Miss Rona Returns to the Small Screen

Article & Interview

Miss Rona (Barrett) returns to the small screen along with some very famous faces

By Alan Petrucelli
Pittsburch Stage and Screen Examiner
April 10, 2009

She remains Miss Rona.

The soft honey-colored hair has turned to white and the distinctive New York accent has somewhat softened, but there’s no doubt that the woman on the other end of the phone is Miss Rona Barrett.

The ground-breaking gossip guru and publishing magnate isn’t yakking from Hollywood, but from Santa Ynez, the Central California town she has called home since December 1985. Miss Rona lives on a ranch with her two dogs (a chocolate Lab named Mr. Chips and a petite boxer named Princess of LuvLand) and her childhood sweetheart, author Daniel Busby, who writes under the name Daniel McNeet. Miss Rona married Busby this past Valentine’s Day; her first husband, businessman William Trowbridge, died in 2001.

I have always had a soft spot in my heart for Miss Rona. We’re both New Yorkers (she: Queens, me: Westchester), we both fell in love with the movies as kids, we both had troubled childhoods (she: rare form of muscular dystrophy, me: a rare form of malignant narcissism), we both were show-biz fans who became show-biz writers, we both worked for Photoplay, the last great movie magazine.

But unlike Miss Rona, I didn’t become a star.

Long before Barbara Walters went out on a limb and asked the rich and famous what kind of trees they wanted to be, long before TMZ took aim and fired, there was Miss Rona. During her heyday, Miss Rona was as much the celebrity as the celebs she interviewed.

She calls herself “the first entertainment journalist to cover the business of show business.” And with good reason.Her Hollywood reports for local station KABC-TV were so successful that she was soon on the entire network; from there she became the first nationally syndicated reporter through Metromedia. In 1975, she inaugurated Good Morning America then went onto regular gigs with the Today show and Entertainment Tonight. She edited three magazines bearing her name; on her small-screen ABC specials, Rona Looks at…” she was able to get Cher and Raquel and Liza and Burt to open up and reveal things that they themselves had probably long forgotten, paving the way for what since become “celebrity journalism.”

She always had access to Hollywood, the first with the inside edition.

And now, at 72, Miss Rona is back.

Infinity Entertainment Group recently released the DVD title Nothing but the Truth, a compilation of snippets from 10 of Miss Rona’s most memorable TV interviews. The DVD—Miss Rona calls it her “love project”—is a fascinating trip into yesteryear, a treat to revisit Cher, Priscilla Presley, Raquel Welch, Robin Williams, John Travolta, John Wayne, Donna Summer, Burt Reynolds, Richard Dreyfuss and Carol Burnett and relive the Miss Rona magic.

This time, however, it’s not all about the business of show. Miss Rona is the founder of the non-profit Rona Barrett Foundation, created to promote the emotional, financial, physical well-being and dignity of low-income elderly adults. One dollar from each DVD sold will be donated to the Rona Barrett Foundation for the Elderly Poor, which assists senior citizens who are unable to afford or obtain assisted living care.

Here, Miss Rona chats about Hollywood, her career and her desire to help seniors.

What a career! You’ve interviewed at least 6,789 celebrities. Miss anyone?
I would have liked to have interviewed Jacqueline Onassis. I asked her for an interview, and she wrote me a letter that said, “I really like you, but you know I don’t do these kinds of interviews. I just cannot make an exception at this time.”
And though I did a written interview with Barbra Streisand—it was one of her first and I still have the letter she wrote me: It said “You’re a good writer!”—Jon Peters [Streisand’s lover at the time] decided to give the TV interview to Barbara Walters because she had a better time slot.

Why do you think you’re such a good interviewer?
Because I didn’t become friends with the stars. If I did I wouldn’t have been able to tell the truth about them. I learned this lesson with Bobby Darin. We were good friends, and I had the exclusive story when he married Sandra Dee. I would see them socially, and one day I saw a side of Sandy I had never seen. The press always made Bobby out to be the heavy one in that relationship, so when I wrote about the marriage, I wrote the truth. Bobby was so upset. “How can you do this to me?” he cried. “You violated a friendship!” He stopped speaking with me for a while. That’s when I realized it’s much easier not to know celebrities as buddies so I could be objective.

I have also intimated your style—don’t “interview” but “chat.”
I always wanted to know what made a person really tick, so I’d always talk freely and have conversations with the stars. We had what I call ‘private moments.’ If I saw someone letting down the shade, I’d find a way to work it back up. I would listen closely and that enabled me to ask pointed questions. The questions I asked at that time were things I believed the public was interested in, about learning something for myself and helping others learn about themselves. A lot of my success is because of what they said. At the time I was working on TV, no one had ever discussed such subjects as sex, divorce and politics. I like to think I paved the way for people like Phil Donahue.

And of course, Oprah.
I really like Oprah. I think she’s real and really wants to help people. Oprah and I have similar qualities—she’s the only person working on TV today that comes close to what hope I had been.

What about Barbara Walters?
I am not surprised at Barbara’s longevity, and I admire her ’stick-to-it-tiveness.’ I understand why people like The View—it’s people talking to other people about hot topics, about the three things I’ve always said people respond to: money, sex and power . . . and not necessarily in that order. [Laughs] And I’ve never asked a question I would be afraid to answer!

What do you watch on TV?
I start off the morning with Good Morning America then switch back and forth between that and the Today show. I am a news junkie—CNN is always in background when I‘m working on the computer.

And when you’re not on the computer, you are fighting for senior citizens. Why?
After my mother died in 1994, my father came to live with me and Bill. He was going into the first phrases of dementia and Alzheimer’s. I was his caregiver for five and a half years until he got really sick and I hired a person to help me take care of him. It was draining emotionally, especially as I realized that I was now the parent and he the child. I was lucky I could afford the care, but what about all the seniors who helped build our nation? They are not all dot-com babies; many cannot afford retirement homes or assisted-living facilities. They may get what? Maybe $800 a month from SSI? That barely buys food, let alone medicine and other essentials. It’s a crime to forget people in this society who contributed in so many ways to making this country what it is. People should live this earth with dignity.

How wonderful that the celebs you chose gave their blessing for such a project. But let’s gossip . . . did anyone turn you down?
Liza Minnelli. I wrote Liza and asked for permission to use our interview on the DVD, and her lawyer wrote back saying “we want fees.” I wrote back, “Fees? We don’t have fees to pay. I am doing this to raise money for my foundation to help the elderly.” I never heard back. My request fell on deaf ears. Liza was the only one to turn me down—everyone else said yes and that was very, very rewarding to me.

Your career spanned more than three decades. Do you miss the glamor and gossip?
It doesn’t happen every often, but now and then, whenever I hear a story and I think I know where the answers lie, I want to sink my teeth in. To paraphrase Walter Cronkite: I’m like a fireman. I hear the bell, put on my yellow slicker and realize, “Wait! I don’t have a fire truck any longer.”