

As a result of which I grew up with a kind of chip on my shoulder and a sense of inferiority. You wouldn't have believed what it used to be. Mike Wallace: Well I, I- when I was your age, and this colored my - I used to have a very bad case of acne. Depression can be treated.Īnd he pulled no punches about his own depression in his memoirs.Įames Yates: Do you feel the same aside from all the experiences that you've had as you did when you were my age? Morley Safer: You've since become a kind of poster boy for dealing with depression. And those intervening years were some of the most productive in his career. And she found the pills that I was taking on the floor. I don't know why the hell you asked me that question because I, other people have and I've - it's the first time I've answered it honestly. Mike Wallace: Uh, I've never said this before. Morley Safer: Did you try to commit suicide at one point? What he did not talk about was something a few of us always suspected. The suit was eventually dropped, and Mike talked many times about the deep depression that descended on him during the trial. General William Westmoreland sued Mike and CBS for reporting that Westmoreland had deliberately falsified estimates of enemy troop strength in Vietnam. A man who at times was as decent a person as anyone would want to know. It's not easy to figure out a friend at a time like this. Since I've known him, shared a great deal with him and even fought with him longer than anybody else still around "60 Minutes," it falls to me to add a little armchair analysis. A name he never really liked and, as soon as he could, he changed it to what he felt was the punchier Mike, and he spent the best part of a century living up to that combative moniker.Īs you've seen our tribute has consisted of equal parts roast and testimonial. When Mike Wallace was born 93 years ago in Brookline, Mass., he was named Myron. When Horowitz was growing up in Russia, people who heard his astonishing playing thought he was possessed by the devil. Because in a lot of ways, Vladimir Horowitz was just like Mike Wallace. Mike Wallace: Because you got the unvarnished - this was the first time he had ever done anything like this. Mike Wallace: What the dickens are you doing? They would love to feel that if I were there in that chair where Wallace is, here's what I would want to know. Mike Wallace: Let's ask the questions that might be on the minds of the people looking in. Interviews that - he once told Ed Bradley - were based on one simple idea. No one could have known that he was just starting the biggest part of his career and launching, with Don Hewitt, the most successful program in the history of primetime television. Mike helped create 60 Minutes in 1968 at the age of 50. Or it certainly has come with my territory. You know, but it comes with the territory. Mike Wallace: I've gotta plead guilty, I suppose.

And for many people, well-mannered people, the embodiment of everything that they hate about reporters. That you're egotistical, occasionally cruel.

That you're more important than the story sometimes. That you're the most important person in the story.
