SUMMARY: Mike Wallace is truly one individual who can be considered a pioneer in television interviews. On Friday he will turn 90. 05-04-2008 MIKE WALLACE TURNS 90 ON FRIDAY (CBS) The following is a weekly 60 Minutes commentary by CBS News correspondent Andy Rooney. We don't ordinarily do birthdays here on 60 Minutes but this is sort of special. Friday will be Mike Wallace's 90th birthday. That may seem pretty old to you but if you meet Mike on the street, don't bet you can beat him around the block because he's still in better shape than most men at 40. One of the things you wouldn't know about this broadcast, 60 Minutes, is what good friends so many of us are who are lucky to work on it. I don't want to get sentimental about this but Mike is not only a great broadcaster, he's a great friend. The only good thing about this is I suspect that Mike is going to continue to be around here quite a bit. Mike is just not the retiring type. Television, after all, is still pretty young. When the history of television is written, a few names are going to stand out and there isn't a name that's going to be bigger than Mike Wallace's. There's never been anyone like him. One of the things that this broadcast does best is illicit information from interesting people and in the brief history of television, no one has ever done that better than Mike Wallace. I don't know if a list of interesting names is interesting or not but I was amazed to see a list of the people Mike has interviewed. Here are just a few of them: Richard Nixon, Johnny Carson, Henry Kissinger, Nancy Reagan, Larry King, Jimmy Carter, Bette Davis, Yasser Arafat, Eddie Arcaro, Frank Lloyd Wright, Carol Burnett, Bill Parcells, Salman Rushdie, Vladimir Putin, Al Sharpton, Vladimir Horowitz, Donald Trump, Jack Kevorkian, Malcolm X, Roger Clemens, Tennessee Williams, Tallulah Bankhead, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Oscar Hammerstein, Woody Allen, Eleanor Roosevelt, Martina Navratilova, Jesse Jackson, The Shah of Iran, Golda Meir. If you ever get famous for something, chances are, Mike Wallace will be after you for an interview. Happy Birthday, Mike! And try to be nicer to the people you interview.
