1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [132]
Walters, Barbara (1931– ) Walters began writing for NBC’s morning talk show, Today, in 1961 and was promoted in 1964 to the “Today Girl,” a decorative role she amplified into one of substance. From 1974 to 1978, she co-hosted Today, then signed a $1 million contract with ABC to co-anchor the news. This made her the highest-paid journalist of the time. From 1979 to 2004 she co-hosted the TV “magazine” 20/20 and became famous for her penetrating interviews with most of the world’s notables, ranging from film stars to world leaders. She enjoyed great success in obtaining interviews even with the most elusive figures.
Ward, Montgomery (1844–1913) In 1872, Ward, a prominent Chicago merchant, began distributing a 280-page catalog throughout the rural Midwest, seeking to expand his market to farmers unable to get into the city. The success of Ward’s mail-order retailing model inspired Richard W. Sears and A. C. Roebuck to begin their own catalog-based mail-order business in 1889, which became the giant of the new mail-order industry, transforming American retailing—and introducing “urban” goods throughout the country.
Warhol, Andy (1928?–1987) Warhol was born Andrew Warhola, probably in Pittsburgh. He became a commercial artist, an experience that inspired him to create works generally recognized as the first instances of the Pop Art movement. In 1962, he exhibited paintings of Campbell’s soup cans, Coca-Cola bottles, and wooden sculptures of Brillo soap pad boxes—all icons of everyday American life. The following year, he added the dimension of mass production to art through silk-screen printing. Warhol challenged the definition of art versus everyday banality by bringing the one to the other. He transformed himself into a Pop culture figure, as his New York studio became the gathering place for a variety of “underground” celebrities.
Warren, Earl (1891–1974) Warren, a California Republican, was nominated as chief justice of the Supreme Court by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953. Eisenhower assumed that Warren would bring a conservative cast to the court, but during his tenure—1953 to 1969—the high court introduced epoch-making social changes of a liberal nature, beginning with Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), which declared public school segregation unconstitutional and including the 1964 Reynolds v. Sims, which pegged representation in state legislatures to population, not geographical area, and the 1966 Miranda v. State of Arizona, which ruled that police officers, before questioning a suspect, must inform him of his right to remain silent and to have an attorney present. Warren also presided over the controversial Warren Commission in 1963–1964, which investigated the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Warren, Mercy Otis (1728–1814) Sister of James Otis, an early advocate of American independence, and married to James Warren, a Massachusetts political figure, Mercy Warren was a self-taught writer who drew on her proximity to events and personalities to write plays and poems about the American Revolution—while it was happening. Later, in 1805, she wrote the three-volume History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, which remains valuable because of its intimate perspective on the conflict.
Warren, Robert Penn (1905–1989) Honored by being named the first official poet laureate of the nation in 1986, Warren is better known as a literary critic and novelist. Although most of his work is literary rather than popular in nature, his 1946 novel All the King’s Men, loosely based on the life and career of Louisiana’s Huey Long, became a bestseller, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1947, and was made into an