The Legendary Rona Barrett

Photos: Alan Mercer Lighting: Eric Venturo

Rona Barrett is a legendary columnist, television pioneer, and successful businesswoman. She currently runs the 'Rona Barrett Foundation,' a non-profit organization in Santa Ynez, California dedicated to the aid and support of senior citizens in need.

Born to a Jewish family in New York, New York, Rona was diagnosed with a rare form of muscular dystrophy at age 9. When she was 13, she became the nationwide coordinator of singer Eddie Fisher's fan clubs. Her date for the high school prom was singer Steve Lawrence. She thought about being a doctor but, majored in pre-law at college, until her uncle, a judge, advised her to switch to journalism.

Barrett became a gossip columnist for the Bell-McClure newspaper syndicate in 1957. In 1966, she began broadcasting Hollywood gossip on the Los Angeles television station KABC-TV. She appeared on TV regularly, going on to appear on ABC's five owned and operated stations around the country. WABC-TV in New York put her pre-recorded gossip segment into its nightly local news.

She developed the first in-depth personal TV Specials about the celebrities of motion pictures, television, music, sports and politics, and had a series of magazines on the entertainment industry that were top-rated at newsstands, including Rona Barrett's Hollywood.

Barrett began appearing on Good Morning America in 1975. In 1986, she bought a ranch in Santa Ynez, California, and began commuting back and forth to Los Angeles. In 1991, she retired full time to her ranch.

This past February Rona returned to the spotlight with the release of the DVD 'Rona Barrett's Hollywood,' a collection of interviews done some thirty-five years ago. I remember those interviews, when I was very young, like they were yesterday. I always loved Rona Barrett.....and her magazines. I remember the first time I ever saw her on television and how I enjoyed reading her autobiography 'Miss Rona' when it was published in 1974! It is safe to say that Rona Barrett was a major influence on my life.

She is now preparing to visit Palm Springs to be honored with a Star on the Walk of Fame, this Friday, Oct. 9, one day after her birthday! Having the chance to sit in her home and talk about her career and life, after Eric Venturo and I took her new publicity photographs, was a real treat.

AM: Miss Rona I must tell you what an honor it is to be able to work with you. I never thought I would have this opportunity. This is really a dream come true.

RB: You know what Alan, I have always believed that you have to go after what you really want. Just make sure you want it because once you get it you can't go back and say, "Oh I don't like this." So you wished this and your wish has come true and it is my pleasure to be with someone who knows how to take nice pictures!

EV: Are you excited about your Walk of Fame Star in Palm Springs?

RB: I couldn't have been more surprised, and perhaps a better word would be shocked, when a friend of mine, who is totally responsible for telling the people in Palm Springs that they should have a star for me. He is a young man named Tony Morris, who like you, sent me a letter way back in the early 70's asking my opinion on how to become a film critic. I wrote him back and apparently he kept the letter and still has it to this very day.

AM: I assume you have met in person by now?

RB: I had the chance to meet him in San Francisco and he showed me the letter. He told me, 'You have no idea how much you mean to me and how you have inspired me.' It sounds a lot like Alan Mercer. I was very flattered. I asked if I could read it and he let me. I said, 'You know what, I would give you the same advice today as I did back then.' So began a new friendship. Anyway he vacations in Palm Springs and said Rona Barrett has to have a star. A few months ago I got a letter telling me they were giving me a star.

EV: That must have been exciting.

RB: I had to read the letter twice. Then Tony called me and asked if I got a letter and I said yes. How did you know? He wouldn't say anything but I later found out, being the reporter that I am, that Tony was largely responsible for it.

AM: It's appropriate for you to have a star there.

RB: I used to live in the dessert the entire time I had a career up until about seventeen years ago.

AM: Can you talk about your charity work?

RB: We are having a crisis in so many areas of this country and the people who seem to be getting hit the most are seniors. Seniors really are the people who do not have the funds to buy insurance and get the health care they need. I'm talking about the elderly poor. Seniors are the first, along with children, to get attacked by any crisis. Then they are eliminated. 'We can get rid of the elderly. They don't really vote and their vote doesn't count anyway. Children can't vote so we never have to worry about them,' say the politicians.

AM: Have you always been involved with charity work?

RB: I've been involved with charitable work for a long time, mainly with children's diseases until my father came to live with me after my Mother passed away. Suddenly I realized that it was the elderly who need the most help now. No one is speaking up for them. Indirectly I became a voice for seniors in this part of the country. My message is getting out slowly but surely across the country that we cannot forget those who helped make us who we are today but can no longer take care of themselves.

AM: I couldn't agree more. I'm heading towards those years myself.

RB: We all are. We all have parents. We all have friends who are older than we are. This is not just a happening thing. It was inevitable and it drives me crazy that for more than fifty years this country knew we were going to be facing this crisis when the baby boomers reached sixty-five. A lot of them would never be prepared for living longer, not necessarily better, and then not having the funds to live out whatever kind of life they have. The crisis that has hit this country in the last couple of years has really hit the elderly more severely than any other group.

EV: What do you think is the worst problem?

RB: We don't have enough housing or hospital beds. It's a very serious problem. I hate seeing pictures on the news where they let an elderly person out of a taxi cab because they have no more insurance to pay for the hospital. You say to yourself, 'How can anybody do that? How can you drop off someone who is infirmed in downtown Los Angeles?' I am absolutely appalled.

EV: When did you start getting involved in this?

RB: I decided since 2000 that I was going to do something about it. I have a brand new hybrid program, that I am trying to get off the ground as a pilot program starting in Santa Ynez Valley. If the program works it can be duplicated all over the country. I am hoping that this will be the beginning of people seriously thinking about how to give people the care they need, especially the elderly. That's my job.

AM: What do you think about the Universal Health plan most of the world has except us?

RB: Well I think they attacked it from the wrong point of view. That is my current belief. I may have my mind changed again. I think everybody should be covered, but having traveled to several countries around the world where they have Universal coverage, I regret to say, other than in Finland, which only has a couple million people, it is the only country that can handle Universal care. Every other country that has it, has problems and it doesn't always work.

AM: I have heard that before, but what do we do?

RB: I'm at a loss because I think we haven't attacked this problem from the right point of view. It isn't just getting all of us insured, it's how are we going to deliver the service and what kind of service? What are the services we should give to people and guarantee? I believe more in preventative medicine. I also happen to believe in alternative medicine. Therefore I think if we can become a healthier nation we would be much better off and that's what most people don't understand.

AM: Why do you think it is so hard to get this message out?

RB: People are so set in their ways of thinking, especially the elderly. They have lived for seventy or eighty years with a certain way of living their life and their expectations. They are afraid of change. People are afraid of change. Most people don't even know how to move to the next step in life. Once they hit the first obstacle in the road they just stop. With that they turn around and we end up with a lot of frustrated people in this country who are doing things they don't want to be doing. They are forced to do what they have to do.

AM: It seems to be most people.

RB: I understand that it is wonderful to be an achiever and to have a type A personality, but not everyone can be an A personality. Therefore, in order to make up a whole entire group and have the kind of democracy we thought we were getting, you have to have a middle class. You have to have an industrialized nation. We cannot be just a service nation. Those are my personal and political views at the moment. When I can get more accurate information they may change. I don't feel we are getting accurate information. That's the problem. You can be told the truth but the truth isn't necessarily accurate.

AM: I'm glad you are doing what you can to help.

RB: I'm a firm believer that what is meant to be will be. I also believe I was led into this path.

AM: What personality trait gave you an advantage at the beginning of your career?

RB: A belief that I had to make something of my life. I knew consciously and subconsciously that my parents only wanted the best for me, but they never knew beyond what they already knew. I felt there was something bigger and better out there. They were afraid that because I was born with a physical handicap that I wouldn't be able to survive. All they wanted to do was protect me. I knew I could not be a physical cripple and a mental cripple at the same time so I made up my mind that I was going to be someone.

AM: How did that physical setback affect you?

RB: Honestly Alan I think the physical setback really gave me the impetus and was responsible for me wanting to make something of myself. No child likes to hear someone call them a cripple. No child likes to hear anything bad said about them. Children, for reasons I will never understand, can be very cruel. I think they hear their parents say things 'on the fly' like, 'Did you see that cripple?' Right away the child has an image of a cripple and the way the parent said it is what sets the tone of it possibly having a negative impact, as opposed to a positive impact. Those things certainly happened to me and I thought if I became someone famous and well known that nobody would ever dare say a bad word about me. ( we are all laughing)

AM: It's really just the opposite.

RB: Sweetheart, what a life I chose for myself!

AM: What did you think of Luella Parsons and Hedda Hopper and how did you want to be different?

RB: Like everyone I grew up reading these ladies, but I really was reading Walter Winchell and Dorothy Kilgallen. It was Dorothy's coverage of murder trials that got me intrigued. I thought, what an exciting life to cover a murder trial! Of course Walter seemed to know everything before anybody else. How would it be to know everything before somebody else? Somehow the idea that I would be a journalist was born in my head.

EV: Did you ever think of doing something else for a living?

RB: I had seriously thought of becoming a doctor of research to find out why I had been born with this physical weakness in my muscles that prevented me from running and skipping and going up a flight of stairs. When I saw famous people on the screen they seemed to have such a wonderful and fabulous life (more laughing). What did I know until I went inside the inner sanctum of that wonderful world known as Hollywood.

AM: Do you still have an interest in Hollywood life today as a reporter or spectator?

RB: More as a spectator. I often think of what Walter Cronkite said when he was asked what it felt like to be retired. He said, 'I feel like a fireman who hears the bell ringing. I jump on the pole and slide down. I grab my yellow slicker. I go to put on my hat and open the front door and I realize I have no fire engine!'

AM: Are there stories today you wish you were working on?

RB: Every now and then there is a story that happens and I say I know how to do this one. I know where the bodies are buried and I know where to get the information, and I know how to do this, and I would love to sink my teeth into this story, and then suddenly I say, 'Hey wait a minute girl. You are the one who quit. You are the one who said one morning I've had it.' I cannot say one more time that Robert Redford was going to get 20 million dollars or somebody was going to get fired from CBS. I just can't do this anymore.

AM: Was it a sudden change?

RB: Little incidents occurred along the way that made it very clear to me that times were changing. If you wanted to say anything controversial there were executives in charge of everything and did not like any controversy. The winter of my years was coming and I could tell. I didn't know when it would happen but I will tell you this, the day CBS gave Dan Rather the job of being Evening Anchor and did not give it to Roger Mudd, who had been the loyal guy, I knew that the day of belonging to a corporation and having them be there for you was over. I said I don't want this to happen to me and that as it.

AM: What has changed the most about the entertainment business?

RB: I think money is more important today than it has ever been, but it's always been important. Money has been at the root of everything. When cable and satellite came along you could see that everyone was nervous. When DVD's came along there was all these new methods of distribution that we never knew before. People started getting nervous about where the funds were going to come from.

AM: I want to talk about your new DVD of your classic interviews. I remember when they aired originally like it was yesterday.

RB: When I was looking over the first group of interviews that I owned because they were done through my company, I was in shock. I couldn't believe it had been almost forty years since I sat down with Cher on her bed! She was very open and honest. Whatever she was thinking at that time in her life she said. That's the way she has always been as far as I'm concerned.

AM: How did you know what to ask?

RB: I only asked questions that I really wanted to know the answers to. I was curious. I wanted to know am I anything like these people? Are they anything like me? What do they really think? What happened the first time a woman went to bed with some guy? I asked the questions.

AM: Does anyone's answer stand out in your memory?

RB: The one that remains in my head was Raquel Welch saying, 'Rona! You can't ask me that!' and I thought, 'why not?' I'll be happy to answer that question. Raquel ultimately told me that by eleven years old she was aware of her sexuality and for her this would be a way to pull herself up the ladder. It took at least six months to get Raquel to agree to the interview. I wanted to do something different and not do an interview about her latest movie but all about her.

AM: Was it hard to pick the first four people?

RB: I chose the four hottest women at the time and we got a 44 share in the ratings. That doesn't happen anymore.

AM: All four of those women are still relevant and very famous.

RB: They never went away. I chose Raquel, Cher, Liza Minelli and Ann-Margret.
The next interview special I did had Carol Burnett talking for the very first time about growing up in an alcoholic family. At the time I did these interviews these subject matters had never been discussed. At the time they really were ground breaking.

EV: What do you think of contemporary media outlets like TMZ?

RB: I've known Harvey Levin for many years. I would say he is in a very good position to know who all the lawyers, judges and police departments to give him information. I think that during the Michael Jackson tragedy his sources came through for him and he was able to do some very good reporting. Other than that he focuses on the most trivial things to put on the air. I just don't understand it.

AM: How did your magazines get started?

RB: They started in 1969. With the success that I was building on television it was thought that I would do well with a magazine called 'Rona Barrett's Hollywood.' I said, 'OK let's try it.' I wanted to focus on young Hollywood at the time. I wanted it to be similar to what I was reporting on TV. The tone was in keeping with something new and different and put all the other magazines out of business.

AM: Your magazine was more like 'People' magazine.

RB: It was more like that. My first issue of 'Rona Barrett's Hollywood' came out one year and one month ahead of 'People.' We knew about "People' magazine coming out and I said to my partners I think we should seriously consider doing a weekly. They said to me to give them more time. It was a mistake because I think we could have gone head to head, just as I was begging ABC to let me go head to head with '60 Minutes' and after creating a show that was eventually called "20/20' where everyone I suggested for that show went on to be in it except me. That was a very serious and difficult moment in my career. It was the beginning of how I began to change my thinking in a lot of ways.

AM: Did you choose to end the publication of the magazines?

RB: In many ways I chose to end them because I desperately wanted to be considered a real news person by the news departments. It was long before any of this so because I was a woman I could not be known as a columnist, but a gossip columnist. There was no room for gossip on the evening news. That's when I said I have to extricate myself from these magazines in order to be taken seriously. It was one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made. You know I created 'Entertainment Tonight.' It wasn't called that at the time, but it was the same show. I was on 'Good Morning America' and everything I reported on that show was on "Entertainment Tonight.' They told me I couldn't do it so two of my friends presented it to Paramount as a syndicated show and the rest is history.

AM: How did you handle the sexism?

RB: When you are going through it you don't realize you are going through it. I was unaware how I was being affected by being a woman. I never got the same pay as any man. I had to fight harder battles. I thought everybody fought battles. It was never ending. All I can tell you is that in the final analysis I applaud Barbara Walters. She has been able to stick it out and want to do it. I, on the other hand, said that's it. I have fought a good battle and I cannot do it anymore. I had lost the 20/20, I had lost 'ET', I had lost the weekly publication I wanted. I thought maybe God has something better for me to do than this and I don't know it. I went into a ten year hibernation.

AM: You wanted to have a human life.

RB: I needed to take care of myself and I needed to take care of my first husband, who has since passed away. Those things became far more important to me. My priorities shifted.

AM: Were you aware that you were making television history?

RB: No I wasn't aware. I didn't think abut it until after people were saying that to me.

AM: Now you are recognized as a Television pioneer and I think that is pretty amazing considering it wasn't 1949!

RB: Absolutely. People used to say to me at one point, 'How does it feel to be so powerful?' I would look at them and say, 'What are you talking about?' The minute I got off the air I would worry about where my next big story was coming from. I could never think about something like that. It was 24/7 always thinking about the next story and how I was going to get it. I did have good intuition and I would think about someone and call them and inevitably there would be the beginnings of a story. I started to listen to my inner self even though I would fight with my inner self all the time. I was my own worst enemy.

AM: How did you "gossip" and still retain a high standard of respect from the people you reported on?

RB: You know what I discovered? The truth often hurts more than a lie. When you tell the truth, it is that which gets people annoyed and angry. Overall when people sat down to have a conversation with me I was always interested in what they had to say. I was always curious. I have been and still am today about what really makes people tick. Who are they? What do they think about? What do they do in the privacy of their own thoughts?

AM: You have an interest in psychology.

RB: I have always had a psychological bent. It was always a favorite subject of mine. I was always interested in the way things happened. How did it happen? Why did it happen? What prompted it to happen? When did the epiphany occur? I would never ask a question that I wouldn't answer myself. That's the difference. I believe that's what it was really all about. Sometimes people couldn't believe they told me all they had. They would see it played back on television and not believe what they said. I was even accused of editing tapes to appear like someone said something they didn't.

AM: Did it hurt any friendships you had at the time?

RB: Well it taught me a lesson and the lesson was, it is better not to have 'Stars' as your best friends. It is much better to do the job that you have to do and keep them at arms length. Build all the sources you can build. Get to know who can tell you things and then go to somebody and verify it. It was also the tone I gave the story. I was never afraid to say I'm sorry I have made a terrible mistake. I remember saying that very clearly when Patty Duke won an Emmy. We didn't know she had real mental problems and she was making a spectacle of herself every night. When I found out that's what was going on in her life I needed to apologize. I announced it on TV when she won her Emmy.

AM: I see what you mean.

RB: I learned to keep all of these people at arms length. I realized that being best friends would make me a lot of enemies and I could not do that. It was difficult to have close friends because it would be too hard to write about them. It defeated the purpose of wanting to be really good at what I did. That's my story Morning Glory!

To learn more about Rona Barrett visit her web site http://www.ronabarrettfoundation.org/