Status of The Mike Wallace Interview

A total of 72 episodes of The Mike Wallace Interview were broadcast by ABC between 1957 and 1958. The series premiered on April 28th, 1957 and was sponsored by Phillip Morris through the April 18th, 1958 episode. The Fund for the Republic then sponsored a 13-week set of interviews entitled “Liberty and Freedom” (one of which was never broadcast) followed by an additional six episodes. The final broadcast took place on September 14th, 1958.

My article about The Mike Wallace Interview can be found here.

The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin has 66 of the 72 episodes of The Mike Wallace Interview. Five are only available as audio recordings while the rest are kinescopes that have been digitized and made available for viewing online. The Ransom Center also has a transcript of the Ben Hecht interview (broadcast February 25th, 1958) but no audio or video. One of the episodes the Ransom Center does not have a copy of is the controversial Mickey Cohen broadcast from May 19th, 1957.

According to Steve Winston, Associate Curator of Film at the Ransom Center, “There are reports that the BBC still has some excerpts though we have not been able to locate the specific department that might hold them. Other than that, the interview appears to be lost.” Audio of the Cohen episode is part of Archival Television Audio, Inc. collection.

Also missing from the Ransom Center’s collection are the two retractions read by ABC’s Oliver Treyz on May 27th and December 14th. According to Winston, “We have no idea why the footage was not included in the kinescope. We don’t know if they were removed later, or if they were never recorded in the first place.” Archival Television Audio, Inc. has the May 27th retraction read by Treyz.

The UCLA Film & Television Archive has two episodes of the series: the Cyrus Eaton interview that is audio only at the Ransom Center and the Ben Hecht interview that the Ransom Center only has a transcript for. Both the Museum of Broadcasting and The Paley Center for Media have several episodes that are also part of the Ransom Center’s collection.

(According to a December 1957 article in The Los Angeles Times, a filmed “stand-by interview” with Evelyn Rudie was always ready to be used in the event a guest didn’t show up. It is not included in the episode count and its current whereabouts are unknown.)

Abbreviations:
ATA – Archival Television Audio, Inc.
MOB – The Museum of Broadcasting
Paley – The Paley Center for Media
Ransom – The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas
UCLA – The UCLA Film & Television Archive

#	Episode Title	Airdate	Status
1	Gloria Swanson	04/28/1957	Ransom
2	Eldon L. Edwards	05/05/1957	Ransom
3	Philip Wylie	05/12/1957	Ransom
4	Mickey Cohen*	05/19/1957	ATA
5	Senator Wayne Morse	05/26/1957	Ransom
6	Earl Browder	06/02/1957	Ransom
7	Ralph Lapp	06/09/1957	Ransom
8	Mary Margaret McBride	06/16/1957	Ransom
9	David Hawkins	06/23/1957	Ransom
10	Charles “Commando” Kelly	06/30/1957	Ransom
11	Steve Allen	07/07/1957	Ransom/Paley/MOB
12	Diana Barrymore	07/14/1957	Ransom
13	Glenn H. McCarthy	07/21/1957	Ransom
14	Senator James O. Eastland	07/28/1957	Ransom/Paley
15	Bob Feller	08/04/1957	Ransom
16	Dagmar	08/11/1957	Ransom/MOB
17	Harry Bridges	08/18/1957
18	Fred Otash	08/25/1957	Ransom
19	Frank Lloyd Wright	09/01/1957	Ransom/Paley
20	Eddie Arcaro	09/08/1957	Ransom
21	George Jessel	09/14/1957	Ransom
22	Governor Orval E. Faubus	09/15/1957	Ransom/MOB
23	Margaret Sanger	09/21/1957	Ransom
24	Frank Lloyd Wright	09/28/1957	Ransom/Paley
25	Lilli St. Cyr	10/05/1957	Ransom
26	Retired General George C. Kenny	10/12/1957	Ransom
27	Malcolm Muggeridge	10/19/1957	Ransom
28	Carmen Basilio	10/26/1957	Ransom
29	Kirk Douglas	11/02/1957	Ransom
30	Diana Dors	11/09/1957	Ransom
31	Elsa Maxwell	11/16/1957	Ransom
32	Eleanor Roosevelt	11/23/1957	Ransom
33	Bennett Cerf	11/30/1957	Ransom
34	Drew Pearson	12/07/1957	Ransom/MOB
35	Edward Bennett Williams	12/14/1957	Ransom
36	Leonard Ross	12/21/1957	Ransom
37	Major Alexander P. de Seversky	12/28/1957	Ransom
38	Jean Seberg	01/04/1958	Ransom
39	Nobel Prize Winners: Lester B. Pearson, Others	01/11/1958	Ransom
40	John Gates	01/18/1958	Ransom
41	Walter Reuther	01/25/1958	Ransom
42	Fulton Lewis, Jr	02/01/1958	Ransom
43	Pearl S. Buck	02/08/1958	Ransom
44	Ben Hecht**	02/15/1958	UCLA
45	Rudy Vallee	02/22/1958	Ransom
46	Tennessee Williams	03/01/1958	ATA
47	Major Donald Keyhoe	03/08/1958	Ransom
48	Oscar Hammerstein II	03/15/1958	Ransom
49	Anthony Perkins	03/22/1958	Ransom
50	Peter Ustinov	03/29/1958	Ransom
51	Lillian Roth	04/05/1958	Ransom
52	Ambassador Abba Eban	04/12/1959	Ransom
53	Salvador Dali	04/19/1959	Ransom
54	Rev. Reinhold Niebuhr	04/27/1958	Ransom
55	Cyrus Eaton***	05/04/1958	Ransom/UCLA
56	Justice William O. Douglas	05/11/1958	Ransom
57	Aldous Huxley	05/18/1958	Ransom
58	Erich Fromm	05/25/1958	Ransom
59	Adlai E. Stevenson***	06/01/1958	Ransom
60	Sylvester (Pat) Weaver***	06/08/1958	Ransom
61	Henry Cabot Lodge	UNAIRED
62	Monsignor Francis Lally***	06/22/1958	Ransom
63	Harry Ashmore	06/29/1958	Ransom
64	Charles Percy	07/06/1958	Ransom
65	Henry Kissinger	07/13/1958	Ransom
66	Dr. Robert Hutchins***	07/20/1958	Ransom
67	Maj. Alexander P. de Seversky	08/03/1958
68	Dr. Henry M. Wriston	08/17/1958	Ransom
69	Edward A. Weeks, Jr	08/24/1958	Ransom
70	James McBride Dabbs	08/31/1958	Ransom
71	Mortimer Adler	09/07/1958	Ransom
72	Arthur Larson	09/14/1958	Ransom

*Archival Television Audio, Inc. has an audio recording of this episode.
**The Harry Ransom Center has a transcript for this episode.
**The Harry Ransom Center has audio recordings of these episodes.

NOTE: From March 1959 to September 1961, Mike Wallace hosted an unrelated interview series called The Mike Wallace Interview (also known as Mike Wallace Interviews) on independent station WNTA-TV in New York City.

References:
Smith, Cecil. “Stars Dodge the Mike Wallace Interview to Avoid Being Tagged ‘It’ in Public.” Los Angeles Times. 1 Dec. 1957: G3

Revised August 29th, 2019