Ustinov, Vallee, Tony Perkins, Dors, Dagmar, and Dali: The Mike Wallace Interview (Part Two)

To pick up where I left off — with Wallace positioning himself as the moral arbiter of middle-brow America — I should mention that the sponsor of The Mike Wallace Interviews was Philip Morris, touted proudly by Mike as having “a man’s kind of mildness.”

Wallace liked to play indignant in his interviews, and nowhere was that clearer than with people he didn’t think should be taken seriously. That could be a crazy Klan leader, or a starlet (Jean Seberg), or a young male star like Tony Perkins. Wallace’s interview with Perkins is an amazing program, since Wallace appears to want to do with Tony what he did with Jean — make him admit he’s young and untalented, that his belief systems are all wrong, and Americans should not be paying to see his films.

It’s easy to link Tony to the interviews with women that Wallace conducted, not because he was gay but because he played “sensitive” characters, and this could hardly be tolerated by the Man’s Man that was Mike Wallace. Thus, the questions run along the lines of asking Tony if he really believes he could be “the next Clark Gable or Gary Cooper,” whether his reputation as a “brooding misfit” is accurate, what he thinks of the Beat Generation, and (again, Wallace playing moral arbiter) what his religious beliefs are.

Tony of course made a career out of playing nervous characters, so here as himself he seems on-edge and uncertain whether Wallace is being complimentary or insulting (Mike’s hardline interviewer act was a role that he stumbled into in the mid-Fifties, as I noted in the last blog entry).

The strangest moments come when Wallace repeats anecdotes from a Newsweek article that paints Tony as a pain-in-the-ass prone to egomaniacal outbursts, and when Wallace wants to know what Perkins is doing when he has been spotted driving around Manhattan in the early morning hours. The later sleazy bios of Perkins provide the real answer to that question, but Tony says he just likes seeing the city when it’s empty and quiet.

What’s most startling about Wallace’s getting strident with Jean Seberg and Tony Perkins is that he absolutely fawns over Rudy Vallee, the old “vagabond lover,” who was completely irrelevant by the late Fifties. One must assume that Mike’s mom loved Rudy (or he himself had very fond memories of Vallee’s radio work), because much of the interview consists of Wallace breaking his “hard man” act to bow and scrape before Rudy — who is by turns self-deprecating and egomaniacal.

The best moment in this chat? The discussion of whether Rudy’s reputation as a cheapskate is real or made-up. Rudy pretty much confirms it’s all true, but also defends saving his shekels all the time.

Interestingly, Wallace does not fawn much over Kirk Douglas, who was of course a major show business name in the late Fifties. He asks Kirk the usual softball questions about being famous and how American movies help forge the American image overseas, but the oddest portion of the show is when Mike “gets tough” with him.

Douglas had made two movies in Germany (Paths of Glory and The Vikings), and Wallace says his “team” has found out that Kirk had an ex-Nazi on his payroll. Wallace cleverly asks Douglas how he feels “as a Jew” to know this (somehow Mike never i.d.’ed himself as Jewish in these hard-edged chats; in the one with Reinhold Neibhur he asks coyly about “our Jewish brothers”).

From that “hard” question, Wallace moves to interrogating Douglas on whether he’d ever employ a Communist. Kirk says no, but then Mike asks what about a former Communist…? This is two years before Douglas did indeed employ Dalton Trumbo on Spartacus, so maybe Mike had heard a story somewhere (man, he really could’ve worked for Fox News….).

A show business figure that Mike is by turns rude and respectful to is Britain’s “answer to Marilyn Monroe,” Diana Dors (the one-time wife of recent Deceased Artiste Richard Dawson). In his interview with her, Mike asks her to evaluate herself as a person and on a physical level, but also tries to sow some discord by asking her what she’s “ashamed” of, and if she is worried about getting old and losing her looks — Dors was of course famous for having gained weight within a decade of being a sexpot, so Wallace’s hard-edged questions again have a weird foreshadowing quality to them.

Wallace’s tut-tting seems particularly odd from the current historical vantage point when he’s trying to the put the screws to publisher Bennett Cerf. He goes on the premise that “book publishers expose children to obscene trash,” asking Cerf to deny that notion.

At one point he hands Cerf an “objectionable” novel and asks him if he’d publish it (Cerf says no), and whether it should be censored (Cerf says no again). Providing the obvious answer, Cerf (who was a delight in his weird wordplay on What’s My Line?) says that if you deny publications that to teenagers, they will only become more desirable.

Certain episodes of the series have been lost (or simply not donated to the U of T library — see below). One of the MW interviews that only exists in transcript form is his talk with writer Ben Hecht, who proved to be one bitter and sharply intelligent older gent. He states outright that “Americans can’t think for themselves, speak for themselves…. they’re terrified at making any crack against anything successful or popular."

Add to that the fact that he calls religion “part of an odd mythomania,” and you just know that old moralizin’ Mike must’ve been “disturbed” (it’s a “work,” kids, as they say in wrestling) by Hecht’s words. To further Hecht’s dismissal of the chipper side of the Fifties, he notes that Nixon is “the most well-dressed boy Washington has seen in a long time” and says that Ike is “trying to save the world by boring it to the point of inanity.” That sounds a lot more misfit-like than anything Seberg or Perkins came out with.

In fact, older men were generally the ones who didn’t let Mike get away with his brusque questioning (and one blonde — but we’ll get to her in a minute). The series’ only two-part interview, with master-architect Frank Lloyd Wright, finds Mike’s requests for quick answers being thwarted by Wright, who refers to his interlocutor as “my dear Mike.” Wright argues against organized religion (in favor of nature, which he calls his religion) and argues for the intelligence and vitality of the day’s youth, two things Wallace-as-moral-arbiter has to get a tad uppity about.

The most interesting part of the Wright interview happens when Wallace quizzes the architect on “the audience watching tonight that doesn’t understand or care about modern art.” Quite wisely, Wright says that their opinions are “worthless” (hey, Frank Lloyd, I’ll have you know that that same audience now watches American Idol and America’s Got Talent and… oh wait, you’re right….). He also grabs at a copy of his latest book, which somehow Wallace has gotten a copy of from the publisher (he remarks that he doesn’t have a copy yet — and you just know that Mike never got that book back…)

Since Wallace represented the average urban-American Joe, he obviously had to be startled and a bit peeved at the odd behavior of the original Warhol, master surrealist and relentless self-promoter Salvador Dali. In his interview with Dali, he asks him the besides-the-point question “Why do you behave the way you do?” and refers to his “clowning and showmanship.”

Dali controls the show from the beginning (his eccentricities were his stock in trade, and he wasn’t going to let any radio announcer turned hardboiled “newsman” spoil his shtick). He articulates some very spot-on things about the “atomic age” and the psychoanalytic aspect of his paintings and, according to Wallace, was all for camping the thing up because he asked him to “ask embarrassing questions” before the cameras started rolling.

Finally I turn to the other essential (for me) interview, with an individual who I greatly admire, Peter Ustinov (a clip from my friendlier, shorter interview with Sir Peter can be found here). Mike's interview with Ustinov begins with Wallace acknowledging the immense talent of Ustinov, but by the end he’s still gotten his barb in, with a question about Peter being able to do so many things, but not being “great” at any one of them (this from the radio announcer who failed and became a newsman by mistake). Ustinov was 36 at the time of the chat, and he was truly a self-effacing renaissance man — able to speak knowledgably about a great variety of topics, he still acknowledged the importance of humor to what he did (it was, he states, his “safety valve”).

Ustinov was the real deal, the kind of an entertainer and artist (and thinker) who had confidence in his own ability, but knew that he existed in a completely commercial industry (his response to Wallace’s bringing up “money” is to merely reply “surival,” and then speak about how he existed in “the century of the middleman”).

Not a fan of the military (he discusses how badly he faired as a soldier during WWII), he also rebuffs Mike’s attempt to compare him to Orson Welles, noting that Welles is a great dramatist, while he worked from a humorous perspective (not true for several of his finest works, including the film Billy Budd).

I should close out this survey of the Wallace shows online with Ustinov, given my great admiration for him, but I have to instead spotlight Dagmar, the comedienne (there’s a word not used after 1970) from the first late-night network show Broadway Open House, who is the one guest who quickly snaps back at Wallace (with humor) and who seems to keep him off-center throughout their chat.

Wallace’s questions to her are still rude as hell — again, this is the man who was bending over backward to praise Rudy Vallee, but he is okay with asking a woman who was a major star just a few years before “What do you miss now that you’re not as big-time as you used to be?” The answer to his query “why aren’t you on TV more?” is obvious: she wasn’t being asked, she had fallen out of fashion. She proves, however, to be a delight in his half-hour, because she continually tweaks Wallace’s hardboiled demeanor, to the extent that he winds up calling her “ma’am” by the end of the talk.

There are a number of other interesting interviews on the Harry Ransom Center page for the Wallace Interviews. Among them are Gloria Swanson, Lili St. Cyr, a festively attired head of the KKK, Oscar Hammerstein II (who discusses his liberalism while Mike posits that the media is intolerant of conservatism — Fox News!), George Jessel, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Lillian Roth.

According to Wikipedia and other writings about the series, Wallace also interviewed Rod Serling, guru for the greedy (and selfish) Ayn Rand, and Malcolm X in this series, but those interviews are not included on the HRC page.

At the end of the Rudy Vallee show Wallace touts Tennessee Williams as his next guest, but that show also isn’t online. That certainly could’ve been a lively encounter — imagine all the complaints about morality and abstraction in art that moral arbiter Mike could’ve brought up to him….

Seberg, Steve Allen, Huxley, Margaret Sanger, and Kissinger: The Mike Wallace Interviews (Part One)

The Internet is crammed to capacity with great things that no one knows exist, so I am always very happy to share new discoveries, especially those that shed light on pop culture’s past. As I have noted in two preceding blog entries (about the Speaking of Radio website and the YT channel for Soapbox Productions), interviews do keep the voices of the departed alive, so I hereby put the spotlight on the University of Texas’ Harry Ransom Center online archive of the 1957-58 ABC TV show The Mike Wallace Interview.

Wallace died last month and was given numerous encomiums for being the most hardcore TV journalist around. What was most interesting about the trajectory of his career is that he was NOT a newsman by choice — he sorta fell into it after being an actor and a radio announcer for many, many different programs. Thus, he was not a hardened reporter like the model of a TV journalist, Edward R. Murrow. He was a guy outta work who just sorta drifted into the game of interviewing famous folks and then reporting on a TV news magazine.

That should be kept in mind while watching The Mike Wallace Interviews, which came after Wallace’s stay on the Dumont program Night Beat, where he had developed his much-vaunted “take no prisoners” style of interviewing. That style was in fact a hook (his “brand,” if such a term had existed back then) and was indeed shtick, since the outrage that is heard on some of these shows from Wallace is not because the guest seems evasive in their answers, but rather because what they’ve said is “offensive” to the American mentality.

Of course, I was most interested in some of the entertainment-industry interviewees, but it was with hard-hitting political interviews that Wallace seemed to “make news,” esp. after 60 Minutes began. In absorbing a bunch of the Interviews, however, it became clear to me that Wallace was simply a barometer reflecting what was socially acceptable on network TV at the time.

Thus, he is very hard on the racists he interviews, but oddly, he’s also very tough on the women he talks to (in fact, he’s sometimes openly rude to them). His interviewer persona wanted to know “if you’ll be giving up your career to have a family,” and whether his female guests thought any less of themselves for not doing so. The other really rigid viewpoint he espouses in a number of these shows concerns religion: he affects a major “concern” over those interviewees who are atheists and seems relieved when show-biz types talk about believing in a deity.

But of course the show did air in the Fifties, and perhaps that was the way that intellectual ideas had to be packaged, with the host as a moral arbiter — no, wait, Murrow and Steve Allen never felt the need to diminish a guest to get the “American agenda” across in their interviews. Wallace was a compelling personality on-screen and was a fascinating interviewer to watch, but the interviewing MW was in fact the best role of his life. And if any of his previous jobs before Night Beat had worked out, he never would’ve been an interviewer in the first place….

Onto the episodes. Since I’ve evoked Steve Allen already, let me spotlight the talk with Steverino first. I am a giant fan of Steve’s work, so was pleased to see him in his prime with Wallace. However, the conversation does not range all over the map (as it easily could have, given Steve’s curiosity and knowledge about different issues).

Instead the main topic of conversation is Steve’s “feud” with Ed Sullivan, since he was on directly opposite the Old Stoneface. Sullivan of course “won” the race for ratings in that timeslot, entirely due to his top-notch guest bookings (as charming and smart as Steve was, was as boring and clueless Ed was). In the meantime, we do get to hear Steve deem TV awards as “meaningless” (a comment that never dates) and discuss how his show received bad reviews and hate mail when he had the “adultress” Ingrid Bergman on as a guest. Watch the interview here.

What is interesting about the program is that Wallace makes the pretense that he’s pursuing a heavy news story — the most commonly-uttered phrase on the show was “we’ll go after that story in just a minute.” Whereas, in many cases, he was simply interviewing someone the public was interested in, regardless of whether there was any true newsworthiness to the discussion.

The only time there was newsworthiness on the show was in Wallace’s interview with columnist Drew Pearson, who openly said that Senator John Kennedy hadn’t written his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Profiles in Courage (Pearson stood by his claim, and the suit was dropped — Kennedy assistant Ted Sorensen wrote the majority of the book).

Wallace’s interviews with newsmakers were indeed confrontational. A good example is his grilling of Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus. Faubus had refused to allow integration in a Little Rock High School, and Wallace confronts him here, as (again) a sort of watchdog for the “American” point of view. (This being the Northern, urban point of view.) Faubus wisely refuses to give his own opinion, but says he represents the state’s voters.

Since the show was a prime reflector of Fifties culture, I have to next turn to the show with Philip Wylie. Wylie was an extremely popular genre novelist and social commentator who isn’t spoken of much these days, but his philosophies were fascinating. In this talk he accurately speaks about both the fact that America has become “a nation of exalted ignoramouses” and the emptiness of religion (in which the practitioners have very “un-Christianlike manners”).

Wallace seems particularly pissed off by Wylie’s put-down of religion, but the two don’t cross swords on one of Wylie’s most famous concepts, the notion of “Mom-ism” having taken over America in the mid-20th century (though it sounds like a purely sexist concept, it’s actually a nuanced, extremely Freudian view of the American male). Most interesting are his responses to Wallace’s fast-answer queries: should birth control be allowed (“why not? We control death”); is Israel a valid state (it’s “another religious nation”); can mercy killing be condoned (“it’s okay,” Wylie quickly answers). His loathing of Liberace isn’t explained, but it was most likely in his mind linked to “Mom-ism.”

Wallace’s show was by no means an “intellectual” outing (in fact, Mike seemed to be a stand-in for the “average” urban American male), but his producers did book some fine minds, having theologian Reinhold Neibuhr on for a full show.

Neibhur proves to be the kind of free-thinking theist that all of us, regardless of our beliefs (or lack thereof), can respect. He states his uncategorical support for the separation of church and state — but because, again, this is the Fifties, he does note that a nuclear war “might be necessary.” He approves of Bertrand Russell and other atheist philosophers by quoting the Bible: “by his works shall you judge a man.”

Perhaps the most famous intellectual who sat in the guest’s chair was Aldous Huxley, with whom Wallace discussed some very important and extremely timeless topics: the loss of personal freedom in modern society; the threat of subliminal advertising; how technological devices are taking over our existence (what a silly idea —where did he get these notions?); and, most fascinatingly, his prediction that drugs wil be marketed that will make man more “happy in his slavery.” The Huxley interview is here.

Wallace’s interview with Malcolm Muggeridge is equally bound up with “big issues” — but in this case the lion’s share of the time is spent discussing a recent article that Muggeridge had written in The Saturday Evening Post, asking “Does England Need a Queen?” (which included the idea that Queen Liz was thought of as “frumpy and dowdy” by the average British woman). Wallace is well pleased with Muggeridge, though, since he’s an intellectual who is religious (god, Mike could be tiresome).

I guess the most interesting “egghead” guest that Wallace had on, especially for folks like myself who grew up in the Seventies, was that wacky old war criminal himself, Mr. Henry Kissinger. The whole episode is an experiment in Strangelove-speak, as Mike and Henry discuss the possibility of a “limited nuclear war” and “war as a usable instrument of policy” (for some lighter fare, they chat about “the collapse of the free world”). As always Kissinger’s notions are chillingly cold and calculating. The man was/is brilliant, but it’s terrifying to think he ran American international policy for a number of years.

I haven’t watched all of the Wallace episodes available on the UT site, but perhaps the single most interesting example of Wallace busting the chops of someone who doesn’t need their chops busted is his interview with Margaret Sanger, the legendary (and blessed) advocate of birth control in America and around the world. Wallace lays into a Sanger, starting off with the notion that he will tackle the big issues in his interview with her – like whether birth control is “murder” (or, alternately, a “sin”).

Wallace reacts to Sanger as if she was the female equivalent of the KKK chief he interviewed early on in the series (who was dumb and racist, whereas Sanger legitimately seemed to want help people out). Wallace interrogates her about whether her advocacy of birth control was just “a way to fight the church” (since she had an Atheist father). She responds very calmly at one point that sex isn’t just for having children — which is indeed a wild concept to be espoused on network TV in the uptight Fifties.

Wallace’s “pursuit” of Sanger as if she was a snake-oil salesman foisting a phony belief on the American public is underscored by his middle-of-the-road attitude — perhaps the most interesting question he asks is “if women have become too indepdendent" as of late. It’s interesting to note that Sanger’s calmly spoken views have been proven right by history, while Mike’s take on the issues is still in mainstream broadcasting — but it’s moved over to Fox News, where Mike’s son Chris now works.

Continuing with the notion of Mike leaning on a female guest, there is the talk with Diana Barrymore, whose infamous tell-all biography had come out before she guested on his show. He accuses her of being too revelatory, of tarring her father’s reputation (is there anyone who knows of John Barrymore who didn't know that he was a complete alcoholic?).

Wallace is a moral arbiter here, interrogating Diana with a disapproving tone. The interview is fascinating but depressing to watch — and much more depressing when you find out DB was only 36 years old here, and that she only lived three more years, at which time she committed suicide with alcohol and sleeping pills.

Completing the troika of women interview subjects that Wallace was a general dick to is one of my all-time favorites, actress Jean Seberg. Wallace speaks to her at the moment when her second feature Bonjour Tristesse is about to open. She is very willing to discuss the horrible critical drubbing she got for her acting in Preminger’s St. Joan, but Wallace really rides her, wanting to know why the public would idolize a person like her.

Wallace tells Jean that she’s a “synthetic star” and “not the prettiest girl in the world.” Clearly he was keying into the average American’s love/hate relationships with celebrities, but it seems particularly harsh to go after a young starlet, telling her, in essence, she is “not needed.”

He does hook her up to Brando and Dean, whom she says she likes (“they fight conformity”), but clearly Old Man Mike has a problem with the youth culture of the Fifties (I’m sure he absolutely loathed what followed in the Sixties). Perhaps the most telling question he asks Seberg is to inquire of her what is “wrong with the average life,” as if she committed a crime forsaking the life of a wife and mother to be an actress.

More about the profound and ridiculous moments in part two of this blog post, coming up — above!