Television: The Mellowing of Mike Malice

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During the 1950s, Mike, you were the host of several highly controversial TV shows. You acted on Broadway and got your second divorce. Why have you omitted all those details from your biography in Who's Who?

This is the sort of interview question that CBS Newsman Mike Wallace would put to Mike Wallace. The answer is that Wallace has mellowed since those old "Mike Malice" days, and would prefer to forget his show-biz past. He still pounds away with the same tenacious questioning, of course. The difference is that today, at 51, Wallace is more interested in getting the story than in stirring sensation. In fact, he has emerged as the toughest news interviewer on the air, and as one of the most capable reporters in broadcasting.

Wallace's current title and prime responsibility is "co-editor," with Harry Reasoner, of CBS's newsmagazine show 60 Minutes. But he also does seven weekly radio spots and appears on the Walter Cronkite nightly news or Face the Nation when the CBS assignment desk is looking for a heavy interview. It was Wallace who did CBS's skilled, chilling —and highly controversial—interrogations of Private Meadlo and Captain Medina about the My Lai massacre. And it was Wallace who put together last week's powerful report on Eldridge Cleaver and the Black Panthers. Cleaver openly admitted that his "goal is to take Senator McClellan's head," and "that would mean shooting my way in and shooting my way out" of the Senate. "This is rhetoric?" asked Wallace. "This is not rhetoric." responded Cleaver.

Soft Openers. Wallace has become a star journalist so rapidly, says CBS Writer-Producer Andrew Rooney, because of his "old still photographer's ethic of Tm going to bring in the story and the hell with everybody else.' " Wallace works harder and longer than anyone else. He is on the road fully one-third of his working life, and spent the New Year's weekend, for instance, tracking down the fugitive Cleaver in Algeria. Preparing for an interview with Judge Clement Haynsworth last month, he immersed himself for eight hours in Senate hearings transcripts, court decisions and CBS morgue clips. Wallace usually opens his interviews with the soft questions. "You want to put a man at ease," he says. "You waste a few, like a baseball pitcher." He talked to Cleaver for half an hour to get the five minutes that were on the air. Once the interview is rolling, Wallace puts short, rapid questions and knows when to slip in a prodding "huh?" if he thinks the subject is about to open up.

As Reasoner points out, "There is one thing that Mike can do better than anybody else: with an angelic smile, he can ask a question that would get anyone else smashed in the face." Taking on Manhattan Restaurateur Toots Shor in the old days, Mike blurted, "Toots, why do people call you a slob?" Just last month, on 60 Minutes, Wallace reminded 32-year-old Millionaire Stewart Mott of his broken engagement to Girl Friend Christine Donovan and continued, "You still go together—aren't you going to get married?" The response: "We may some day, if we ever decide to have children."