Mike Wallace, man of the hour

Katie Couric

In the lion’s den of investigative journalism, Mike Wallace is the father of the pride. He is fierce, fearless, and unrelenting. For half a century, he has taken on the most notable and notorious figures in modern history, never hesitating, in the hunt for truth.

Katie Couric, NBC News: Did you ever feel like, “Oh I can’t ask this?” Or did you ever ask someone a question and think, “Oh that’s a little too much?”

Mike Wallace, journalist: No, no.

Couric: Never?

Wallace: No, never.  I even asked Eleanor Roosevelt difficult questions and she loved it. And then people began to really admire it and say “Hey we’re really getting the straight stuff from Wallace.”

At 87 years old, Wallace is still giving us the straight stuff on "60 Minutes" and in his second memoir, “Between You and Me.” 

The title comes from an exchange with an accountant he cajoled into admitting tax fraud.

(footage) Wallace: Between you and me, you do it, everybody does it.

Accountant: I presume everyone does it to an extent.

With a companion DVD, the book is a testament to a brilliant career. It also reveals a Mike Wallace you might not recognize: the former cigarette pitchman who fought for respect as a reporter, the father who lost a teenage son, and even a tough guy who battled depression.

On Martha’s Vineyard, where Wallace relaxes when "60 Minutes" takes a break for the summer, the lion might pass for a lamb, were it not for that tell-tale competitive streak. Every summer, at the Possible Dreams auction, Wallace and his trusted friend, Walter Cronkite compete to raise the most money for community services.

This year, Cronkite steered bidders to a luncheon sail on his boat. Wallace, on the other hand, talked up a tour of “60 Minutes.” Dollar for dollar, Wallace lost that match. But he and his buddy displayed the same camaraderie they used to show on the tennis court.

Couric: Do you still play a lot of tennis up here?

Wallace: No, I don’t. I hit the ball some, but I don’t play tennis, competitive tennis. That’s the game I love.

Colleague Morley Safer has joked that Wallace’s only hobby is pulling the wings off insects. Truth is, he has no real hobby, only work, which he says he’ll never give up.

Couric: How do you do it? How do you stay so vibrant, so active, so alert, and continue to work so hard?

Wallace: ‘Cause I wouldn’t know what else to do.  Seriously, I went to work when I was a young fellow and I loved what I did. And I just kept working. And when I decided that maybe the time had come for me to quit, I got depressed. What could I do if I didn’t work?

Born in 1918, Myron Leon Wallace was raised in Brookline, Massachusetts, the fourth and last child of Russian-Jewish immigrants. By the way, his father an insurance broker, worked every day of his life until he died at the age of 73.

In high school, Wallace excelled at violin and tennis, but his real strength: his voice. 

Wallace: When I went to Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, what I really wanted to be was a radio announcer.

Fresh from the class of ‘39, Myron Wallace hit the airwaves in Michigan. He started as a rip-and-read reporter for $20 a week and worked his way up.

Among his first claims to fame: the popular radio program, “The Green Hornet.”

After a couple years in the Navy during World War II, Wallace grew more ambitious. In the mid-40s, he made the leap to a new thing called television, even though he wasn’t quite ready for his close-up.

Couric: Early on, you were self-conscious about your looks.

Wallace: Yes, because of this [points all over his face]. Pockmarks.

Couric: So even though you had a face for radio in your view, you decided to give TV a try?

Wallace: That’s exactly right.

Myron also decided to use his nickname on television, and for the next decade, Mike Wallace hosted all kinds of shows, among them, one that co-starred his second wife.

The show was called “Mike and Buff.” The polite banter—or “pabulum,” as he calls it— wasn’t exactly his cup of tea. So he and his talented producer, Ted Yates, came up with a much stronger brew: “Night Beat.”

When “Night Beat” debuted in New York in 1956, it created quite a buzz. No topic was off limits for the 38-year-old interviewer.

Wallace: An old friend of mine said, “There’s no such thing as an indiscreet question.” And it worked. At 11:30 at night with the lights in here, warts in all. And the smoke from my cigarette curling up.  I had been fairly anonymous until that time, and all of a sudden, cab drivers [were telling me] “Give ‘em hell, Mike, go for it!”

In 1957, he went national on ABC with “The Mike Wallace Interview.” His guest list read like a who’s who, and might have branded him a serious journalist, were it not for the cigarette ads that featured him.

Back then, even the legendary Edward R. Murrow smoked on the air. But Wallace was a paid spokesman, long after other reporters had given up those jobs because of conflicts of interest.

Wallace: I used to say that I didn’t do news exclusively because I had to support Peter and Chris.

Peter and Chris, Wallace’s two sons in Chicago didn’t see much of their dad, who was working in New York. He divorced three times before settling down with his fourth and current wife, Mary.

Incidentally, she was the widow of his "Night Beat" producer, Ted Yates. He was killed in 1967 while covering the Six-Day War in the Middle East for NBC News.

Before he married Mary in 1986, Wallace admits, he was married to the job.

Wallace: I was not a very good husband.

Couric: Any regrets about that?

Wallace: In retrospect, yeah. But listen, I did what I felt that I wanted to do. Fairly selfishly. I didn’t know my kids as well as I should have.

Chris would grow up to be a network correspondent. The elder, Peter, aspired to be reporter, too. But he never got that chance. Instead, when he was 19 years old, he changed his father’s life forever.

Wallace: In a strange way, I wanted to prove to Peter that I could do good serious work and attribute it, in effect, to his memory.

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