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Mike Wallace, the CBS reporter who became one of the nation’s best-known broadcast journalists as an interrogator of the famous and infamous on “60 Minutes,” died on Saturday. He was 93. [...]
A reporter with the presence of a performer, Mr. Wallace went head to head with chiefs of state, celebrities and con artists for more than 50 years, living for the moment when “you forget the lights, the cameras, everything else, and you’re really talking to each other,” he said in an interview with The New York Times videotaped in July 2006 and released on his death as part of the online feature “The Last Word.”
-- Tim Weiner at The New York Times
The man was still winning emmys at 89. I wouldn't mind having another forty years of reading and blogging.
As for "60 Minutes", like a lot of Americans, it was a staple of my news, until about the middle nineties, when I fell into a moderate depression and could not care much for the affairs of the larger world, not even to watch a news show. Then, when we got wired for the Internet, while my interest reawakened, TV news just seemed too slow and simple compared to the offerings on the Web.
_ _ _
“Forgive me” was a favorite Wallace phrase, the caress before the garrote. “As soon as you hear that,” he told The Times, “you realize the nasty question’s about to come.”
Mr. Wallace invented his hard-boiled persona on a program called “Night Beat.” Television was black and white, and so was the discourse, when the show went on the air in 1956, weeknights at 11, on the New York affiliate of the short-lived DuMont television network.
“We had lighting that was warts-and-all close-ups,” he remembered. The camera closed in tighter and tighter on the guests. The smoke from Mr. Wallace’s cigarette swirled between him and his quarry. Sweat beaded on his subject’s brows.
“I was asking tough questions,” he said. “And I had found my bliss.” He had become Mike Wallace.
“All of a sudden,” he said, “I was no longer anonymous.” He was “the fiery prosecutor, the righteous and wrathful D.A. determined to rid Gotham City of its undesirables,” in the words of Michael J. Arlen, The New Yorker’s television critic.
-- Tim Weiner at The New York Times
A reporter with the presence of a performer, Mr. Wallace went head to head with chiefs of state, celebrities and con artists for more than 50 years, living for the moment when “you forget the lights, the cameras, everything else, and you’re really talking to each other,” he said in an interview with The New York Times videotaped in July 2006 and released on his death as part of the online feature “The Last Word.”
-- Tim Weiner at The New York Times
The man was still winning emmys at 89. I wouldn't mind having another forty years of reading and blogging.
As for "60 Minutes", like a lot of Americans, it was a staple of my news, until about the middle nineties, when I fell into a moderate depression and could not care much for the affairs of the larger world, not even to watch a news show. Then, when we got wired for the Internet, while my interest reawakened, TV news just seemed too slow and simple compared to the offerings on the Web.
_ _ _
“Forgive me” was a favorite Wallace phrase, the caress before the garrote. “As soon as you hear that,” he told The Times, “you realize the nasty question’s about to come.”
Mr. Wallace invented his hard-boiled persona on a program called “Night Beat.” Television was black and white, and so was the discourse, when the show went on the air in 1956, weeknights at 11, on the New York affiliate of the short-lived DuMont television network.
“We had lighting that was warts-and-all close-ups,” he remembered. The camera closed in tighter and tighter on the guests. The smoke from Mr. Wallace’s cigarette swirled between him and his quarry. Sweat beaded on his subject’s brows.
“I was asking tough questions,” he said. “And I had found my bliss.” He had become Mike Wallace.
“All of a sudden,” he said, “I was no longer anonymous.” He was “the fiery prosecutor, the righteous and wrathful D.A. determined to rid Gotham City of its undesirables,” in the words of Michael J. Arlen, The New Yorker’s television critic.
-- Tim Weiner at The New York Times
