Although he spent many years in broadcasting before turning to journalism, Mike Wallace became one of the United States' most enduring and prominent television news personalities. Primarily known for his work on the long-running CBS magazine series 60 Minutes, he developed a reputation as an inquisitorial interviewer, authoritative documentary narrator, and powerful investigative reporter. While his journalistic credentials and tactics have been questioned at times, his longevity, celebrity, and ability to land big interviews have made him one of the most important news figures in the history of television.

     Wallace's early career differed from those of his well-known peers at CBS News. Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Eric Sevareid, Andy Rooney, and others worked as wartime radio and print correspondents before moving to television. Wallace, however, studied broadcasting at the University of Michigan and began an acting and announcing career in 1939. Throughout the 1940s, he performed in a variety of radio genres­ quiz shows, talk shows, serials, commercials, and news readings. After service in the Navy, the baritone­ voiced radio raconteur landed a string of early television jobs in Chicago. As early as 1949, "Myron" Wallace acted in the police drama Stand by for Crime, and he later appeared on the CBS anthology programs Suspense and Studio One. He emceed local and network TV quiz and panel shows while also working in radio news for CBS from 1951 to 1955. Wallace's move into interviewing at the network level came in the form of two husband-and-wife talk shows. All Around the Town and Mike and Buff, which CBS adapted from a successful Chicago radio program. With his wife. Buff Cobb, Wallace visited New York locations and conducted live interviews with celebrities and passers-by. After a three-season run on CBS, Wallace had a brief stint in 1954 as a Broadway actor before returning to television.

     In 1955 Wallace began anchoring nightly newscasts for the DuMont network's New York affiliate. The following year his producer, Ted Yates. created the vehi­cle that brought Wallace to prominence . Night Beat was a live, late-night hour of interviews in which Wal­lace grilled a pair of celebrity guests every weeknight. Armed with solid research and provocative questions, the seasoned announcer with a flair for the dramatic turned into a hard-hitting investigative journalist and probing personality reporter. With the nervy Wallace as its anchor, Night Beat developed a hard edge lacking in most television talk. Using only a black backdrop and smoke from his cigarette for atmosphere, Wallace asked pointed, even mischievous questions that made guests squirm. Most were framed in tight close-ups. revealing the sweat elicited by Wallace's barbs and the show's harsh klieg lights.

     After a successful first season, during which Wallace interviewed such celebrities as Norman Mailer, Salvador Dali, Thurgood Marshall, Ayn Rand, Hugh Hefner, William Buckley, and prominent politicians, the program moved to ABC as a half-hour prime-time show called The Mike Wallace Interview. Promoted as "Mike Malice" and "the Terrible Torquemada of the TV Inquisition," Wallace continued to talk to prominent personalities about controversial issues. However, ABC executives, particularly after brushes with libel suits, proved wary of Wallace's brinkmanship. The show lasted only through 1958, turning more cerebral in its final weeks when the Ford Foundation became its sponsor. Intellectuals such as Reinhold Niebuhr, Al­dous Huxley, and William O. Douglas replaced the Klansmen, ex-mobsters, movie stars, and more sensational interviewees seen before.

     For the next five years, Wallace continued to parlay his celebrity into odd jobs on New York and network TV as quizmaster, pitchman for cigarettes. chat show host (PM East, 1961-62), and newsreader, but he began to sharpen his focus on mainstream journalism as well. He anchored Newsbeat (1959-61 ), one of the first half-hour nightly news programs. for an independent New York station and also began working as host for David L. Wolper's TV documentary series Biography, narrating 65 episodes of the syndicated program. (His distinctive voice continues to be heard in many such educational productions. including The 20th Century with Mike Wallace, which CBS produces as a cable series for A&E and the History Channel. Increasingly, he became a field correspondent. After a chain of Westinghouse-owned stations hired Wallace to cover the 1960 political conventions, he started traveling extensively. supplying the stations with daily radio and TV reports from across the country (Closeup U.S.A., 1960) and abroad (Around the World in 40 Days, 1962).

     At this point in his life, as he described in his 1984 autobiography, Wallace decided to "go straight," giving up higher-paying entertainment jobs for a career exclusively devoted to news. In 1963 (a year in which the networks expanded their news divisions), the CBS Morning News with Mike Wallace premiered. Wallace remained on the show for three years before resuming full-time reporter's duties. Although seen frequently on other CBS News assignments (Vietnam, the Middle East), Wallace's beat was the Richard Nixon comeback campaign. A confessed Nixon apologist, he nevertheless rejected an offer in 1968 to be the candidate's press secretary.

Instead, that fall Wallace began regular duties for 60 Minutes, the prime-time news magazine for which he and Harry Reasoner had done a pilot in February 1968. To contrast with the mild-mannered Reasoner, producer Don Hewitt cast Wallace in his usual role as the abrasive, tough-guy reporter. While he could be charming when doing softer features and celebrity profiles, Wallace maintained his reputation as a bruising inquisitor who gave his subjects "Mike fright." With his personal contacts in the Nixon (and later Reagan) circles, he proved an adept reporter on national politics, particularly during Watergate. Throughout his run on 60 Minutes, he consistently landed timely and exclusive interviews with important newsmakers.

     As 60 Minutes was becoming a mainstay of TV news, Wallace developed its most familiar modus operandi: the ambush interview. Sometimes using hidden cameras and one-way mirrors, Wallace would confront scam artists and other wrongdoers caught in the act. Field producers did most of the investigative work, but Wallace added the theatrical panache as he performed his on-camera muckraking. His tactics have been both praised and criticized. While he has won numerous awards as a sort of national ombudsman, a reporter with the resources and ability to expose corruption, some critics have judged his methods too sensational, unfair, and even unethical.

Twice Wallace was entangled in landmark libel cases. His 60 Minutes report "The Selling of Colonel Herbert" (1973) questioned a whistleblower's veracity about war crimes. Herbert sued Wallace's producer. Although the news team was exonerated, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Herbert v. Lando (1979) that the plaintiff had the right to examine the materials produced during the editorial process. A far bigger case followed when Wallace interviewed General William Westmoreland for the CBS Reports documentary "The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception" (1982). When TV Guide and CBS's own in-house investigation charged that the producers had violated standards of fairness, Westmoreland sued the network. The charges Wallace aired--conspiracy to cover up the actual number of Viet Cong troops-were substantiated by trial evidence, but CBS's editorial tactics proved suspect. Early in 1985, just before Wallace was to testify, CBS issued an apology and Westmoreland dropped the suit.

Despite such occasional setbacks, Wallace continued his globetrotting reports and "make-'em-sweat" interviews into the next century. A CBS News special, Mike Wallace, Then and Now (1990), offered a retrospective of his first 50 years in broadcasting. In the decade that followed, he offered another televised memoir, Mike Wallace Remembers (1997), and hundreds more hours of news programming. Considerable notoriety surrounded his 1995 interview with Dr. Jeffrey Wigand, a former tobacco executive turned whistleblower. CBS lawyers suspended the broadcast, until leaked transcripts appeared in print. Wallace criticized his network in a 1996 expose co-produced by PBS and CBC. The story of Wigand, Wallace, and Wallace's producer was dramatized in the Hollywood film The Insider (1999). Amid it all, the senior correspondent of U.S. television journalism continued his 60 Minutes work unabated, surpassing 1,500 episodes in 2001. In April 2002, however, Wallace announced his intent to cut back considerably on his television work and, beginning with the 2002-03 season, to appear less frequently on 60 Minutes.