April 28th, 1957- April 18th, 1958 (with Mike Wallace) continuing till September 14th, 1958-ABC
A half-hour interview series with host Mike Wallace.
Mike interviews playwright Tennessee Williams.
NOTE:
One of the rare "lost" MIKE WALLACE INTERVIEW broadcasts, of which all but two of the 72 broadcasts survive.
NOTE:
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 19th, 1958 episode. The Fund for the Republic then sponsored a 13-week set of Mike Wallace 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.
The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin has 68 of the 72 episodes of The Mike Wallace Interview, donated by Mike Wallace in the 1960's. Four of these broadcasts are only available as audio recordings while the rest are kinescopes.
The Ransom Center also has a transcript of the Ben Hecht interview (broadcast February 25th, 1958) as well as a kinescope of this show. One of the episodes the Ransom Center does not have is 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, both interview and retractions appears to be lost.”
Also missing from the Ransom Center’s collection are the two retractions read by ABC’s Oliver Treyz and Mike Wallace on May 27th which Archival Television Audio, Inc. does have 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.”
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 also retains as a kinescope. 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.)