BARBARA WALTERS engaged in a war of words with her former "View" co-host STAR JONES this week, putting the spotlight squarely on the veteran broadcast journalist's personal life and behind-the-scenes confessions.

Tonight on ET, we reveal Barbara's heartbreak, from a miscarriage and taking valium before her third wedding to her father's tragic suicide attempt…

"I think he was desperate and terribly depressed and tried to kill himself with an overdose of sleeping pills," says Barbara of her father, an impresario who owned several nightclubs but stumbled when one of them failed. "It was a terribly, terribly difficult time, and it also meant from then on that he lost everything, and I had to support my mother, my father, my sister and my child. Maybe that's where [my] drive came from; maybe that's where [my] ambition came from."

Barbara adds, "I had not been close to my father and I had a lot of resentment; I didn't see him very much -- he worked all night and slept all day -- it was a very glamorous life on the surface and a lot of people envied me. I think I realized when [he tried to kill himself] how much I loved him."

Available now, Audition chronicles Barbara's struggles and triumphs as a tenacious woman in a male-dominated broadcast journalism field, along with her sometimes racy private life -- including a secret affair with married African-American U.S. Senator EDWARD BROOKE -- and the anguished choices she was forced to make to balance career and family.