Mike Wallace | |
|---|---|
 Wallace in 1997 | |
| Born | Myron Leon Wallace (1918-05-09)May 9, 1918 Brookline, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | April 7, 2012(2012-04-07) (aged 93) New Canaan, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Education | University of Michigan (BA) |
| Occupations |
|
| Years active | 1939–2008 |
| Employer | CBS Broadcasting Inc. |
| Notable credit | 60 Minutes (1968–2008) |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 2, includingChris |
Myron Leon Wallace (May 9, 1918 – April 7, 2012) was an Americanbroadcast journalist, and television personality. Known for hisinvestigative journalism,[1] he interviewed a wide range of prominent newsmakers during his seven-decade career. He was one of the original correspondents featured onCBS news program60 Minutes, which debuted in 1968. Wallace retired as a regular full-time correspondent in 2006, but still appeared occasionally on the series until 2008. He is the father ofChris Wallace.
Wallace interviewed many politicians, celebrities, and academics.[2][3][4]
Wallace, whose family's surname was originally Wallik, was born on May 9, 1918, inBrookline, Massachusetts, to Russian Jewish immigrant parents.[5][6] He identified asJewish and claimed it was his ethnicity (instead of religion) throughout his life. His father was a grocer and insurance broker.[7] Wallace attendedBrookline High School, graduating in 1935.[8] He graduated from theUniversity of Michigan four years later with aBachelor of Arts degree. While a college student, he was a reporter for theMichigan Daily and belonged to the Alpha Gamma chapter of theZeta Beta Tau fraternity.[9]
Wallace appeared as a guest on the popular radioquiz showInformation Please on February 7, 1939, when he was in his last year at the University of Michigan. He spent his first summer after graduation working on-air atInterlochen Center for the Arts.[10] His first radio job was as a newscaster andcontinuity writer for WOOD radio inGrand Rapids, Michigan. This lasted until 1940, when he moved toWXYZ radio inDetroit, Michigan, as an announcer. He then became a freelance radio worker inChicago.
Wallace enlisted in theUnited States Navy in 1943 and duringWorld War II served as a communications officer on theUSS Anthedon, asubmarine tender. He saw no combat but traveled to Hawaii, Australia, andSubic Bay in the Philippines, then patrolling the South China Sea, the Philippine Sea and south of Japan. After being discharged in 1946, Wallace returned to Chicago.
Wallace announced for the radio showsCurtain Time,[11]Ned Jordan: Secret Agent,Sky King,The Green Hornet,[12] andThe Spike Jones Show.[13] It is sometimes reported Wallace announced forThe Lone Ranger,[14] but Wallace said that he never had done so.[15] From 1946 through 1948, he portrayed the title character onThe Crime Files of Flamond onWGN and in syndication.
Wallace announced wrestling in Chicago in the late 1940s and early 1950s, sponsored by Tavern Pale beer.
In the late 1940s, Wallace was a staff announcer for theCBS radio network. He had displayed his comic skills when he appeared oppositeSpike Jones in dialogue routines. He was also the voice of Elgin-American in the company's commercials onGroucho Marx'sYou Bet Your Life. As Myron Wallace, he portrayed New York City detective Lou Kagel on the short-lived radio drama seriesCrime on the Waterfront.
In 1949, Wallace began to move to the new medium of television. In that year, he starred under the name Myron Wallace in a short-lived police drama,Stand By for Crime.[16]
Wallace hosted a number ofgame shows in the 1950s, includingThe Big Surprise,Who's the Boss? andWho Pays?. Early in his career, Wallace was not known primarily as a news broadcaster. It was not uncommon during that period for newscasters to announce, to deliver commercials and to host game shows;Douglas Edwards,John Daly,John Cameron Swayze andWalter Cronkite hosted game shows as well. Wallace also hosted thepilot episode ofNothing but the Truth, which was helmed byBud Collyer when it aired under the titleTo Tell the Truth. Wallace occasionally served as a panelist onTo Tell the Truth in the 1950s. He also made commercials for a variety of products, includingProcter & Gamble's Fluffo brand shortening.[citation needed] In the summer of 1959, he was the host on the NBC game showWho Pays?.[17]
Wallace also hosted two late-night interview programs,Night Beat (broadcast in New York City during 1955–1957, only onDuMont'sWABD)[18] andThe Mike Wallace Interview onABC in 1957–1958. See alsoProfiles in Courage, section:Authorship controversy.
In 1959,Louis Lomax told Wallace about theNation of Islam. Lomax and Wallace produced a five-part documentary about the organization,The Hate That Hate Produced, which aired during the week of July 13, 1959. The program marked the first time that mostwhite people heard about the Nation, its leader,Elijah Muhammad, and its charismatic spokesman,Malcolm X.[19]
By the early 1960s, Wallace's primary income came from commercials forParliament cigarettes, touting their "man's mildness" (he had a contract withPhilip Morris to pitch their cigarettes as a result of the company's original sponsorship ofThe Mike Wallace Interview).
Between June 1961 and June 1962, Wallace andJoyce Davidson hosted a New York-based nightly interview program forWestinghouse Broadcasting[20] calledPM East for one hour; it was paired with the half-hourPM West, which was hosted bySan Francisco Chronicle television critic Terrence O'Flaherty. Westinghouse syndicated the series to television stations that it owned and to a few other cities.WFAA channel 8 in Dallas, Texas carried it, but viewers in other southwestern states, in the Deep South and in the metropolitan areas ofChicago andPhiladelphia were unable to watch it.
A frequent guest on thePM East segment wasBarbra Streisand, though only the audio of some of her conversations with Wallace survives,[20] as Westinghouse wiped the videotapes and kinescopes were never made or were thrown away.
Also in the early 1960s, Wallace was the host of theDavid Wolper–producedBiography series.
After his elder son's death in 1962, Wallace decided to get back into news and hosted an early version ofCBS Morning News from 1963 through 1966. In 1964 he interviewedMalcolm X, who, half-jokingly, commented "I probably am a dead man already."[21] The black leader was assassinated a few months later in February 1965.
Wallace's career as the lead reporter on60 Minutes led to some run-ins with the people interviewed and claims of misconduct by female colleagues. Wallace was critical offeminism. In the 1950s, Wallace was quoted as saying, "It helps if a wife walks one step behind her husband. European women have that by-your-leave-my-lord attitude that you just don’t find in American women. They’re infinitely more self-absorbed. European women let the men run things and quite right they are too!" When questioned in a 1977 interview withGood Housekeeping, Wallace claimed to "stand by every word" of what he had said, but by 1979, he had softened that view somewhat. He also claimed feminism made women more unattractive, saying, "So many feminists in our business lose that soft, round, appealing quality—I don’t know how else to define it."[22]
While interviewingLouis Farrakhan, Wallace alleged that Nigeria was the most corrupt country in the world. Farrakhan immediately shot back that Americans were in no moral position to judge, declaring "Has Nigeria dropped an atomic bomb that killed people inHiroshima andNagasaki? Have they killed off millions ofNative Americans?" "Can you think of a more corrupt country?" asked Wallace. "I'm living in one," said Farrakhan.[23]
Wallace interviewed GeneralWilliam Westmoreland for the CBS specialThe Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception that aired on January 23, 1982.[24] Westmoreland thensued Wallace and CBS forlibel. The trial ended in February 1985 when the case was settled out of court just before it would have gone to the jury. Each side agreed to pay its own costs and attorney fees, and CBS issued a clarification of its intent with respect to the original story.
In 1981, Wallace was forced to apologize for a racial slur he had made about Blacks and Hispanics. During a break while preparing a60 Minutes report on a bank that had been accused of duping low-income Californians, Wallace was caught on tape joking that "You bet your ass [the contracts are] hard to read if you're reading them over the watermelon or the tacos!"[25][26][27][28]
Attention was again drawn to that incident several years later when protests were raised after Wallace was selected to deliver a university commencement address during a ceremony within whichNelson Mandela was awarded an honorary doctorate in absentia for his fight against racism. Wallace initially called the protesters' complaint "absolute foolishness".[29] However, he subsequently apologized for his earlier remark and added that when he had been a student decades earlier on the same university campus, "though it had never really caused me any serious difficulty here ... I was keenly aware of being Jewish, and quick to detect slights, real or imagined.... We Jews felt a kind of kinship [with blacks]", but "Lord knows, we weren't riding the same slave ship."[30]
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Wallace's reputation has been retrospectively affected by his admission that he had harassed female colleagues at60 Minutes over many years. In the 1970s and 1980s, he was known for putting his hand on the backs of his female CBS News co-workers and unsnapping the clasps on their bras, as well as inquiring about their sex lives. Wallace admitted this inRolling Stone magazine in 1991: 'It wasn't a secret. I have done that'.[31] In 2018, claims of sexual misconduct at60 Minutes led to the resignation of executive producerJeff Fager, who had assumed the role of Executive Producer following the retirement of the show's creator,Don Hewitt. He resigned several months after a July 27 story byRonan Farrow inThe New Yorker.[32] Not only did Farrow's story accuse Fager of ignoring and enabling misconduct by several high-ranking male producers at60 Minutes, but Farrow also cited former employees who accused Fager himself of misconduct.[33]
Former60 Minutes producer Ira Rosen wrote that, in addition to the aforementioned sexual harassment, Wallace would also verbally abuse his colleagues. Rosen painted the60 Minutes working environment during his tenure as a toxic workplace with frequent incidents of sexual and verbal harassment.[34]
On March 14, 2006, Wallace announced his retirement from60 Minutes after 37 years with the program. He continued working for CBS News as a "Correspondent Emeritus", albeit at a reduced pace.[35] In August 2006, Wallace interviewed Iranian PresidentMahmoud Ahmadinejad.[36] Wallace's last CBS interview was with retired baseball starRoger Clemens in January 2008 on60 Minutes.[37] Wallace's previously vigorous health (Morley Safer described him in 2006 as "having the energy of a man half his age") began to fail, and in June 2008 his sonChris said that his father would not be returning to television.[38]
Wallace expressed regret for not having secured an interview with First LadyPat Nixon.[39]
Wallace had two children with his first wife, Norma Kaphan.[40] Their younger son,Chris, is also a journalist. Their elder son, Peter, died at age 19 in a mountain-climbing accident inGreece in 1962.[41]
From 1949 to 1954, Wallace was married to his second wife,Patrizia "Buff" Cobb, an actress and stepdaughter ofGladys Swarthout. The couple hosted theMike and Buff Show on CBS television in the early 1950s. They also hostedAll Around Town in 1951 and 1952.[42] She died in 2010.[5]
He was married to his third wife, Lorraine Perigord, from 1955 until their divorce in 1986.[5]
The same year as his divorce from his third wife (1986), he married his fourth and final wife, Mary Yates, the widow of one of his best friends and television producer, Ted Yates, who died in 1967 while on assignment for NBC News during theSix-Day War.[5]
In addition to his two sons, Wallace had a stepdaughter, Pauline Dora, and two stepsons, Eames and Angus Yates.[5]
For many years, Wallace unknowingly suffered fromdepression. In an article that he wrote forGuideposts, Wallace related, "I'd had days when I felt blue and it took more of an effort than usual to get through the things I had to do."[43] His condition worsened in 1984 after General William Westmoreland filed a$120 million libel lawsuit against Wallace and CBS over statements that were made in the documentaryThe Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception (1982). Westmoreland claimed that the documentary made him appear as if he had manipulatedintelligence. The lawsuit,Westmoreland v. CBS, was later dropped after CBS issued a statement explaining they never intended to portray the general as disloyal or unpatriotic. During the proceedings, Wallace was hospitalized with what was diagnosed as exhaustion. His wife Mary forced him to go to a doctor, who diagnosed Wallace with clinical depression. He was prescribed anantidepressant and underwentpsychotherapy. Out of a belief that it would be perceived as weakness, Wallace kept his depression a secret until he revealed it in an interview withBob Costas on Costas' late-night talk show,Later.[43] In a later interview with colleagueMorley Safer, he admitted having attempted suicide circa 1986.[44]
Wallace received apacemaker more than 20 years before his death, and underwenttriple bypass surgery in January 2008.[5] He lived in a care facility the last several years of his life.[5] In 2011,CNN hostLarry King visited him and reported that he was in good spirits, but that his physical condition was noticeably declining.
Wallace considered himself a political moderate. He was a friend ofNancy Reagan and her family for over 75 years.[45] Fox News said, "He didn't fit the stereotype of the Eastern liberal journalist." Interviewed by his son onFox News Sunday, he was asked if he understood why people feel disaffection toward mainstream news media. "They think they're wide-eyed commies; liberals," Mike replied, a notion he dismissed as "damned foolishness".[46]
In a 1979 interview withMother Jones magazine, Wallace lamented the idea that he was regarded by peers as the "in-house conservative" at CBS News, saying he had "liberal inclinations" and had come from a family of "Roosevelt Democrats." However, coveringRichard Nixon andSpiro Agnew on the1968 presidential campaign trail made him more sympathetic to their points of view, and Wallace developed positive relationships with both men, and was also close withHenry Kissinger andWilliam F. Buckley. Nixon wanted Wallace to be his press secretary.[22]
Wallace rejected the notion that the United States was a structurally flawed society, citing his humble upbringing and later success (as well as the success of60 Minutes) as proof theAmerican Dream worked. He was critical of socialism and government intervention in the economy, calling theUnited Kingdom a "sad country to visit" due to its stagnating economy, which he blamed on Britain at the time being a "planned economy", and warned the United States would soon follow down the same path.[22]
Wallace died at his residence inNew Canaan, Connecticut, from natural causes on April 7, 2012.[5][47] The night after Wallace's death,Morley Safer announced his death on60 Minutes. On April 15, 2012, a full episode of60 Minutes aired that was dedicated to remembering Wallace's life.[48][49][50] He is buried at West Chop Cemetery inTisbury, Massachusetts.[51]
In 1989, Wallace was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Pennsylvania.[52] Wallace's professional honors included 21Emmy Awards,[5] among them a report just weeks before theSeptember 11 attacks for an investigation on the formerSoviet Union'ssmallpox program and concerns aboutterrorism. He also won threeAlfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, threeGeorge Foster Peabody Awards, a Robert E. Sherwood Award, a Distinguished Achievement Award from theUniversity of Southern California School of Journalism, the Golden Plate Award of theAmerican Academy of Achievement,[53] and aRobert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in the international broadcast category. In September 2003, Wallace received a Lifetime Achievement Emmy, his 20th.[citation needed] Most recently, on October 13, 2007, Wallace was awarded the University of Illinois Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism.
Wallace was played by actorChristopher Plummer in the 1999 feature filmThe Insider. The screenplay was based on theVanity Fair article "The Man Who Knew Too Much" byMarie Brenner, which was about Wallace caving in to corporate pressure to kill a story aboutJeffrey Wigand, awhistle-blower trying to exposeBrown & Williamson's dangerous business practices in the manufacture of cigarettes. Wallace disliked his on-screen portrayal and maintained that he was in fact very eager to have Wigand's story aired in full.
Wallace was played by actor Stephen Rowe in the stage version ofFrost/Nixon, but he was omitted from the screenplay of the2008 film adaptation and thus the movie itself. In the 1999 American broadcast television movieHugh Hefner: Unauthorized, Wallace is portrayed byMark Harelik. In the filmA Face in the Crowd (1957), Wallace portrayed himself. In 2020, Greg Dehm played Wallace in episode 6 of the second season ofManhunt, re-creating Wallace's 1996 interview on60 Minutes withRichard Jewell, the security guard who discovered a bomb at Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park in July 1996. In the filmThe Apprentice (2024), Wallace was portrayed byStuart Hughes.
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