same year).

Merv Adelson, the CEO of Lorimar Television. They married on May 10, 1986, and divorced in 1992.

She dated lawyer Roy Cohn in college, and the lawyer said that he proposed marriage to Walters the night before her wedding to Lee Guber, but Walters has denied this claim. In her autobiography, Walters says that Cohn got her father's warrant for "failure to appear" dismissed.

Walters, who dated former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in the 1970s, was linked romantically to United States Senator John Warner in the 1990s.

In Walters's autobiography Audition she claimed that she had an affair in the 1970s with Edward Brooke, then a married United States Senator from Massachusetts. It is not clear whether Walters also was married at the time. Walters said that the affair ended to protect their careers from scandal.

She announced on the May 10, 2010 episode of her show The View, that she will be undergoing open heart surgery to replace a faulty heart valve; the aortic valve, which pumps blood from the heart to the rest of the body. Walters added that she knew for quite a while that she was suffering from aortic valve stenosis, though symptom free.

The procedure to fix the faulty heart valve "went well, and the doctors are very pleased with the outcome," Walters' spokeswoman, Cindi Berger, said in a statement on May 14, 2010.

On July 9, 2010, it was announced that Barbara Walters will return to The View and her Sirius XM satellite show Here's Barbara in September 2010.

Books

In the late 1960s, Walters wrote a magazine article, How to Talk to Practically Anyone About Practically Anything, which drew upon the kinds of things people said to her, which were often mistakes. Shortly after the article appeared, she received a letter from Doubleday expressing interest in expanding it into a book. Walters felt that it would help "tongue-tied, socially awkward people — the many people who worry that they can't think of the right thing to say to start a conversation." To Walters' great surprise, the book was a phenomenon. As of 2008, it had gone through eight printings, sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide, and had been translated into at least 6 different languages. Radner exaggerated Walters' partially rhotacistic speech impediment (not a geographical accent) wherein she pronounced l and r like w. She remembered seeing a sketch during the time she was leaving NBC to join ABC News with Harry Reasoner, and Radner as "Baba Wawa" said: "This is my wast moment on NBC and I want to wemind you to wook fow me awong with Hawwy Weasoneh weeknights at seven o'cwock ... anotheh netwohk wecognizes in me a gweat tawent for dewivering wewevant news stowies with cwystal cwahity".

One time Walters' daughter Jackie was watching the characterization and laughing, much to Walters' dismay. She said her daughter "set her straight" by saying "Oh, Mom. Lighten up." Walters wrote in her memoir: "Hearing that from Jackie made me realize that I was losing all perspective. Where was my sense of humor?" Walters later met Gilda Radner and told her that she thought the caricature was funny. When Gilda Radner died of ovarian cancer at age forty-two, Walters sent a short, simple note to her husband, Gene Wilder, and said: "She made me laugh. I will miss her. Baba Wawa."

Awards and nominations

Daytime Emmy Awards

1975 Award for Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show Host (Today)

1998 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)

1998 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

1999 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)

1999 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

2000 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)

2000 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

2001 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)

2001 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

2002 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)

2002 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

2003 Award for Best Talk Show (The View)

2003 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

2004 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)

2004 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

2005 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)

2005 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

2006 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)

2006 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

2007 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)

2007 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

2008 Nomination for Best Talk Show (The View)

2008 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

2009 Award for Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show Host (The View) (with Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Sherri Shepherd)

2010 Nomination for Best Talk Show Host (The View)

NAACP Image Award

2009 Award for Best Talk Series (The View)

2010 Nomination for Best Talk Series

See also

Barbara Walters' 10 Most Fascinating People

References

External links

ABC News' "Time Tunnel" page containing clips of numerous newscasts on which Walters appeared

Excerpts from 2008 autobiography, Audition: A Memoir

Barbara Walters Archive of American Television Interview

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