(CBS News) America’s number-one news program will devote its entire hour this week to the man who is perhaps most responsible for its unparalleled success, Mike Wallace.
Wallace, who died at the age of 93 last Saturday, was the founding correspondent of “60 Minutes” whose masterful interviews helped the news magazine draw perennial high ratings that have made the program the most successful in television history.
“Remembering Mike Wallace” will be broadcast on “60 Minutes” Sunday, April 15 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
Through a series of interviews conducted by his “60 Minutes” colleagues, and the best moments from his 800-plus “60 Minutes” reports, “Remembering Mike Wallace” provides the definitive picture of Wallace the man and Wallace the reporter.
Watch an excerpt
Morley and Mike get personal
The correspondents expose the inner Wallace few have ever seen, asking him the impertinent, the probing questions — the kind of questions he used to make interview subjects squirm for decades.
The hour revisits — and Wallace comments on — some of his most controversial and engaging interviews, including the Ayatollah Khomeini, Johnny Carson, Barbra Streisand, Chinese President Jiang Zemin, Mel Brooks and Vladimir Putin. It also includes his final 60 Minutes interview, the headline-making, sit-down with Roger Clemens about steroids.
The retrospective also includes rare footage from the early career of a legend who, until 2008, appeared on television every year since 1949.
