Rona Barrett

Rona Barrett
Barrett in 1975.
Born	Rona Burstein (1936-10-08) October 8, 1936 (age 80) New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Actress Gossip columnist
Years active	1957–91
Spouse(s)	Bill Trowbridge (m. 1973; div. 1982) Daniel Busby (m. 2008)

Rona Barrett (born Rona Burstein, October 8, 1936, New York City) is an American gossip columnist and businesswoman. She currently runs the Rona Barrett Foundation, a non-profit organization in Santa Ynez, California, dedicated to the aid and support of senior citizens in need.

Burstein was born on October 8, 1936, in New York City. As a teenager, she overcame a degenerative hip condition that made walking extremely difficult, and organized fan clubs for popular singers she admired, such as Eddie Fisher and Steve Lawrence. She became a gossip columnist for the Bell-McClure newspaper syndicate in 1957, and soon went to work for the management handling teen idols Frankie Avalon and Fabian.

In 1966, she began broadcasting Hollywood gossip on the Los Angeles television station KABC-TV. She appeared on TV regularly, going on to appear on ABC's five owned and operated stations around the country. However, not everyone was thrilled with the arrangement. WABC-TV in New York put her pre-recorded gossip segment into its nightly local news, but anchor Roger Grimsby would generally introduce it by making disparaging comments about her. Barrett made the enemies list of Frank Sinatra by criticizing his personal life, particularly his relationships with his children. Barrett also invoked the ire of actor Ryan O'Neal after she wrote some unflattering things about him. To retaliate, he supposedly sent her a box containing a live tarantula Spider. She developed the first in-depth personal TV specials about film, television, music, sports and political celebrities, and had a series of magazines on the entertainment industry that were top-rated at newsstands, including Rona Barrett's Hollywood: Nothing But the Truth, published by Laufer Media, edited by Bill Royce and Judy Wieder.