Mike Wallace
Before 60 Minutes

It should be known that broadcast journalist Mike Wallace (1918 – 2012), of 60 Minutes fame, did not gradually come upon his craft as a smooth and highly-skilled interviewer – these skills were intact from the beginning. Television audiences learned this as early as 1955, when Wallace hosted a remarkable interview program called “Night Beat” on WABD, New York. It was at this venue where he was very quickly drafted into the ranks of the American Broadcasting Company and thrust upon the national stage with his own program: “The Mike Wallace Interview” (1957 – 1958):

“To Wallace, no guest is sacred and he frankly dotes on controversy. Apart from probing the lives of his guests, he has explored American sex mores, censorship, politics, Zionism,trade union policy, psychoanalysis, the expose magazines and many other topics”.

We were amused to read that in one of his earliest forays into broadcasting he played a character in a radio soap opera.