Mike Wallace (1918-2012): The Role of His Life

Publicity photo of journalist Mike Wallace for the television program Mike Wallace Interviews. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Before Mike Wallace, who died at the age of 93 Saturday, became the hard-hitting journalist who helped define "60 Minutes" for decades, he had a varied career in entertainment.

Wallace was an actor, a radio and TV announcer, and a game show host in the 1950s.  He was a commercial pitchman who, among other things, hawked cigarettes.  He even co-hosted a morning talk show with his then-wife Buff Cobb.

Those were just to pay the bills on Wallace's way to his real career:  interrogating world leaders, celebrities and small-time crooks.  He first plied his trade on a local New York show called "Night Beat" in the 50's (which became "The Mike Wallace Interview" when ABC picked it up), then moved on to CBS News in 1963 as a correspondent.  Before "60 Minutes" went on the air in 1968, Wallace was the first person executive producer Don Hewitt hired.

Wallace's confrontational style of "ambush interviewing", where his subjects who committed alleged wrongdoing would be paid an unscheduled visit by a "60 Minutes" camera crew and being asked embarrassing questions, has been imitated by countless broadcast journalists (local, cable and network).

Wallace's approach occasionally got him and the network in trouble.  The two most notable instances were:

• Retired General William Westmoreland's libel suit against CBS for a documentary they did during the Vietnam War.  Twelve million dollars in legal costs were spent on that trial before Westmoreland dropped it.
• Wallace's interview with tobacco-industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigard, who claimed the company he worked for deliberately put nicotine in its cigarettes, was taken out of a "60 Minutes" report because of network fears of a lawsuit.  Eventually, the full report was broadcast.

Wallace stayed at "60 Minutes" almost as long as it's been on the air (now in its 44th season), from its premiere broadcast to his stepping down as a regular correspondent in 2006 when he was in his 80s, becoming a part-time contributor after that.  He has won 21 Emmy awards, five DuPont-Columbia journalism awards and five Peabody awards.

Mike Wallace wasn't afraid of looking his subject in the eye and not blinking before he got the answer he wanted, as if he were in a courtroom interrogating a witness.  He was broadcast TV's version of a crusading newspaper journalist who stopped at nothing to get at the truth.  He also knew how to put on a good show for the millions who made "60 Minutes" the longest-running news magazine in TV history, thanks to his entertainment background.  Mike Wallace played the role of his life as a master interrogator, and broadcast journalism has benefited from it.