'60 Minutes' correspondent was known for his hard-hitting interview style.
By Gil Kaufman
Mike Wallace
Photo: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images
Veteran TV reporter and longtime "60 Minutes" correspondent Mike Wallace died on Saturday at the age of 93. Over 50 years as a journalist Wallace developed a reputation as a dogged interrogator unafraid to ask his subjects hard, uncomfortable questions, which he often set up with the soft-touch phrase, "forgive me."
Wallace, who was one of the founding hosts of pioneering TV news magazine "60 Minutes," retired in 2006, occasionally returning to the show to do interviews with the likes of Mitt Romney and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He underwent triple bypass heart surgery in 2008 and died after what was described as a long illness in New Haven, Connecticut, on Saturday.
"All of us at CBS News and particularly at '60 Minutes' owe so much to Mike," said Jeff Fager, chairman of CBS News and a longtime executive producer of "60 Minutes," in a statement, which praised the reporter for no-holds-barred tactics that made him "synonymous with the tough interview — a style he practically invented for television more than half a century ago ... Without him and his iconic style, there probably wouldn't be a '60 Minutes.' There simply hasn't been another broadcast journalist with that much talent. It almost didn't matter what stories he was covering, you just wanted to hear what he would ask next," Fager said.
Wallace interviewed some of the most iconic figures of the 20th century, lecturing then-Russian President Vladimir Putin, grilling some of late president Richard Nixon's Watergate conspirators on their nefarious acts and asking former Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini if he was "crazy." He also traveled with civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and interviewed Malcolm X before his assassination.
In one of his most famous interviews, he spoke to former tobacco executive-turned-whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand in 1995 about how the industry had long known cigarettes caused cancer. That segment, which ran a year later, turned into the inspiration for the 1999 Oscar-nominated film "The Insider," which starred Al Pacino, Russell Crowe and Christopher Plummer as Wallace.
Thanks to Wallace's pitbull spirit and unflappable demeanor, "60 Minutes" was a ratings smash for decades, drawing 40 million viewers at its peak, settling into the top 10 in the Nielsen rankings for 23 seasons and establishing the high bar for broadcast journalism. Wallace came to national prominence when the show began its run in 1968, but he had already been working in radio, TV and theater for nearly two decades.
According to the New York Times, Wallace honed his hard-boiled reporter persona on a black-and-white late night TV show called "Night Beat," which began airing in 1956 on a New York station. It was there that he sat toe-to-toe with his subjects and grilled them, the smoke from his cigarette swirling between them as he often, literally, made them sweat his questions on camera.
The show morphed into a national prime-time program renamed "The Mike Wallace Interview," which aired on ABC from 1957 to 1958. Then, after years of experience on quiz shows and entertainment programs such as "The Big Surprise," "Who's the Boss?"" and "What's In a Word," as well as acting on stage, Wallace reached a career crossroads. He was inspired to become a more serious journalist after the death of his firstborn son, Peter, 19, in a mountain climbing accident in Greece in 1962.
His first move was to join CBS News as a correspondent, which morphed into a job anchoring "The CBS Morning News With Mike Wallace," and then the "60 Minutes" gig.
Myron Leon Wallace was born in Brookline, Massachusetts on May 9, 1918, one of four children born to Russian immigrants Friedan and Zina Wallik. After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1939, he began working in radio and narrating on such radio shows as "The Lone Ranger." Following a stint in the Navy in 1943, he returned to radio and TV and began building his reputation as a pioneering newsman, winning more than 20 Emmy awards.
A special hour-long tribute to Wallace will air on "60 Minutes" on April 15.
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