Mike Wallace: Before He Was a 60-Minute Man

Back in the early Sixties, when TV journalist Mike Wallace and the University of Texas' Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center were both young pups, Wallace donated to the HRC some 16mm kinescopes of the interview show that catapulted him to prominence: the nationally televised program, The Mike Wallace Interview. The HRC, along with the University's School of Information, have now digitized these unique programs and have made them available online. Although the show aired from 1957 to 1960, the HRC's collection is limited to 65 interviews on kinescope and audio tape from the years 1957-58. But what a panoply of guests Wallace attracted in that time!

Interviewees include such figures from the arts as Gloria Swanson, Salvador Dali, George Jessel, Jean Seberg, Frank Lloyd Wright, Oscar Hammerstein II, Ben Hecht, and Kirk Douglas, as well as personalities from the political world such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard Eldon Edwards, birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger, Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas, and a Harvard University foreign-policy expert named Henry Kissinger. Written transcripts of the shows can be viewed at the site in addition to the digitized videos. Wallace, who is best known for his hard-nosed probes and tenacity as an interviewer over the decades at 60 Minutes, can now be seen nearly 50 years ago still hammering his subjects on the issues of the day.