Myron's Story

What Makes Myron 'Mike' Wallace Tick? Morley Safer Tries To Find Out

(CBS) 
In 1962, an event happened that would change his life. While sightseeing on a mountaintop in Greece, Wallace's 19-year-old son Peter was killed.

"And we went over and found him," he said. "He had fallen off a cliff. He, you know. What can you say? He was a glorious young man."

To honor Peter's memory, Wallace decided to concentrate on more meaningful work. Soon, CBS News became his professional home.

During the early years of 60 Minutes, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Wallace labored on a broadcast not many people watched.

"We finished regularly 85 out of 100 shows and so forth. But we got our act together during those years," Wallace said.

"It was spring training," Safer remarked.

"That's exactly right," Wallace agreed.

The rest, as they say, is history.

On screen, of course, there was little evidence of the toll taken by the brutal hours and the arguments and the hundreds upon hundreds of airplane flights and hotel rooms.

But like all members of 60 Minutes, Wallace did not escape untouched. He passed out on a plane 15 years ago. Doctors put in a pacemaker, and still monitor his heart by long distance.

Over the years he has been involved in some major embarrassments for CBS.

There was his interview with whistle blower Jeffery Wigand, who charged that despite its denials, the tobacco industry had known for years how harmful cigarettes were.

"It's a delivery device for nicotine," Wigand told Wallace.

"A delivery device for nicotine. Put it in your mouth, light it up, and you're gonna get your fix?" Wallace asked.

"Get your fix," Wigand agreed.

CBS management first refused to air the interview. By the time it finally did run, the network had a very public black eye. But it was a lawsuit over a Vietnam documentary that literally took him to the edge.

Gen. William Westmoreland sued Wallace and CBS for reporting that Westmoreland had deliberately falsified estimates of enemy troop strength in Vietnam. The suit was eventually dropped, and Wallace has talked many times about the deep depression that descended on him during that trial.

What he's not talked about is something a few of his colleagues always suspected.

"Did you try to commit suicide at one point?" Safer asked Wallace.

"Uh, I've never said this before. Yeah. I tried," Wallace admitted. "I don't know why the hell you asked me that question because I, other people have and I've — it's the first time I've answered it honestly. I wrote a note. And Mary found it. And she found the pills that I was taking on the floor. I was asleep."

But that was over 20 years ago. Wallace's wife, Mary, got him through it. And those 20 intervening years have been some of the most productive in his career.

"You've since become — I mean this in the best sense — a kind of poster boy for dealing with depression," Safer said.

"Yes, I have," Wallace agreed. "Because, I — listen. Depression can be treated."