Mike Wallace, ‘60 Minutes’ Star, Dies at Age 93

Mike Wallace, a legendary newsman known for impertinent, hard-nosed interviews on CBS' popular "60 Minutes" television program, died at age 93, the network announced on Sunday.

Wallace, whose 60-year career began in radio, spanning roles from wrestling announcer to quiz show host before making an indelible mark on U.S. television journalism as an interviewer of the news makers who defined his times.

From Malcolm X to Ayatollah Khomeini, Wallace cut to the quick with tough, abrasive, "who-gives-a-damn" questions that proved ground-breaking in U.S. television journalism.

He honed his cocky, pit bull persona in an interview show called "Night Beat," from 1955-57, and then brought it to "60 Minutes" when CBS launched that seminal television magazine show in 1968.

Wallace, who retired in 2006 but continued to do the occasional headline grabbing interview until 2008, racked up at least 20 Emmy awards, along with every other major prize for television journalism.

Some of his work, however, also came in for criticism.

He and CBS were sued for libel by General William Westmoreland, a Vietnam War commander, for a 1982 documentary "The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception." The suit was later dropped after CBS issued a statement saying it had not meant to question the general's patriotism.

He also was accused of buckling to corporate pressure to kill a story about a tobacco company whistleblower, which later became the basis of a 1999 movie "The Insider" with Christopher Plummer.

He later admitted to suffering periodic bouts of depression, and a suicide attempt during the Westmoreland law suit.

Wallace was remembered as an indefatigable journalist -- active well into his 80s -- who probed the lives of the world's noted and notorious, fearlessly asking the impertinent question on everyone's mind.

He interviewed Malcolm X shortly before his assassination, asked Ayatollah Khomeini if he were crazy, and interviewed Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2006 at the end of a 37-year stint with "60 Minutes."

He had said that his favorite interview was with pianist Vladimir Horowitz, an encounter described Sunday in a CBS remembrance as a duel between "sly, manic egos."

"All of us at CBS News and particularly at 60 Minutes owe so much to Mike. Without him and his iconic style, there probably wouldn't be a 60 Minutes," said CBSNews chairman and 60 Minutes executive producer Jeff Fager in a statement.

CBS said Wallace died Thursday night at the Waveny Care Center in New Caanan, Connecticut, surrounded by family.

Born Myron Leon Wallace in Brookline, Massachusetts on May 9, 1918, Wallace graduated in 1939 from the University of Michigan where a professor helped him get his first job as a radio announcer.

After a stint in the U.S. Navy aboard a submarine tender in the Pacific, he resumed his broadcasting career with a mix of news reporting, entertainment shows, acting and commercials.

"Night Beat," which aired late night on a local New York television station, was followed by "The Mike Wallace Interview" on ABC from 1957 to 58.

In 1959, he co-produced a five-part documentary about the Nation of Islam and its black Muslim leader Elijah Muhammad called "The Hate that Hate Produced."

CBS News initially was reluctant to hire him, however, because he had appeared in television ads for Parliament cigarettes.

But he became a correspondent for the network in 1963, reporting from Vietnam, Washington and the U.S. campaign trail, and five years later was picked to co-anchor the pioneering 60 Minutes show, opposite the avuncular Harry Reasoner.

The show won critical praise and after a slow start rose to the top 10 in the ratings within a decade, in the process transforming television news into a major profit center for the first time.

"Wallace played a huge role in 60 Minutes' rise to the top of the ratings to become the number-one program of all time, with an unprecedented 23 seasons on the Nielsen annual top 10 list -- five as the number-one program," CBS said.

Wallace's inquisitorial style became the show's trademark.

Exposes of scam artists and corrupt officials were favorite fodder, with Wallace popularizing the "ambush interview" where targets were confronted with hidden camera video of their misdeeds.

Along the way he interviewed a slew of U.S. presidents, world leaders and celebrities.

In a 1998 story on Jack Kevorkian, the assisted suicide champion, Wallace played a video tape of the doctor giving a suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis a lethal injection.

The tape, which set off a huge debate when it was aired, was used as evidence to convict Kevorkian of murder.

But Kevorkian granted Wallace his first post-prison interview in 2007, one of the journalist's last major scoops.

Wallace retired from public life after undergoing triple bypass operation in January 2008.

He is survived by his wife, the former Mary Yates; a son, Fox News anchor Chris Wallace; and a stepdaughter, Pauline Dora.