About Rona

In 1986, Rona Barrett bought her first ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley and commuted back and forth to Los Angeles until 1991. It was then that she decided to reside on the Central Coast full time. Miss Rona had spent three decades of her life on television, starting her career on the local Los Angeles station, KABC, graduating to their five owned and operated stations around the country and finally to the network in 1975 where she inaugurated Good Morning America.

Throughout her career spanning more than 30 years as a vastly successful entertainment reporter, commentator and producer, Rona Barrett has been both an eyewitness to and an expert on the ever-changing world of entertainment and celebrities in the news including sports figures and political leaders.

A true pioneer and innovator in this challenging landscape, Ms. Barrett has achieved a number of historic firsts along the way:

• The first to recognize there was a new and larger generation of young people than America had ever seen before with interests in stars and celebrities different from their parents. She called them Young Hollywood. They included young stars such as  Natalie Wood, Elvis Presley, Bobby Darin, Fabian, Frankie Avalon, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and many more. Rona began covering these young stars for The Bell-McClure-NANA newspaper syndicate as the youngest columnist to ever report on Hollywood and other entertainment personalities.
• The first to bring entertainment reporting to the world of television when she began broadcasting in 1966 for KABC, the ABC owned and operated station in Los Angeles.
• The first to bring in-depth entertainment reporting and celebrity interviews to the world of morning television when she helped inaugurate Good Morning America in 1975 as its Arts and Entertainment Editor.
• The first entertainment journalist to edit a stable of magazines bearing her name in the 60’s and 70’s, including Rona Barrett’s Hollywood, Rona Barrett’s Preview, and Rona Barrett’s Daytimers.
• The first entertainment journalist to cover the business of show business, first on Good Morning America followed by NBC’s Today Show and Entertainment Tonight as well as the publisher of Hollywood’s first insider newsletter, The Barrett Report.  She ruled this domain so forcefully that David McClintick, the author of  “Indecent Exposure,” the best-selling book about the David Begelman/Columbia Pictures scandal, used many of her news reports to open each chapter of his book.
• The first entertainment reporter to be called upon as a consultant for Fortune 500 companies with entertainment holdings.
• She is also the author of three books including her best-selling intimate autobiography, Miss Rona, one of the first “tell all” autobiographies.

Rona Barrett’s Hollywood Reporter 1977

clockwise from top left: Liza Minnelli, Sophia Loren, Rona Barrett, Barbra Streisand, Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Burt Reynolds,
Henry Winkler. By Wes Herschensohn.

A Young Fan’s Dreams Launch a Unique Career

Rona Barrett first developed her lifelong interest in entertainment as a young girl growing up in Queens, New York. Born with a rare form of muscular dystrophy, she would sit in her room dreaming of the stars she saw in the movies when her parents began taking her to films when only nine months old.

Rona was barely in her teens when she began making those dreams into a reality when she started traveling to Manhattan and striking up friendships with the music makers and movers just starting out in the 50’s and 60’s, including everyone from Eddie Fisher and Tony Bennett to Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand. In fact, it was Rona Barrett who wrote Ms. Streisand’s first in-depth Sunday newspaper interview for the Bell-McClure-NANA syndicate.

Soon Rona had her own column in the then #1 fan magazine, Photoplay. It would only be a matter of a few years when a magazine bearing her own name overtook that magazine as the leader in its field – and paved the way for the introduction of the celebrity-oriented People magazine. She is probably best known the very popular celebrity magazine, “Rona Barrett’s Hollywood.”

Rona’s success, however, was not limited to just print journalism. In the mid sixties, she began reporting on show business and its stars right in the middle of where it all happened — Hollywood. Her reports for ABC station, KABC-TV were so successful, she graduated to the entire network of ABC owned and operated stations. From there she became the first nationally syndicated reporter through the Metromedia stations. With ABC, Rona also worked on a special daytime series including interviews with Jerry Falwell and Tom Cruise. In the early 70’s she produced and hosted a groundbreaking string of intimate interview specials called “Rona Looks At…” which featured in-depth interviews with top personalities from Raquel Welch, Liza Minnelli and Cher to Michael Caine, James Caan, and Burt Reynolds.

Good Morning Rona, Bringing Hollywood to America

In 1975, Rona was invited to return to ABC to bring her brand of journalism to a new show she helped create and inaugurate, Good Morning America. There, her news reports and interviews became the talk of not only Hollywood, but also America, including even the notoriously media-shy Alfred Hitchcock!

In the early 80’s she left ABC and continued her success as a Contributing Editor to NBC’s Today Show and West Coast Anchor for Tomorrow Coast To Coast. Her interview subjects ranged from OJ Simpson and Magic Johnson to David Bowie, Roman Polanski, Bette Davis, Sylvester Stallone, Elton John, Reverend Billy Graham and hundreds more!

Convinced that everyone’s second business was becoming show business, she began publishing her own newsletter, The Rona Barrett Report, which offered its subscribers unparalleled insight and details on all the entertainment-related companies including Time-Warner, Viacom, Fox and many more.

After her tenure with those programs was completed, she hosted a series of network specials as well as frequently sitting in for Larry King on CNN’s Larry King Live, interviewing all types of celebrities to political movers and shakers including Mrs. Gerald Ford. Rona also substituted for Larry after his heart surgery for nearly three months.

Moving North and Moving On

After the devastating 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles, Rona and her late husband, businessman William Trowbridge, moved their base of operations north to Santa Barbara County where they raised and sold running Paint Horses and eventually began growing Lavender, one of the most healthy and medicinal of all herbs.

With her immeasurable contacts, insights, and opinions related to the world of entertainment, Rona’s expertise has been frequently utilized by many of the world’s entertainment conglomerates. After the years she has served reporting about show business and interviewing its most talked-about personalities, she has seen empires –and careers – built, lost, only to be built or reclaimed again.

Most of all, she has never lost her fascination with people or her drive to understand what makes people tick. She is like millions of us, with one important difference: she’s lived her life right alongside the major players! And she’s not afraid to ask the questions everyone wants answered.

Today, Ms. Barrett’s focus is firmly on her Foundation. She still makes her home in the Santa Ynez Valley, where she lives with her husband and two dogs. She was married on Valentine’s Day to her sweetheart, author Daniel McNeet.