WPCNR MILESTONES by Peter Katz (special to WPCNR) April 9, 2012:

Although I never worked with Mike Wallace during my news and broadcasting career, we were nodding acquaintances over many years at uncounted events due to the fact that my father had worked with him in the mid-1950's, and I had first met him as a youngster who yearned to get into television.  

Until 1955 or so, Mike Wallace had not been known as a journalist. His career in radio and t-v was checkered. During the 50's, he had been on a number of shows originating in New York, including a daytime show on CBS with his wife at the time, Buff Cobb. He had done commercial work, hosting of quiz and variety shows, and just about anything else that came along. Channel 5 here in New York, which went by the call letters WABD, (standing for its founder Allen B. DuMont), decided it was time to establish a news department and begin daily news programming. Among the key people hired were Ted Yates, Sanford Socolow, who would later go on to produce the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, and Mike Wallace.

Wallace would on rare occasions be sent out with a film crew for a story, would anchor the evening 15-minute newscast, and would also do the live commercial on the program. The sponsor of the program was Bond Clothing. My father was display director for the clothing chain, and was responsible for the in-studio set-up of the store's live commercials. In fact, he had that responsibility on other shows the store had sponsored on the DuMont network.

As a child, I had the opportunity to see early television from the inside, watching shows such as "Captain Video" at the DuMont studio in the old John Wanamaker Department Store in Manhattan. Now, I was getting to hang around with Mike Wallace doing the news at the state-of-the-art DuMont Tele-Center at 205 E. 67th street. And, in early television one of the rules was that you had to be kind to the sponsor's kid.

When I first met Mike Wallace, he was with Ted Yates, the program's producer. Yates would soon invent the late night interview show Night-Beat at DuMont, which would establish Wallace as a tough interviewer and create his cigarette-brandishing tough reporter image. It was in studio 3, on the 3rd floor at DuMont. As an aside, my co-hosts on White Plains Week, John Bailey and Jim Benerofe, and I recently visited the studios on 67th street. They're still home to Channel 5, which now is Fox television. What was studio 3 has been converted into the Fox5 newsroom.

At the time, two shows originated back to back in studio 3. The studio was divided by a large translucent rear projection screen. On one side of the screen, Wallace sat on a stool reading the news and moved to the commercial set at the appropriate time to tout the virtues of a Bond suit. On the other side, an interview show featuring television personality Tex McCreary was set-up to follow the Wallace newscast.

Four things I remember now about the late Mike Wallace: first, he was very nice and encouraging to me to pursue a career in television; second, he was himself excited about the prospects for the burgeoning medium of television to have a serious impact on society; third, his face was terribly pockmarked; fourth, over the years, he was kind enough to remember me even as I was pursuing the career as he had encouraged me to do.

Mike Wallace

1919-2012