Mike Wallace, the iconic star of CBS’s “60 Minutes,” reveals all manner of secrets in a farewell performance with his co-stars that airs Sunday night. Matt Drudge has a preview:
Mike Wallace was too rough? He’s sorry? An actress flirted with him off and on camera? His depression was worse than he’s ever admitted? The grand inquisitor himself fesses up when his own colleagues ask him the questions in a special edition of 60 MINUTES dedicated entirely to the program’s legendary correspondent. These personal revelations and many of Wallace’s most controversial and engaging interviews can be seen and heard when Morley Safer, Ed Bradley, Steve Kroft and Lesley Stahl interview Wallace in “I’m Mike Wallace: A 60 MINUTES Tribute.” The special edition of 60 MINUTES will be broadcast Sunday, May 21 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
Among the more surprising admissions is this one: some prodding from fellow Correspondent Lesley Stahl and 15 years of a guilty conscience finally make Wallace admit he was rough on Barbra Streisand. “That was mean. It was mean,” a stern Stahl charges. “Yes it was [rough]. But [Streisand] needed to have control,” says Wallace. But in the end, a repentant Wallace makes a sincere on-camera apology to Streisand.
Wallace doesn’t apologize to Shirley MacLaine, with whom he was just as rough about her belief in reincarnation and in life on other planets. “I adore her, and she was interested in me, too,” Wallace says of MacLaine. The actress openly flirts with Wallace in her response to his question about aliens “visiting you on your porch.” “You don’t have to be that unpleasant. It doesn’t become you,” the actress practically purrs. Wallace tells Stahl that MacLaine had a thing for him back then and that he and his wife, Mary Yates, before they married more than 20 years ago, “triple dated” with her. “You mean a threesome,” says Stahl. “Yes, but only at dinner,” says an amused Wallace.
Not so surprising — because he has openly and readily discussed his depression for years, but shocking for its candidness — is Wallace’s story of attempted suicide. Safer asks the question that he says he and others had suspected all along. “Did you try to commit suicide at one point?” asks Safer. Wallace answers yes and says, “I don’t know why the hell you asked me that question, because other people have…it’s the first time I have answered it honestly.” After the story of the attempt to take his own life, Wallace says that the years since that time 20 years ago “have been the best in my life.”
Other Mike Wallace moments include: his testy exchanges with world leaders like Vladimir Putin of Russia, Zhang Zemin of China and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini; and his extraordinary interviews with news figures like Paul Meadlo, who recounts shooting women and babies at the My Lai massacre, mobster Jimmy Fratianno, who calmly recalls murdering a man in his living room, and John Ehrlichman of Watergate infamy.
Wallace, 88, announced in March that he would retire from regularly scheduled appearances on 60 MINUTES. He becomes a CBS News correspondent emeritus at season’s end, appearing occasionally on CBS News programs.
Wallace’s career was long and storied. It’s not surprising that he has a few regrets.
The image of a 68-year-old Wallace having a threesome with Shirley MacClaine, however, I could have done without.
The Guardian reports that a remake of the popular 1980s nighttime soap opera “Dallas” is in the works, with John Travolta and Jennifer Lopez in starring roles.
A film remake of Dallas, the 80s TV series that had millions of viewers glued to their TV screens, is in the pipeline. The hit show, which starred Larry Hagman as the Stetson-wearing oil magnate JR Ewing, hooked audiences around the world for over a decade with its over-the-top plots, shady oil deals, family backstabbing and catfights.
Fifteen year later, the cast currently being assembled for the Dallas movie promises to be just as flamboyant as the original series. John Travolta is in line to play evil oil baron JR, while Jennifer Lopez is set to play Sue Ellen, his long-suffering alcoholic wife. Shirley MacLaine could play the part of the Ewing family matriarch, Miss Ellie, and Luke Wilson is in negotiations to play her nice-but-dim son, Bobby Ewing.
I don’t recall Bobby being particularly “dim,” but Wilson has a way of infusing a character with that quality.
As for Travolta in the role of J.R., I have my doubts. Then again, one would never have suspectedd Larry Hagman could play the role so convincingly given that he was previously best known for goofball Major Anthony Nelson on “I Dream of Jeannie.”
I don’t recall Bobby being particularly “dim,” but Wilson has a way of infusing a character with that quality. 
