Barbara Walters Came From New York Nightlife Royalty — Her Dad Was an Entertainment Maestro
"My nightmare was that my father was going to lose it all," said Barbara Walters.
Published June 23 2025, 7:53 p.m. ET
In May 2008, Barbara Walters released her memoir, "Audition," which detailed the journalist's rather unorthodox childhood. The week the book came out, ABC News spoke with Barbara's longtime friend, psychoanalyst Joyce Ashley, who said she grew up with "tension in the air."
Joyce told the outlet that Barbara always felt like she had to care for her family.
This feeling largely stemmed from the fact that Barbara's older sister suffered from an undiagnosed disability. She was labeled as slow, though Barbara thought that if she were born later, she might have been diagnosed with Autism.
Barbara felt a sense of deep responsibility from a very young age. "My nightmare was that my father was going to lose it all," she said. This fear eventually became a reality. Here's what we know about her parents, Lou and Dena Walters.
Barbara Walters's parents were an interesting match.
Joyce said Barbara's parents were unlike any other parents that she knew.
"Her father was rather mysterious," explained Joyce. "Her mother was under a great deal of tension because her sister probably had a birth injury of some kind." Barbara's father, Lou Walters, was an entertainer at heart. The British native came to America in 1909 at the age of 11.
When Barbara was a child, her father managed the Latin Quarter nightclub in Boston. When she was 13 years old, Lou opened a Latin Quarter location in New York. It didn't take him long to settle into New York's specific brand of entertainment. A year after opening the Latin Quarter, Lou produced the famous Ziegfield Follies.
Never one to rest, Lou also brought the Folies Bergère stage show from Paris to the Tropicana Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.
Barbara's mother was treated differently in the book. Maybe it was just a sign of the times. Dena Seletsky was a caretaker and caregiver for her husband and children, one of whom required more attention than the others. Perhaps there wasn't enough oxygen in the family, given the fact that Lou lost and made their money multiple times throughout Barbara's childhood. When times were good, they were great. When they were bad, it was really bad.
Barbara Walters's father once had a nervous breakdown.
In an April 1996 interview with The New York Times, Barbara briefly touched on a nervous breakdown her father had when she had just graduated from Sarah Lawrence College. Lou was completely broke.
"He went down to live in our house in Florida, and then the Government took the house, and they took the car, and they took the furniture," recalled Barbara.
Barbara was working as a secretary at an advertising agency. It was her first job. She was told that people assumed her father had squirreled away some money somewhere.
"He had none," she said. "He had even used some of the payroll taxes, and that's a criminal act, and I had to pay that money back." It took Barbara five years to fix her father's mess.
This hurt Barbara's mother immensely. The two were very close.
"I was her confidante," said Barbara. It took the veteran journalist decades to get to know her father. Memories of him revolve around Dena criticizing Lou, and rightfully so.
"My mother should have married the way her friends did, a man who was a doctor, or who was in the dress business," Barbara said.