In Print

ABC Special Report
Author: Barbara Walters
A CELEBRATION: 100 YEARS OF GREAT WOMEN
Date: 04-30-1999

Transcript

BARBARA WALTERS: Good evening. And welcome to our celebration. So how do you decide on the 100 most important women of the 20th century? With great difficulty. But the Ladies Home Journal did just that. They put together a distinguished panel to select 100 women who they felt have had the biggest influence on our lives.

And tonight, you will hear about and from many of the women on the list. But we've done something a little different. We've asked some of the most intriguing women we know to talk about the women on the list who most inspired them.

You'll hear from Oprah Winfrey and Jane Fonda, Bette Midler, Rosie O'Donnell, Madonna and many more. Commenting on women from Amelia Earhart to Rosa Parks to Princess Diana. And this is the program that answers the burning question, who in the world is Alice Paul, and why should I care?

If you have a daughter, you'll want her to watch this. If you have a son, bolt the door and make him watch. You give us 10 minutes, and we promise you'll stay for the full 90. Because the journey of women this century has been anything but boring.

We start with two women who made their way on to the list through your television set.
(voice-over) Lucille Ball. Her face has perhaps been seen by more people than any other woman on the planet.

LUCILLE BALL (Clip from "I Love Lucy"): Ooh! BARBARA WALTERS: (voice- over) More than 40 years since it went off the air, her show is now syndicated in more than two dozen countries. The world still loves "I Love Lucy." (Laughter) CAROL BURNETT: She was the first woman to knock everybody's socks off, globally, in comedy.

BETTE MIDLER: And the thing that's so interesting about her is that she was in pictures for years and years, and they never knew she was funny.

LUCILLE BALL (Movie Clip): Tell me, little boy, did you get a whistle or a baseball bat with that suit? BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) One of her first drama coaches told her she had no talent. But in 1942, she landed a leading role in "The Big Street" with Henry Fonda.
(Clip from "The Big Street") LUCILLE BALL: Pinks, pinks.

HENRY FONDA: Having a good time, your highness? LUCILLE BALL: Sure.

JANE FONDA: She and my dad were very, very close. They made a movie together, and they were close.

BARBARA WALTERS: (on camera) A-ha! Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda had a romance? JANE FONDA: I don't know, but I think so.

(Clip from "The Big Street") LUCILLE BALL: Everybody's watching us.
HENRY FONDA: You, not me.

JANE FONDA: He carried her up 12 flights of stairs. He talked about that often.

BARBARA WALTERS: Did he like it or not like it? JANE FONDA: I think he liked it.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) The critics, however, didn't like the picture. And it looked as if Lucille Ball wasn't going to make it in the movies.

BETTE MIDLER: She was a show girl. She walked around. She was glamorous. And then, she turned out to be hilarious.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) It was the 1950s and that newfangled medium "television" was gaining popularity. Lucy and her husband, Desi Arnaz, sold an idea to CBS, and the first successful sitcom was born.

DESI ARNAZ (Clip from "I Love Lucy"):Are you kidding?

(Laughter) BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Six months after "I Love Lucy" went on the air in 1951, it was the number-one show. Every Monday night, 10 million people tuned in, in a nation with just 15 million televisions.

(Clip from "I Love Lucy") LUCILLE BALL: Ricky, this is it.

DESI ARNAZ: This is it? VIVIAN VANCE: This is it! BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) And by the time Lucy Ricardo gave birth to little Ricky in 1953, a whopping 92 percent of the people with televisions were watching. As a TV housewife, Lucy became a household word. But in real life, she was a modern working mother, juggling a family and a career.

LUCILLE BALL: I expected to only do the show for a year and then have some, like, home movies to show the baby that I had just had.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Some home movies. Six years on the air, 179 episodes. LUCILLE BALL (Clip from "I Love Lucy"):I don't want to go.

BARBARA WALTERS: (on camera) Do you have a favorite "I Love Lucy" episode? BETTE MIDLER: Oh, well, everybody loves -- everyone loves Vitameatavegamin.

LUCILLE BALL (Clip from "I Love Lucy"):Well, I'm your Vitameatavegamin girl.

ROSIE O'DONNELL, Talk Show Host: Had to be Vitameatavegamin. You know that one, right? When she does, "Do you poop out at parties?" LUCILLE BALL (Clip from "I Love Lucy"):Are you unpoopular?

(Laughter) BETTE MIDLER: And everyone loves the chocolate factory.

ROSIE O'DONNELL: Or the chocolates on the.

BARBARA WALTERS: The chocolates.

CAROL BURNETT: The grape stomping in the barrel with the Italian woman, when she gets into the big fight.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) How many times have we all seen these episodes? Yet Lucy got the last laugh. She became one of the richest women of the century, because she made sure her contract gave her and Desi the rights to all those reruns.

GLORIA STEINEM: I didn't like it then and I don't like it now.

BARBARA WALTERS: (on camera) Really? GLORIA STEINEM: But it isn' t that I hate it. It's just that I don't get it. I don't understand why it's funny. But I admire her as a business woman. You know, she really seemed to control her entire professional life and was very, very smart.

BARBARA WALTERS: Did Lucille Ball pave the way for you, for Oprah?

ROSIE O'DONNELL: Lucille Ball paved the way for every female performer, I think, today. You know, you have to honor those who came before you and give a hand to those who are coming up after you, I think. Because we're all in it together.

FEMALE SINGER: (singing) Where can you stop when you want to get started?

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) In the '50s, it was Lucy. In the ' 90s, it's Oprah.

OPRAH WINFREY: Some days I say to myself, "You're doing it. You're there, Dorothy. Click your heels." BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Before Oprah Winfrey became just "Oprah," actress, producer and media mogul with a half billion dollar empire, she was a victim of racism and rape, of teenage pregnancy and poverty. Somehow, she found a way to turn adversity into advantage. In 1988, I asked her how she did it.

OPRAH WINFREY: I really don't know. But somewhere I have always known that I was born for greatness in my life. Somewhere I have always felt it.
I didn't mean it from an -- an arrogant point of view, or greatness in terms of notoriety and money. Because who could have ever imagined this life that I'm living now, or that you could even make this much money? I couldn't have imagined it.
But I did think that I would be able to use my life, and that my life could somehow be a force for good. I always did think that.
(Clip from "Oprah") To make herself feel better, she would stand in my shoes. And now she says doesn't have to stand in the shoes as much because she's standing on her own.

ROSIE O'DONNELL: She dreamed it, and now she's living it.

(Clip from "Oprah") PATRICK SWAYZE: Step, together, step.

(Applause) GLORIA STEINEM: She brings to a television forum real subjects about real people.

OPRAH WINFREY (Clip from "Remembering Your Spirit"): I know it's really stepping out there for a lot of people, but I call it "remembering your spirit." BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Like many of the women on the list Oprah grapples with her personal life.

(on camera) Cinderella marries Prince Charming. Oprah doesn't get married. Why don't you get married? OPRAH WINFREY: Well, this is the truth, Barbara. I was going to do that book in 1993. We'd set a wedding date, September 8. The autobiography was supposed to come out that same week. And Stedman said, "It's coming out the same week we're getting married? Because I don't want my wedding to be confused and messed in the press with the autobiography." I said, "OK." He said, "So we should postpone it." And I said "OK." And we have never discussed it again. It has never come up.

BARBARA WALTERS: You said once of Oprah that she is the reason you are allowed to have your own show. ROSIE O'DONNELL: And it's true.

BARBARA WALTERS: She made it so, therefore, another woman can make it.

ROSIE O'DONNELL: Because she had succeeded, they were, like, "Well, let's try someone else then." When a tough New York Irish girl decided she wanted her own show, well, "Oprah Winfrey did it," they said. "Well, let's give her a shot." BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) As for Oprah, she says she may just walk away from her show when her contract runs out in the year 2002.

OPRAH WINFREY: There will come a time when you will know when you' ve said all that you can say about it. And I still, at this point with -- until 2002, that's still 700 more shows.

BARBARA WALTERS: (on camera) Oprah and Lucy are defined largely by their work. But at the beginning of this century women are were defined almost entirely by their relationships with men. They were wives, daughters, mothers.

One of the exceptions was the renowned scientist Madame Curie who won two Nobel Prizes. To make a mark in this world in the early 1900s, women needed to be not only smart, but fearless.
(voice-over) Margaret Sanger, an outspoken activist who, when told to be quiet, staged this not so subtle protest. Perhaps the century' s first photo op.

JANE FONDA: Margaret Sanger would be way at the top if I had to choose the most important women of the 20th century.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) She was the mother of contraception. In 1916, Sanger opened the nation's first birth control clinic. But after nine days and 500 patients, the clinic was shut down and Sanger arrested.

MARGARET SANGER: Many people are horrified at the idea of birth control. Why, to me, it is simply the keynote of a new moral program.

JANE FONDA: Women were having 10, 12 children, one right after the other, and to great detriment to their health and well-being. And she was the one that said women have a right to have a say-so over their families and how those children are going to be born.

BETTE MIDLER: Jane Addams, a woman with a big idea.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Jane Addams, the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She was our nation's first advocate for children's rights and devoted her life to her work at Chicago' s Hull House.

BETTE MIDLER: She took children in -- children off the streets. And she gave them a place to live, and she gave them an education. And that was the beginning of a big, big social movement in this country.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) At first, quietly, then as a movement, women who had virtually no rights began to demand them.

WOMEN: (singing) Stand and be counted.
We each have a voice. Stand and be counted.

ANN RICHARDS, Former Texas Governor: Alice Paul was so smart. And she was fearless.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Alice Paul -- the fiery feminist who urged women to take to the streets, confront the police and demand the vote.

ANN RICHARDS: Many of us are held back by the constraints of what we think society will think and how we will be judged. That was not a problem for Alice Paul, thank God.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) In 1913, she helped organize a march on Washington that drew 5,000 women and 500,000 spectators.

BETTY FORD, Former First Lady: Those women, I want to take my hat off to them. They worked very hard. They went to jail.

CAROL BURNETT: Rocks were thrown at them. They were hooted and booed, and that -- that is pretty frightening.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: World War I had ended. Traveled soldiers found that their women folk hadn't just sat by the fire but had launched an offensive for equal rights.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Women finally won the vote in 1920. And by then, there were 50 million of us. A quarter of us were in the workplace. We were on our way.

(on camera) If you look back over this century, who would be the most important influence? JANE FONDA: This is going to surprise you. One of the first women that pops into my mind is Coco Chanel.

BARBARA WALTERS: It surprises me.

JANE FONDA: And here's why -- she freed us from the corset.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Coco Chanel, a Parisian designer who changed the way the women dressed and breathed.

JANE FONDA: You know, the foot in the back, Scarlett O'Hara, whalebone corset.

(Clip from "Gone With The Wind") VIVIEN LEIGH, Actress: Ooh. HATTIE MCDANIEL, Actress: Just hold on and suck in.

JANE FONDA: If you get a strong emotion, be it fear, sadness, anger, what happens? You pass out. Women don't pass out today. You know why? We can breathe. She stripped us of the corset. She put the A-frame dress on us, showed our legs, removed the focus from the waist, bobbed our hair, and we were off and running.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: The Roaring '20s, personified by the flashing feet of a line of flappers.

BETTE MIDLER: I think the flapper was really important. The girls who had been born at the turn of the century, who cut off all their hair and who took off their corsets and rolled down their stockings and pulled up their skirts and said, "Hey, let's have a party!" BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Now we were going where no woman had been - - up. Aviator Amelia Earhart. For her, the sky was the limit.

AMELIA EARHART, Aviator: I cruised inland until I found a suitable pasture. I landed there after frightening all the cows in the neighborhood and rolled up to the farmer's front door.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: Journey's end. Here she is safe and sound on a farm in Ireland, having just completed the first flight by a woman across the Atlantic.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Earhart was now a national hero. And her disappearance in 1937 only heightened her legend.

Lt. EILEEN COLLINS, Astronaut: She was very popular, a very courageous and a very glamorous woman who loved flying. And because of her, we had more women available to fly in the 1940s to help us get through World War II. And because of these women, women of my generation are able to look back and say, "Hey, they did it. They even flew military airplanes, we can do it, too." NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: Here are women making the tools that our men fight with and doing it just as well as a man.

ANN LANDERS, Advice Columnist: World War II brought many women into the workplace who were not there before. Rosie the riveter is legendary.

MEN: (singing) Rosie the riveter.

BETTE MIDLER: There wasn't one Rosie the Riveter. There were hundreds of thousands of women who took over the jobs that the men left behind when they went off to fight the war. And in doing that, they realized, "Wow, I'm making money. And I'm -- I'm having fun. Holy smoke!" BARBARA WALTERS: When we come back, we'll introduce you to a sports legend named Babe, and we don't mean Babe Ruth.

But first, another woman on the list. One who millions turn to every day.

(voice-over) Ann Landers. Today, this one-time Chicago housewife reaches 90 million readers in 1,200 newspapers. A lot has changed since she started giving common sense advice four decades ago.
ANN LANDERS: The boss problem. I never heard about that 42 years ago. Women didn't have bosses. They stayed home and took care of the kids.

(Commercial Break) ANNOUNCER: "A Celebration: 100 Years Of Great Women" with Barbara Walters continues.

BARBARA WALTERS: At the turn of the century, the idea of a woman competing in any sport was unthinkable and, most of all, laughable. But in 1926, Gertrude Ederle swam the English Channel at the age of 19 to become the most celebrated athlete in the world, male or female.
Two years later, tiny Sonja Henie won the first of three consecutive Olympic gold medals in figure skating and became a Hollywood star. But the most competitive female athlete maybe ever was a lady named Babe.

TRACK AND FIELD ANNOUNCER: Mildred "Babe" Didrikson making the javelin do some traveling.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) In the 1932 Summer Olympics, Babe Didrikson set world records and won two gold medals in the javelin and the hurdles. She excelled in every sport she tried -- from track and field to baseball to golf. "It's not enough to just swing at the ball," she said. "You've got to loosen your girdle and really let fly." And that's what she did. Yes, that's her playing football, tackling an opponent.

JACKIE JOYNER-KERSEE, Athlete: What Babe did, she was able to capture the world with her talent.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) She set more records than any other athlete of her time, male or female. Didrikson was subjected to ridicule about her mannish looks and endless speculation about her sexuality, but she kept going, competing well into the 1950s.

JACKIE JOYNER-KERSEE: Babe opened the door, and Wilma continued to push the door open a little further.

TRACK ANNOUNCER: She is a sprinter.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Track star Wilma Rudolph. She had to overcome discrimination and disability. As a child she was crippled by polio, but in the 1960 Olympics, Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field.

TRACK ANNOUNCER: She has set several new world records.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) And then there is Billie Jean King.

BILLIE JEAN KING: I think most people think I am like the mother of modern sports. WIMBLEDON ANNOUNCER: Billie Jean serves again. BILLIE JEAN KING: I happened to come along at a time when the world was ready for some change.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) And Billie Jean decided she was the woman to change it.

WIMBLEDON ANNOUNCER: Billie Jean serves for match point. Beautiful shot! And the Wimbledon title is hers.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Billie Jean won a record 20 Wimbledon titles. But to really win in the eyes of the world, she would have to beat a man.

HOWARD COSELL: Live from the Astrodome in Houston, Texas, the tennis "Battle of the Sexes." Billie Jean King versus Bobby Riggs. BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) 1973 -- Bobby Riggs was 55 years old. Billie Jean King was 29.

CHRIS EVERT, Athlete: I think that he's really a tough player, so I'd have to give him the edge over Billie Jean.

Men and women were at odds with each other at that point, and they were butting heads. So I think that match belonged in that era.

BILLIE JEAN KING: If you listen to Howard Cosell set the scene for this match.

HOWARD COSELL: A very attractive young lady, sometimes you get the feeling that if she ever let her hair grow down to her shoulders and took her glasses off, you would have somebody vying for a Hollywood screen test.

BILLIE JEAN KING: That is just so typical, talking about my looks as a girl. Not talking about Bobby Riggs and his looks.

HOWARD COSELL: They have started the match. BILLIE JEAN KING: I felt alone, scared, focused. Particularly in those days, you know, we' re the ones, boy, if there's any kind of pressure, the woman's the first to fold like a napkin.

GLORIA STEINEM: She gave us a moment of triumph. It's like Joe Lewis.

BARBARA WALTERS: (on camera) I remember that game, and I wasn't the greatest tennis enthusiast. But, oh, boy, when she won, how we all cheered! HOWARD COSELL: The game is over! Let's watch Bobby Riggs...

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Billie Jean King shattered the myth of male superiority and in the process became Sports Illustrated's first "sportswoman of the year." GYMNASTICS ANNOUNCER: She is one of the strongest gymnasts that I have ever seen.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) And then came the perfect 10. Nadia Comaneci.

GYMNASTICS ANNOUNCER: Beautiful rhythm, right to a handstand.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Tiny 14-year-old Nadia won her three gold medals in the 1976 Olympics. She got seven perfect 10s, a record unmatched to this day.

(Applause) NADIA COMANECI: I heard a lot of noise before I had a chance to see the scoreboard. And when I turn my head, I saw my number, 073, and under that there was 1.00. And I thought, "No, it can't be a one! I think I did better than one." I didn't know what that meant.

GYMNASTICS ANNOUNCER: A perfect 10! BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) What it meant was the scoreboard didn't have room for all those digits. Nobody had ever scored a 10 before.

NADIA COMANECI: And after that, they put four digits, so now they can make a 10. I like to be remembered very simple, like the first perfect 10.

BARBARA WALTERS: When we return, more perfect 10s. This time from the world of music -- Madonna, and the women who gave their voice to this century.
But first, one of the most extraordinary women on anybody's list.
(voice-over) Helen Keller, an outspoken activist for the rights of the disabled -- despite a bout of scarlet fever that left her deaf and blind, she learned to speak.

HELEN KELLER: I am not dumb now.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) With the help of Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller learned five languages using Braille. She wrote more than a dozen books. "Life," said Helen Keller, "is either a daring adventure, or nothing." For her, life was a daring adventure.

(Commercial Break) ANNOUNCER: "A Celebration: 100 Years Of Great Women" with Barbara Walters continues.

BARBARA WALTERS: Of the 100 women on the Ladies Home Journal list, there are only two painters -- Georgia O'Keeffe and Frieda Kahlo. Only two photographers, Margaret Bourke-White and Dorothea Lang. Only two dancers, Martha Graham and Isadora Duncan. And there is only one opera star, Maria Callas.

But there are four popular singers on the list. Perhaps because their music was and still is universal. Each singer influenced the next, all the way up to Madonna. Yes, the "material girl" is on the list.

MADONNA: (singing) Some boys kiss me.
Some boys hug me.
I think they're OK.
I'm in charge of my fantasies. I put myself in these situations with men, and everybody knows, in terms of my image in the public, people don't think of me as a person who's not in charge of my career or my life. OK? And isn't that what feminism is all about, you know, equality for men and women?
(singing) Don't go for second best, baby.
Put your lover to the test.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Madonna...

MADONNA: (singing) Make him express how he feels.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Outrageous? You bet.

MADONNA: (singing) Then you know your love is real.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) She is sexy and shocking, a brilliant marketer who re-invents herself constantly.

MADONNA: I was pigeonholed or labeled as this woman, this raving nymphomaniac who's obsessed with sex and shocking people.

(singing) I want to kiss you in Paris.

GLORIA STEINEM: She was clearly nobody's victim. She was using sex and being in control of sex. And that's rare.

MADONNA: (singing) Wanting, needing.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Here she is as a modern-day Marilyn with a difference.

GLORIA STEINEM: She's taken all the traditional trappings that victimized Marilyn Monroe, and said, "I'm going to control them." So the fans of Marilyn Monroe were largely men and boys. But the fans of Madonna are young girls.

MADONNA: (singing) Let your body move to the music.
Hey, hey, hey.
Come on, vogue.
Vogue.
Let your body go with the flow.

CELINE DION, Singer: Now, that she has a child, she's so different. She's so wonderful. She's been wonderful all the time. But she' s changed many things through her music.

BARBARA WALTERS: (on camera) Do you think that Madonna is a role model, or should be a role model? ROSIE O'DONNELL: Yeah, I think she definitely is a role model. When you talk to women, especially much younger than me, the next generation, like, you know, 25 and below, they have a reverence for her that's kind of unparalleled.

BARBARA WALTERS: Why?

ROSIE O'DONNELL: Because she was the defining pop star of their childhood. When they grew up, she was the one they wanted to be like. And she also was a very successful, powerful woman. Probably the most successful, powerful woman of rock 'n' roll ever.

MADONNA: (singing) And I feel and I feel...
And it just gets harder and I feel.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) If Madonna is the most successful woman in rock 'n' roll, Ella Fitzgerald was the most widely acclaimed jazz singer of the century.
(Scat singing) Tony Bennett called her, "The lady who taught us how to sing." ELLA FITZGERALD: (singing) Somewhere there's heaven.
It's where you are.
Somewhere there's music.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Her work spanned nearly 60 years, in every style from scat to swing, country to bebop.

BETTE MIDLER: Her ear was so superb, and her taste was so exquisite. I mean, if she played -- if she been an instrumentalist, if she had been a piano player or a trumpet player, well, she would have just been the greatest that ever lived.

ELLA FITZGERALD: (singing) .the moon.

BILLIE HOLIDAY: (singing) Them that's got shall have.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) And then, there was Billie Holiday.

BILLIE HOLIDAY: (singing) Them that's not shall lose.
So the Bible says.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) They called her "lady day." But she sang of the night, of heartache and lost love. Billie once said, "The whole basis of my singing is feeling. Unless I feel something, I can't sing." BILLIE HOLIDAY: (singing) God bless the child.
That's got his own.
That's got his own.

JESSYE NORMAN, Opera Singer: The sound that she was making was much less important than what she was saying. I mean, she wasn't sort of busy trying to sort of make a pretty noise. She wanted you to know what was in her heart.

BILLIE HOLIDAY: (singing) Treat me right, baby.
And I'll stay home everyday.

BETTE MIDLER: When I hear the later albums of Billie's, when she was in so much pain and so much trouble and her voice was almost shot, to me, those are the most moving records that she made because you can hear everything that she lived through in those songs.

BILLIE HOLIDAY: (singing) Love is like a faucet.
It turns off and on.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Billie Holiday was a heroin addict. She died at the age of 44.

BILLIE HOLIDAY: (singing) Sometimes when you think it's on, baby.
It has turned off and gone.

JANIS JOPLIN: (singing) One more time...

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Janis Joplin, she lived the blues. The first female superstar in the all-male world of rock 'n' roll. But her world included hard liquor and heroin. Like Billie Holiday, the soul in her music came from the pain in her life.

(Janis Joplin singing) JESSYE NORMAN: She allowed us to see her soul. She just stood there and showed it to everybody.

JANIS JOPLIN: (singing) When you hold me in your arms, (inaudible). Come on, come on, come on, come on and take it. Take another little piece of my heart now, baby.

CELINE DION: Take another little piece of my heart now, baby. When you hear her music, she's so, she's crying all the time. It's so painful. I love her very much because she's very passionate.

JANIS JOPLIN: (singing) You know you got it.
If it makes you feel good.
Yes, indeed.

BETTE MIDLER: I saw her a couple of times at the Fillmore East, and she killed me. She was brilliant. She was completely and utterly brilliant.

JANIS JOPLIN: (singing) And oh, oh, well, honey, Just take me.
Oh, b-b-b-b-baby.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) I'd rather not sing, than sing quiet, " said Joplin. But her voice was silenced in 1970 when heroin claimed the life of the queen of rock 'n' roll. Janis Joplin was just 27.

JANIS JOPLIN: (singing) Tell me what.
Oh, tell me what.
Oh, baby, tell me what.
What love, honey, what love is like.

BARBARA WALTERS: Those were women of passion. And there are all kinds of passion. When we come back, some of the most passionate, provocative and irritating women of our time. But first, a woman on the list who made our world a safer place.

(voice-over) Rachel Carson. This is what propelled Rachel Carson into action -- pesticides. They were sprayed indiscriminately on fields, in cities. The environmental movement was born in this country in 1962 when Carson published an explosive book -- "Silent Spring." RACHEL CARSON: We've heard the benefits of pesticides, but very little about the hazards.

BETTE MIDLER: She said, "We're poisoning ourselves. This has got to stop." Rachel Carsonblew the whistle and rang the bell.

ANNOUNCER: "A Celebration: 100 Years Of Great Women" with Barbara Walters continues after this from our ABC stations.

(Station Break) ANNOUNCER: "A Celebration: 100 Years Of Great Women" with Barbara Walters continues.

BARBARA WALTERS: Feminist. This may be one of the most misunderstood words of this century. At its core, feminism was supposed to be about equality. And equality is what the women you will be meeting next were fighting for. Some of them may have been really annoying. But without them, we would be living today in a very different world.

(TV Clips) ACTOR: What's cooking? ACTRESS: Bleu cheese salad dressing.

FEMALE SINGER: (singing) Is that all there is?
If that's all there, is my friends...

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) It was 1960, and "father knew best." TV told us that true fulfillment was a clean house.

ACTRESS (TV commercial): Shouldn't you try presoaking those things?

BARBARA WALTERS: This was happiness? By now, some women were discovering that the comfortable suburban fantasy wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

ACTRESS (TV commercial): I can't seem to make good coffee.

BETTY FRIEDAN: It was as if there were millions of women, and each one thought she was a freak. She was alone if she wasn't having an orgasm waxing the kitchen floor.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) One of those women was Betty Friedan, a housewife and mother of three. In 1963, she sat down to write a book. It became a manifesto, "The Feminine Mystique."

BETTY FRIEDAN: She doesn't need to devote all of her energy and abilities just to getting that man. And she doesn't need to devote all of her energy and abilities just to having babies. And it's a terrible thing we' re doing to American women in the name of femininity.

GLORIA STEINEM: She told the truth, and many other women who had experienced that truth understood that they were not crazy, that the system was crazy.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Gloria Steinem was a young magazine writer back in 1963 when she went undercover as a "bunny." NARRATOR: One might call the Playboy clubs the triumph of the obvious.

BARBARA WALTERS: (on camera) I want to go back to 1963, when you caused a sensation. What did you learn from that experience? GLORIA STEINEM: I discovered that I had more in common with the bunnies than I did with my smart-ass editors who assigned me to do this. That these were women who were trying to make a living. It was a terrible job. They were underpaid.
We are a movement about power, not a public relations movement.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) The journalist became an activist.

FEMINISTS: We are sisters, be ourselves, power to all women.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Fighting for equal rights for equal pay, leading the pro-choice marches for abortion.

JANE FONDA: Every movement needs a voice, needs someone who can capture in words the essence of what the movement is. That's what Gloria does.

FEMINISTS: Equal pay for equal work.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) By 1970, for the first time in history, nearly half of all women were working. Abortion was legalized in 1973. It was an era of liberation and bra burning. Women took the pill and talked about "free love." BETTE MIDLER: To say we are now free love, who invented that? That was guys invented that, because the women have all the burden of free love.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) There were many who rejected the feminist label, perhaps because it seemed so strident. And they feared being a feminist might mean they could no longer be feminine.

CAROL BURNETT: A lot of people felt that feminists were threatening, that they had to be butch or smoke cigars of stuff like that, which is insane.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Phyllis Schlafly, an outspoken, conservative crusader.

PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY: A whole cabinet for women, that's one of their proposals.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) While Steinem pushed for legislation, Schlafly pushed back against the Equal Rights Amendment.

PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY: I showed that the Equal Rights Amendment would take away rights from women. And we were successful in that. It was carried on with great fervor in many of the state capitals. And we won against overwhelming odds.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Katharine Graham -- if you had to name one woman this century who transformed herself from a shy wife and mother, who had really never worked, into one of the most powerful women of her time, this is the woman you would pick.

KATHARINE GRAHAM, Media Executive: I grew up in the world where women were second-class citizens and, I hate to say, accepted it.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) She was 46 when her husband, Phil Graham, committed suicide. No one expected her to step into his shoes. But that's just what she did, running her family's newspaper, the Washington Post.

(on camera) In many ways, your story is a 20th century woman's story. What was for you the most difficult challenge of this transition? KATHARINE GRAHAM: There were so many difficult ones, I don't know how I could begin, because it was overwhelming. They were all male when I started. And I never got used to it, and they never got used to it. What I finally learned was that they were as scared of having me in the room as I was of being in the room.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) She took the Post from a local newspaper to a national media powerhouse and, along the way, helped bring down a president -- Richard Nixon. But when Graham came face-to-face with feminism, she blinked.

KATHARINE GRAHAM: When Gloria came along and said, "I want to talk to you about women's roles in the world." I said, "That's not for me." BARBARA WALTERS: (on camera) How did you change her view of women? GLORIA STEINEM: Well, I guess, maybe I reminded her that she was one. There's a choice basically, and it's called, you're either a feminist or a masochist. And that's pretty much it.

BARBARA WALTERS: But for women of color, equal rights was a dream beyond their reach. And it took them to a new frontier, the dangerous battlefield known as civil rights.

MARIAN ANDERSON: (singing) Let us break bread together on our knees.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) It may be that the civil rights movement started with a song. Opera singer Marian Anderson was told that she wasn't allowed to sing in Constitution Hall in 1939. The Daughters of the American Revolution told her she wasn't welcome because she was black.
Furious, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt booked Anderson into a much bigger theater -- the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. With a crowd of more than 75,000, her concert became the nation's first civil rights rally.

MARIAN ANDERSON: (singing) Sweet land of liberty.

JESSYE NORMAN: It was a political statement. It was a civil rights statement. And of course, it was a tremendous musical experience for the tens of thousands that were lucky enough to be there that Easter Sunday.

OPRAH WINFREY: What Marian Anderson showed is that, "If you won't let me sing inside, I will just move myself out and sing to the stars. I will sing to the stars." And what it took to do that. BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) The torch was lit and passed to Rosa Parks. She's in her 80s now -- a gentle woman who hardly looks like someone who could start a movement, yet alone a revolution. But that is exactly what Parks did. In Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, the 42-year-old seamstress refused to give up her seat on a public bus to a white passenger.

OPRAH WINFREY: What Rosa Parks did is out in the stratosphere, it' s in the stratosphere what that was. And my life that I'm living would not be possible had she not had the courage to say, "I'm not moving today." ROSA PARKS: Well, we hope to achieve equal rights, as any human being deserves. That's what we're working for.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Rosa Parks was arrested, and for the first time in this nation, black citizens rose up in defiance. In Montgomery, they refused to ride the public buses, a crippling boycott that lasted a full year. It took the Supreme Court to finally rule that segregated public buses were illegal. And it had taken just one person, a woman, to set the ball in motion.

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN, Children's Rights Advocate: You don't have to have a huge amount of education. You don't have to have a huge amount of sophistication. You just have to believe in something deeply, in freedom. And she did. And look at what she sparked.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) What she sparked in Marian Wright Edelman was a passion. "If you don't like the way the world is," she once said, "you change it." CHILDREN: (singing) I'm not afraid.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) And in 1963, there was plenty to change.
(Screaming) (voice-over) The segregated South was a battleground when Edelman first arrived in Mississippi. The young law student had gone to register black voters, a peaceful goal in a time of violence.

MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: I was scared all the time. But it was a sense that when you believe in something so deeply, you're ready to die for that.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) She became the first African- American woman admitted to the Mississippi bar. In 1973, she founded the Children' s Defense Fund. MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN: What will it take for us to stand up and stop the killing of children in America? MAYA ANGELOU: I am that tree planted by the river which will not be moved.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Maya Angelou -- the celebrated poet and novelist. Her proudest moment, she said, was reading her poem at President Clinton's first inaugural in 1993.

MAYA ANGELOU: You have a piercing need for this bright morning dawning for you.
I was standing in front of my new president, my people were looking to me, frightened, you know, trepidation, "Please be good." BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Angelou first found refuge in books and poetry at the age of 7. Raped by her mother's boyfriend, she didn't speak for six years. But she found her voice and, in 1970, told her story in the best-selling novel -- "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings." Another young girl growing up in Mississippi read it and wept.

OPRAH WINFREY: It was the first piece of literature about a black female that validated my life, that made me think the life of a Negro child could be important and worth writing about. I connected to her and that story and gathered strength from that. She came out of it, so can I.

BARBARA WALTERS: Next, can women have it all? Jane Fonda, Bette Midler, Oprah and Katharine Hepburn try to answer that question. But first, a woman on the list who brought a taboo subject out in the open.

(voice-over) Anita Hill -- she brought the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace into our living rooms.

COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Professor, do you swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God? ANITA HILL: I do.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) In 1991, she went public with accusations against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.

ANITA THOMAS: It was really about the ability to stand up and tell the truth about our experiences and face the heat if you will. Not everyone gets to go through the storm and to come out with their lives intact. And I was able to do that.

(Commercial Break) ANNOUNCER: "A Celebration: 100 Years Of Great Women" with Barbara Walters continues.

BARBARA WALTERS: For many of the women on the list, having it all seemed impossible. Margaret Meade devoted her life to anthropology, but we rarely hear about her three failed marriages and her guilt over spending so little time raising her only daughter. Mother Teresa was married to the church. The world's poor were her family.

For these women, their life was their work. And there was little left over for themselves. Yet today, when having the marriage, the career and children is possible, we still wonder if we can have it all.
(on camera) Do you think you can have it all? OPRAH WINFREY: I think you can have it all. You can't have it all at once.

BETTE MIDLER: I don't think you can have it all without some help. I really don't.

KATHARINE GRAHAM: If you want to be a chief executive officer, I don' t think you can probably do justice to your home life or your children.

BARBARA WALTERS: I have said that you can't have it all unless you have a man who also will stay home certain days and help with the children and help with the housework, and so on. Then maybe you can have it all.

GLORIA STEINEM: But the problem is that when I go around and speak on campuses, I still don't get young men standing up and saying, " How can I combine career and family?" BARBARA WALTERS: No, it's the woman who says it.

GLORIA STEINEM: Right.

BARBARA WALTERS: Sure.

GLORIA STEINEM: So as long as half the human race is worrying about this problem, it's not going to get solved.

BARBARA WALTERS: I would not be asking that question "Can you have it all?" to a man.

GLORIA STEINEM: Right.

KATHARINE HEPBURN: I have not lived as a woman, I have lived as a man.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Katharine Hepburn, strong and independent. She did it her way, or not at all. Here's what she had to say when I interviewed her in 1981.
(interviewing) You know, we are in a period in which women are trying so hard to have it all -- the marriage, the children, the career. I think it's very tough. I know how.

KATHARINE HEPBURN: It's impossible. It's impossible. If I were a man, I would not marry a woman with a career, and I'd torture myself as a mother. Supposing little Johnny or little Katie had the mumps, and I had an opening night, I'd want to strangle the children. You see, I really would want to strangle the children.

BARBARA WALTERS: If you were a man, you would not marry a woman with a career? KATHARINE HEPBURN: Nope. I wouldn't be that big a fool. I'd want her to be interested in me, not a career. And a career is fascinating.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) From the moment Hepburn burst onto the screen, she was that sexy, elegant and elusive woman we all wanted to be. (Movie clip) KATHARINE HEPBURN: Isn't the sports department downstairs? ACTOR: Well, yes. Yes, I guess it is. KATHARINE HEPBURN: Then aren't you going in the wrong direction? GLORIA STEINEM: Katharine Hepburn to me was somebody who was smart and complicated and sexual. As opposed to being dumb and sexy, she was smart and sexy.

LAUREN BACALL, Actress: She is a woman who has traveled solo most of her life and very independent. And she was just always Katie, you know? There was just Katie.

SPENCER TRACY (Clip from "Adam's Rib"): Sit down, Pinky.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Hepburn was constantly challenging the notion that women simply sprang from Adam's rib. That was the name of one of the movies that teamed her with the love of her life, Spencer Tracy.

SPENCER TRACY (Clip from "Adam's Rib"): Pinky.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Hepburn and Tracy had a 26- year relationship, but never married. It's hard to imagine Hepburn playing the role of the dutiful wife.

KATHARINE HEPBURN: I mean, I put on pants 50 years ago and declared a sort of middle road.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) But one woman on the list does seem to have it all, Jane Fonda. She has the career, the children and marriage, though she's had more than one.
(interviewing) Jane Fonda does represent so many of the changes in this society.

JANE FONDA: Mm-hmm.

BARBARA WALTERS: It's almost full circle, though, from the Barbarella.

JANE FONDA (Movie clip): Armed, like a naked savage.

BARBARA WALTERS: The sex kitten, to the activist.

JANE FONDA: Choice now.

BARBARA WALTERS: And fitness, right? JANE FONDA (From exercise video): Eight more. Lift, lift.

BARBARA WALTERS: And now, the wife.

JANE FONDA: You know what I've discovered is that, yes, there's been lots of changes. And they've become very noticeable depending on who I'm married to. But there's a leitmotif through it all. And it's a leitmotif of strength. I've gone from strength to strength.

(Movie clip) And why do I still want to trick? Why do I still walk by a phone? BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Fonda won her first Oscar in 1972, playing a prostitute who is being stalked. JANE FONDA: When the killer confronts me, and I hear the tape recording he's made of the voice of my friend who he killed...

(Screaming) I had prepared in the scene to play scared. And instead, I wept.

BARBARA WALTERS: You're weeping now, Jane.

JANE FONDA: Well, it moves me so much. I -- the incredible brutality, physical brutality against women and girls.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) In the '90s, Fonda stopped acting and now spends much of her time on her favorite cause, preventing teenage pregnancy.

JANE FONDA: Over the past years, we've learned that adolescent pregnancy is not so much a cause but rather a symptom.

I've divided my life into three acts. I'm in my third act. Very important, you know enough about books and movies and plays. The third act has to pull it all together.

BARBARA WALTERS: And in our third act, we'll meet some very powerful women who tried to put it all together. But first, the youngest woman on our list.
(voice-over) Anne Frank -- she wrote just one book, "The Diary Of A Young Girl." Anne Frank died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945 at the age of 15.

NATALIE PORTMAN: I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness. I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us, too. In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals. Perhaps the day will come when I will be able to realize them.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Seventeen-year-old Natalie Portman portrayed Anne Frank last year in the Broadway revival.

NATALIE PORTMAN: She taught us that even when you are up against the worst kind of evil in the world, you can still retain your spirit.

(Commercial Break) MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, Secretary of State: I, Madeleine Corbell Albright...
Vice Pres. AL GORE: Do solemnly swear.

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: Do solemnly swear.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Madeleine Albright -- America's first female Secretary of State. Since 1997, Albright has been front and center, from Baghdad to Kosovo.

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: Good afternoon.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) A blunt, often controversial voice on foreign policy.
(on camera) Do you think Thomas Jefferson ever thought there'd be a woman? MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: I doubt that he did. But I have to tell you what really puts it into perspective for me is when I tell people I have Thomas Jefferson's job.

BARBARA WALTERS: (on camera) Thomas Jefferson, our first Secretary of State, became our third president. When will we finally have our first female president? Interestingly, the United States, which led the way in women's rights, lags behind when it comes to real political power for women. For that we must look to other continents.

To Indira Gandhi, from 1966 to 1984, prime minister of the world's largest democracy, India. To Golda Meir, from 1969 to 1974, prime minister of a young and struggling country named Israel. And Margaret Thatcher, Great Britain's first female prime minister. She held the post longer than anyone in modern history, 11 years.

Closer to home, the list includes four American first ladies. And the earliest on the list influenced the latest.

(voice-over) Hillary Clinton has chosen a role model whom she jokingly says she looks to for advice, although her much-admired mentor has been dead for almost 40 years.
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, First Lady: When I last spoke with Mrs. Roosevelt, she wanted me to tell all of you how pleased she is by this great, great new statue.
BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Eleanor Roosevelt -- perhaps the most influential American woman of this century.

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT: We want a prosperity which will make life more worth living.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Roosevelt spoke out at a time when few women dared to speak at all. She even held press conferences, 300 of them.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: And Mrs. Roosevelt transformed the duty of a first lady from that of a mere social hostess to one of aggressive participation in national life and affairs.

KATHARINE GRAHAM: She was a perfectly extraordinary, strong, able woman who had launched on a career of her own at a time when it wasn' t done.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: King George and his queen welcome Mrs. Roosevelt to Britain, the first time a president's wife had traveled abroad.

ANN LANDERS: I knew Eleanor Roosevelt. In fact, I have a wonderful picture of the two of us. I bet the woman was over six feet tall. And she was a broad-shouldered type, but she had a charm about her that was just incredible.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) But Roosevelt wasn't always revered. She was often criticized for going where first ladies had never gone.

BETTY FORD: One of the images I have of her was seeing a picture of her going down into the coal mines with the coal miners and the hat. I think she definitely redefined the role of first lady for me.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Betty Ford -- as a first lady, she broke the barrier on silence about drugs, alcohol and cancer.

NEWS ANCHOR: Bethesda Naval Medical Center today released pathology reports on First Lady Betty Ford in the aftermath of her operation for breast cancer this weekend.

BETTY FORD: Hundreds of thousands of women in the world have breast cancer. I felt I had to share my experience with them.

ROSIE O'DONNELL: I think it paved the way for so many women now who are not ashamed or stigmatized by that word or by that diagnosis, breast cancer. And also, by living, she proved that you can survive it.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) And Betty Ford saved lives by revealing another dark secret, the first lady was seriously addicted to drugs and alcohol. It was sadly apparent when I interviewed her at the White House in 1976.

BETTY FORD: They have a room at -- the lower level...

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Her family decided to take action.

GERALD FORD, Former President: We wanted her to understand we loved her. And if she didn't respond to the intervention, didn't take treatment, the likelihood was that she would die.

BETTY FORD: It was what I needed. I needed somebody who cared to tell me I was sick.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Betty Ford saved herself and decided she could save others. She founded the Betty Ford Clinic in 1982.

ANN RICHARDS: Betty Ford was a truly courageous woman. To say, "I' m a human being. I have a serious problem, and I'm going to deal with that problem." BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) And what of today' s first lady? Hillary Rodham Clinton.

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: I appreciate what you all are doing. I saw that, great.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) From the start, she has been more of a politician than a political wife. Pres. BILL CLINTON: My slogan might well be, "Buy one, get one free." HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: Good to see you, Hillary Clinton.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) But early on, as we remember, she got in trouble for speaking her mind. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas.

KATHARINE GRAHAM: She should say what she thinks, and if it means anything, she should be taken seriously. But I don't think that she should act as co-president.

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: And to deal with the problems that are affecting this country.

ANN LANDERS: She's a real person, and it comes across. She could be president.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Perhaps, but there are those that felt that even as first lady, she expressed herself too often. I talked with Mrs. Clinton about this in 1996.
(on camera) Do you think the American people are ready yet to have a first lady who has strong opinions and an agenda?

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON: I think so. I think some are and some aren' t. And I believe that this has been a learning experience for me, coming here and not really understanding all the expectations that people sort of put on this role.

REPORTER: Mrs. Clinton, channel 7...

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) No first lady has been more investigated or scrutinized. But perhaps because of her handling of her husband' s troubles, Hillary Clinton has found her own approval ratings soaring.

(on camera) Now, there might have been a time, Gloria, when you would have criticized Hillary Clinton for standing by her man no matter what he did. How do you rationalize that? GLORIA STEINEM: I don' t. I mean, I think Hillary Clinton is not a victim. She is very smart. She is a full partner. If you see them together, you realize -- it seems to me that they really like each other. It's her choice. I respect her choice.

BARBARA WALTERS: Simple as that? GLORIA STEINEM: Simple as that. I hope she's having a sex life of her own.

(Laughter) BARBARA WALTERS: When we come back, the legends -- Jacqueline Kennedy, Princess Diana, and Marilyn Monroe.

ANNOUNCER: "A Celebration: 100 Years Of Great Women" With Barbara Walters continues after this from our ABC stations.

(Station Break) ANNOUNCER: "A Celebration: 100 Years Of Great Women" With Barbara Walters continues.

BARBARA WALTERS: Everybody has a dream. Mine was to one day interview the legendary Greta Garbo. In fact, I once said I would quit if only Greta Garbo would agree to an interview with me. And then I was afraid she would call me up and say, promise?

I also never interviewed the three legendary women we're going to meet next. They tried to carve out some normalcy in their lives, but their fame made it almost impossible.

(voice-over) Jacqueline Kennedy was American royalty from the day we first met her. As first lady, she enthralled us. She took us on a tour of the White House that she helped restore.

JACQUELINE KENNEDY: It just seemed to me such a shame when we came here to find hardly anything of the past in the house.

BETTY FORD: Jacqueline Kennedy brought a new aura to the White House. There's no question about it.

KATHARINE GRAHAM: She lit up the room. In a funny way I couldn't take my eyes off her. She had such charm, and the whispery voice and huge eyes.

JACQUELINE KENNEDY: This is the end of the room where Pablo Casals played for us.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) But her time in the White House was tragically about to come to an end.

REPORTER: It appears as though something has happened in the motorcade route. Something, I repeat, something has happened in the motorcade route.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) She was just 34, a widow who now planned every detail of her husband's funeral.

JACQUELINE KENNEDY: I want to take this opportunity to express my appreciation for the hundreds and thousands of messages, nearly 800, 000 in all, which my children and I have received over the past few weeks.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) What mattered most to Jacqueline Kennedy were her children. "If you bungle raising your kids," she once said, "I don't think whatever else you do well matters very much." In 1994, she died at home with her family by her side.
If Jacqueline Kennedy was American royalty...

("Wedding Symphony" playing) ...the royal legend of this century was Princess Diana. The bride had just turned 20.

PRINCESS DIANA: I, Diana Frances, take thee, Philip Charles Arthur George...
Here was a fairy story that everybody wanted to work. And so, it was isolating. But it was also a situation where you couldn't indulge in feeling sorry for yourself. You had to either sink or swim.
BRITISH COMMENTATOR: Well, there's no doubt she has lost weight since the birth...

JANE FONDA: I always wished that I -- that I had known her. We would have had a lot to talk about.
BARBARA WALTERS: (on camera) The bulimia? JANE FONDA: Yeah. BARBARA WALTERS: The eating disorders? JANE FONDA: The being married and not feeling loved, all those kinds of things.
BARBARA WALTERS: Yeah. The exercise and the overdoing all of that? Whatever.

JANE FONDA: Yeah, yeah.

BARBARA WALTERS: Fascinating.

JANE FONDA: She used to use my tapes. And I just couldn't get up the courage to call her.

BARBARA WALTERS: You talked very frankly with Princess Diana. What were some of the things that you said to her? KATHARINE GRAHAM: I said once that shouldn't she go back and get some more education. And she looked at me with some degree of scorn and said, "I've been educated." BARBARA WALTERS: Princess Diana, what's the most important lesson?

GLORIA STEINEM: Never marry a prince.

BARBARA WALTERS: We grew up with, "Someday my prince will come." Cinderella marries the prince.

GLORIA STEINEM: Yeah, but there was a reason why those stories never continued after marriage. They didn't want you to know what happened.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) After her divorce, she began to find her way, spending time with her sons, crusading against AIDS and land mines. But wherever Diana went, the paparazzi followed.
PRINCESS DIANA: Could I ask you to respect my children's space?

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Her every move was documented. Especially, when it seemed she might be falling in love again.

(Bell tolling) ELTON JOHN: (singing) Good-bye English rose From the country lost without your soul.
Who'll miss the wings of your compassion.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Elton John's song was originally written for another woman, Marilyn Monroe, whose legend has also grown since her death.

ELTON JOHN: (singing) You've lived your life Like a candle in the wind.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) She went from being Norma Jean Baker, who grew up in orphanages, to Marilyn Monroe, sex goddess. "The most beautiful girl America could dream up," said one writer. From the beginning, we couldn't take our eyes off her. Riveting, even in a early TV commercial.

MARILYN MONROE (TV Commercial): Cynthia will just love that Royal Tritan.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) She became a starlet.

(Movie clips) MARILYN MONROE: I hate a careless man. ACTOR: Your picture has been almost on the cover of all popular magazines, hasn' t it? MARILYN MONROE: No, not the Ladies Home Journal. JANE FONDA: She walked in a room, and all the energy went...

(Clip from "How To Marry A Millionaire") MARILYN MONROE: (singing) I've heard of affairs that are strictly platonic.
But diamonds are a girls best friend.

LAUREN BACALL: All right, put them on. No men here yet.

At the time that we made "How To Marry A Millionaire," she was just going out with Joe DiMaggio. And she had this fantasy about, she wanted to have children, and she -- family life. And of course, it wasn't in the cards for her to have a family life.

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) She never got to live out that fantasy, and after 29 movies and a decade as America's favorite pin-up girl, Monroe herself said there was nothing left. "I have given myself away, the whole of me, every part." BETTE MIDLER: She really wanted not just to be a beautiful face. She wanted to be known as a great actress. She wanted to be known as intelligent.
BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) In 1962, Marilyn Monroe sat for a Life magazine photo session and rare a radio interview.

MARILYN MONROE: We are all born sexual creatures, thank God. It's a pity so many people despise and crush this natural gift.

NEWS ANCHOR: In a last tribute...

BARBARA WALTERS: (voice-over) Just two weeks later, she was dead, reportedly from an overdose of sleeping pills.
(on camera) You met Marilyn Monroe. What was she like?

GLORIA STEINEM: She was so vulnerable, so vulnerable. And I think I was haunted by her because she died before the women's movement came along. And I kept thinking she had so many of the experiences that would have been better understood now -- being sexually abused as a little girl, being turned into an object not a person, being used as a dumb blond. You know, could the women's movement have saved her life? BARBARA WALTERS: When we come back, Elizabeth Taylor on the importance of men in the next 100 years. Will women need men?

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: Oh, yes. Oh, God, yes!

(Commercial Break) BARBARA WALTERS: So here we are, at the end of the century. With all the advances, women in general still make less money than men, do more housework, spend more time with the kids. But what about the next millennium?

(interviewing) How do you think women are going to be different 50 years from now?

ROSIE O'DONNELL: Fifty years from now? I think they'll be more independent than they are. And I think probably more focused on family. You know, I think we sort of swung back in the other way. It was, like, those '50s values of the woman has to stay home, "No way, let's rebel against that." And, you know, in the -- in the '80s, it's, like, super woman, do everything, and go. And I think you -- we're going to settle somewhere in the middle.

BARBARA WALTERS: What is left for the women of the 21st century? GLORIA STEINEM: We know that we can do what men can do, but we still don't know that men can do what women can do. That's absolutely crucial. We can't go on doing two jobs.

NADIA COMANECI: We're not quite equal, but we're getting there.

ANN RICHARDS: During my grandmother's lifetime, the vote was denied to idiots, imbeciles, the insane and women. And one generation later, I was the governor of this state. We have come a very long way.

BETTE MIDLER: I don't think there are going to be great movements of women moving one way or another.

BARBARA WALTERS: So you think the 21st century, for women, is going to be individual. You want to stay home, stay home. You want to have a career, have a career.

BETTE MIDLER: Yes, yes. No more sheep? BARBARA WALTERS: Look ahead to the next millennium, will women need men? ELIZABETH TAYLOR: Oh, yes. BARBARA WALTERS: Yes? ELIZABETH TAYLOR: Oh, God, yes. BARBARA WALTERS: I mean, they can have babies without men. Why do they need men? ELIZABETH TAYLOR: No, no, no, no, no. Oh, to cuddle up to. Oh, God, to smooch with. Definitely. To make love with. Oh, God, yeah. Women need men.

BARBARA WALTERS: I'd be the last to argue with that. When we come back, I have a little disclosure to make.

(Commercial Break) BARBARA WALTERS: There are, of course, dozens left on the list of 100 we didn't get to. We probably needed at least another 90 minutes. So here's my wish for the millennium. One hundred years from now, women will have found such a secure place in this world that it will not only be impossible to confine the list to 100, but also unnecessary to categorize us by gender.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that I am also on the Ladies Home Journal list. I am slightly embarrassed, but very proud.

For more about the 100 most important women of the century, you can find the Ladies Home Journal book at your local bookstore or visit us at thecentury.com.

I'm Barbara Walters. Thank you for watching. For all of us at ABC News, good night.

Transcribed by Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. under license from American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission. For further information please contact ABC's Office of the General Counsel.

BARBARA WALTERS, A CELEBRATION: 100 YEARS OF GREAT WOMEN. , ABC Special Report, 04-30-1999.