With “trailblazer” being used in almost every Barbara Walters obituary, perhaps no singular video moment speaks more to the path she forged as a female journalist than the surprise she received on her final episode of The View.
Back on May 15, 2014, Walters ended her 17-plus year run as a cohost on the daytime program, which was conceived as “a talk show featuring four or five women of different backgrounds, different generations, and different opinions.”
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To commemorate the occasion, daytime talk queen Oprah Winfrey stopped by — in part to lavish her own praise upon Walters, but most memorably to surprise the guest of honor with a literal parade of more than 20 female journalists who stood on Walters’ shoulders.
There were in-house ABC peers/alumni such as Diane Swayer, Joan Lunden, Robin Roberts and Amy Robach, of course, but the Avengers-like assembly also boasted reporters, anchors and on-air personalities from rival networks, including Katie Couric, Savannah Guthrie, Kathie Lee Gifford and Hota Kotb.
Watch the emotional and historic moment cued up above (to the 12:30 mark).
“I was teary,” Walters told ABC News afterwards. “But I wasn’t going to cry because I was really very happy…. It was, really, for me, very moving.”
Walters died Friday, Dec. 30 at her home in New York, at age 93. In a tweet announcing her death, ABC News described her as someone “who shattered the glass ceiling and became a dominant force in an industry once dominated by men.” (Read TVLine’s obituary for the journalistic icon here.)
In addition to a career marked by hosting duties on Today, 20/20 and The Barbara Walters Special, Walters created and co-hosted ABC’s The View. She retired from co-hosting the show in 2014, but remained an executive producer.
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