Movie Review/Ed Rampell

Look Out! Mike Wallace is Here

Belkin does viewers a great service by remining us of one of broadcast journalism's most outspoken gladiators, who at his finest boldly yelled truth to power.

In response to the tyrannical Trump regime’s denouncing journalists as “enemies of the people” who report “fake news,” a nonfiction and fiction film trend highlighting the Fourth Estate has emerged. Enter “Mike Wallace is Here,” which derives its clever title from what were arguably broadcast journalism’s four most dreaded words.

For decades, that phrase, which meant that “60 Minutes”’ intrepid investigative reporter was on the scene, struck terror in the hearts of corrupt politicians, dictators, pampered celebrities, big time criminals, and small-time scammers alike. Wallace was famous — or infamous — for his relentless reportage and take-no-prisoners interview style.

Director Avi Belkin’s entertaining documentary shines the spotlight on the fabled career of the iconoclastic CBS broadcaster, sometimes striving to give, with mixed results, the eponymous subject the Mike Wallace treatment.

Alas, details about this public man’s private life are sparse in Mike Wallace is Here. While we learn he was born 1918 near Boston, the biopic never mentions that this son of Russian immigrants was Jewish. It also overlooks that Wallace served in the Navy in the Pacific Theater during World War II.

The biographical film is far more successful mining nuggets from Mike’s television career. Although audiences remember Wallace most as a newsman, a series of amusing black-and-white clips in the film reveal him as also a radio announcer, actor in TV dramas and comedies, and hawker of products, particularly cigarettes.

Wallace hit his stride in the then fast-emerging medium of TV on “Night Beat,” which aired locally in New York from 1955 to 1957. That’s where he established his brand as a hard-nosed interviewer. ABC took notice and picked up the rising star for a national prime-time program, “The Mike Wallace Interview,” from 1957 to 1960.

“Here” claims Wallace’s contentious technique was a television precedent, but that’s debatable. A year before “Night Beat” went on the air, legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow confronted despotic Sen. Joe McCarthy on CBS News’ “See It Now,” which hastened the anti-communist zealot’s fall from power (clips of Murrow, including a glimpse of the famed McCarthy episodes, appear briefly in “Here”).

Wallace hit the big time with “60 Minutes,” television’s first news magazine, which premiered in 1968. The brainchild of Don Hewett — “plagiarized” in part from Life magazine’s combination of hard news, entertainment, and human-interest stories — the show experienced a meteoric rise in ratings. Still running after more than half a century, the show has spawned many imitators, won numerous Emmy awards, and remains a fixture on CBS’s Sunday evening lineup.

Wallace, the winner of 21 Emmys, was in no small measure responsible for “60 Minutes”’ success. “Here” captures a number of memorable moments, notably Wallace’s jaw-dropping interview with Ayatollah Khomeini after Iran’s 1979 revolution and seizure of American hostages in Tehran. Wallace dared ask Iran’s supreme leader to respond to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s calling the imam a “lunatic.”

“60 Minutes” also pioneered the technique of shooting with hidden cameras to document dubious activities. After undercover lenses revealed a crime being plotted or committed, Wallace would typically burst onto the scene, confronting the malefactors face-to-face. The correspondent was so famous he didn’t always need to identify himself. In one droll clip, a bad guy sitting at his desk when the “60 Minutes” superstar shows up uninvited gleefully blurts out that “Mike Wallace is here,” registering for perpetuity the wrong-doer’s high status in the criminal world.

Celebrities weren’t spared either. We see clips of Wallace interrogating actor Kirk Douglas regarding his narcissism, and broadcaster Larry King about his womanizing. We see a young Barbra Streisand and an elderly Bette Davis spar with the acid-tongued, impertinent interviewer who won’t show the deference these legends believe they’re owed.

In “Here”’s most intriguing scenes, colleagues including Barbara Walters and “60 Minutes”’ Morley Safer and Lesley Stahl turn the table, giving Wallace the Mike Wallace treatment. The interrogator clearly dislikes getting a taste of his own medicine. He bristles at being asked how often he’s been married. Mike’s son from his first marriage, Chris Wallace — now a FOX News correspondent — is shown briefly interviewing his dad.

The sequences that most succeed in getting underneath Wallace’s skin deal with the death of his son Peter, an Ivy Leaguer who mysteriously disappears while mountain climbing in Greece in 1962. After weeks passed without receiving word, Mike Wallace flies to Greece to search for his son, only to spy the lad’s body from afar on seaside rocks.

“Here” is no hagiography. It aims to depict its titular subject warts and all. Wallace candidly discusses his bouts with clinical depression and even a suicide attempt. What appears to trigger Wallace’s struggle with “the black dog” is a $120 million lawsuit General William Westmoreland lodged against Wallace and CBS in 1982 for claiming the former US commander in Vietnam manipulated intelligence. In 1985, Westmoreland dropped the suit, claiming he’d “won.” But the exhausting legal ordeal clearly shook Wallace.

There are instances, unmentioned in “Here,” in which Wallace, widely perceived as the press’ exemplar of holding others accountable for their actions, may have fallen short of living up to journalism’s code of ethics. In 1981, the New York Times revealed that Wallace had asked his colleagues on the show to not file a report on Haiti criticizing its political regime because relatives of his wife lived in Haiti and might be subject to recriminations. Wallace also had an interest in an arts and crafts store in Port-au-Prince. “60 Minutes” aired the segment anyway. (This reviewer inquired of the film’s L.A. publicist why the Haiti snafu wasn’t included, but no explanation was provided.)

“Here” does touch on what happens when reporters become celebrities and earn millions. Belkin also raises the specter that Wallace’s off-the-rails approach lifted the curtain for tabloid TV shows like “Inside Edition,” “Hard Copy” and “A Current Affair,” as well as glib carnival barkers like Bill O’Reilly, who is seen being interviewed by an uncomfortable Wallace.

Fans of Wallace, who died in 2012 at age 94, will find this stroll down memory lane extremely enjoyable. As the Fourth Estate comes under repeated attack by a sitting President, Belkin does viewers a great service by reminding us of one of broadcast journalism’s most outspoken gladiators, who at his finest boldly yelled truth to power.

“Mike Wallace is Here,” which runs for 90 minutes, theatrically opened in New York and Los Angeles on July 26.

Ed Rampell is a film historian and critic based in Los Angeles. Rampell is the author of “Progressive Hollywood, A People’s Film History of the United States” and he co-authored “The Hawaii Movie and Television Book,” now in its third edition. This appeared at Progressive.org.

From The Progressive Populist, October 15, 2019

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