1950's Mike Wallace Interviews

The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas Austin has about 65 Mike Wallace interviews from 1957 and 1958 on their website. The people he interviewed were all very well known names at the time, some still are. I haven't had a chance to listen to them yet, but this seems like an incredibly interesting way to connect to American history and to get some perspective on how some things have changed, how other things haven't changed at all.

There's a tendency to think that the time you live in is when people really know what's going on. But I've always been amazed reading books from the past at how aware and 'modern' people from previous centuries and millennia were.

I've picked a few of the interviews to give you an idea of what's there. Great for those with ipods to listen to in the car or at the gym. Find out how we got to where we are today. I've included the brief bios since many of the names will not be familiar to a lot of people today. (And Monica, no I didn't know who they all were either. The first one's for you though.)


Thanks to reader JM for this great tip, which he found when Salon.com discussed the interview with Pearl Buck.

Mortimer Adler
9/7/1958

Mortimer Adler, president of the Institute for Philosophical Research, former professor of the philosophy of law at the University of Chicago, and author of The Idea of Freedom, talks to Wallace about conceptions of freedom, capitalism, socialism, and the American worker.



Charles Percy
7/6/1958

Charles Percy, president of Bell & Howell, talks to Wallace about the role of government in the economic system, about private enterprise's involvement in public services, tax reform, and the soviet economic system.



Henry Kissinger
7/13/1958

Adlai Stevenson
6/1/1958

Adlai Stevenson, former governor of Illinois and twice the Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States, talks to Wallace about American politics, the difficulty in persuading good people to become involved in politics, diversity, elections, and the need for the average citizen to be involved in government.

William O. Douglas
5/11/1958

William Douglas, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, talks with Wallace about freedom of expression and the freedom to exchange ideas. In Douglas's book, The Right of the People, he wrote, "In recent years, as we have denounced the loss of liberties abroad we have witnessed its decline here in America."


Salvadore Dali
4/19/1958

Salvador Dali, the surrealist painter, talks to Wallace about genius, the subconscious, weakness, old age and luxury, death, religion, and dreams.


Reinhold Niebuhr
4/27/1958

Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr, vice president of Union Theological Seminary in New York, on leave to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and one of the most important and challenging religious thinkers in the world, talks to Wallace about the separation between church and state, Catholicism, Protestantism, anti-Semitism, communism, and nuclear war.

Oscar Hammerstein II
3/15/1958

One of the most successful and controversial figures in show business and Broadway lyricist for such classics as Oklahoma!, The King and I, and South Pacific, Oscar Hammerstein II talks to Wallace about sentimentality, racism, religion, and politics.

[He was like a father to Sweeney Todd composer Stephen Sondheim]

Pearl Buck
2/8/1958

Pearl Buck, Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning novelist, talks to Wallace about American women, marriage, career versus family, and the difference between men and women.

Walter Reuther
1/25/1958

Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, talks to Wallace about his plan for profit sharing for auto workers, which was being attacked as a "giant step toward socialism."

Drew Pearson
12/7/1957

Drew Pearson, syndicated columnist, talks to Wallace about Sputnik, a third world war, Eisenhower, Nixon, Kennedy, and about being called a vicious liar by prominent politicians.

Eleanor Roosevelt
11/23/1957

Eleanor Roosevelt, former first lady, talks to Wallace about Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Republicans, Democrats, the Soviet Union, Westbrook Pegler, her son's relationship with Dominican leader Rafael Trujillo, race, and garlic pills.


Kirk Douglas
11/2/1957

Kirk Douglas, a film star who had recently completed two films, Paths of Glory and The Vikings, talks to Wallace about acting, fame, the charge that Hollywood films misrepresent America abroad, Nazis, Communists, and European versus American women.
[Michael Douglas' father]

Malcolm Muggeridge
10/19/1957

Malcolm Muggeridge, former editor of Punch Magazine and one of England's leading intellectuals, talks to Wallace about his article in The Saturday Evening Post in which he created an international furor by criticizing Queen Elizabeth.


Orval Faubus
9/15/1957

Orval Faubus, governor of Arkansas, talks to Wallace from the Governor's mansion in Little Rock during his standoff with the Federal Government over the integration of Little Rock Central High School. Faubus had called in the National Guard to bar the African-American students from the school and had met the day before this interview with President Eisenhower in an effort to resolve the conflict.


Margaret Sanger
9/21/1957

Margaret Sanger, the leader of the birth control movement in America, talks to Wallace about why she became an advocate for birth control, over-population, the Catholic Church, and morality.


Frank Lloyd Wright
9/1/1957 and 9/28/1957

This interview was recorded in two parts. Frank Lloyd Wright, one of the greatest architects of the 20th century, talks to Wallace about religion, war, mercy killing, art, critics, his mile-high skyscraper, America's youth, sex, morality, politics, nature, and death.
Thanks to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation for their cooperation in presenting this interview here. This interview is available on home video through the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.



Eddie Arcaro
9/8/1957

Eddie Arcaro, the most celebrated jockey in America, winner of 5 Kentucky Derbys and 22 million dollars in purses over a 25-year career, talks with Wallace about horse racing, gambling, drugging of horses, and the pressure to win.

[Sports scandals with drugs are nothing new]

Senator James Eastland
7/28/1957

Senator James Eastland of Mississippi, who has been called "The Voice of the White South," talks to Wallace about segregation, slavery, the Soviet Union, voting rights laws, and the Ku Klux Klan.
NOTE: This interview contains language that may be offensive to some people.
[Listen to a Mississippi Senator when segregation was still the law in the South]

Bob Feller
8/4/1957

Bob Feller, one of the great baseball pitchers of all time, talks to Wallace about ballplayers' salaries, the reserve clause, rich ball clubs, Pay TV, beer companies as sponsors, bean balls, gambling, and Joe DiMaggio versus Ted Williams.


Charles "Commando" Kelly
6/30/1957

Chuck "Commando" Kelly, recipient of the Medal of Honor in World War II, talks to Wallace about his financial troubles, unemployment, the Korean War, and nuclear weapons.


Steve Allen
7/7/1957

Steve Allen, comedian, musician, and television personality, talks to Wallace about his rivalry with Ed Sullivan, his television show, and awards.


Gloria Swanson
4/28/1957

Gloria Swanson, one of Hollywood's most spectacular stars, talks to Wallace about why she is not making films, sex appeal, Hollywood in the 1920s, marriage, plastic surgery, and cancer cures.


Eldon Edwards
5/5/1957

Eldon Edwards, Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, talks to Wallace about the South's attitude toward the KKK, the Klan's membership, segregation, the NAACP, communism, and J. Edgar Hoover.