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IT WASN'T ALL WORK ...

BY DEBRA HAZEL

LAS VEGAS — Mike Wallace, co-editor of 60 Minutes, has just about seen it all: a Secret Service agent tearfully recalling the death of his president; a controversial Palestinian leader insisting on his commitment to peace; a steely-eyed former first lady denying knowledge of a political scandal.

Wallace shared these and other memories from his storied journalistic career in an anecdotal presentation at this year’s ICSC Spring Convention, in one of a handful of presentations and activities not directly related to retail development. The 85-year-old Wallace, whose broadcast career began in the 1950s, has interviewed world leaders and artists ranging from Muammar Qaddafi and Ronald Reagan to Frank Lloyd Wright, Barbra Streisand and Itzhak Perlman.

His is a career that began long before the debut of 60 Minutes. In fact, it was an early Wallace program, Nightbeat, that helped break the mold of the insipid interview shows of the time and set the stage for 60 Minutes. Wallace asked tough questions in his precursor to the Hardballs and the O’Reilly Factors of today.

“[My partner, Ted Yates,] and I did something radical, asking people the questions the audience would ask — nosy, irreverent, sometimes abrasive,” he told his audience in a packed room. “It caused a sensation in New York City.”

And the programs were live. “Whatever the guests said or did was what the viewers saw and heard,” he said. That includes Wright chastising Wallace for smoking on a show sponsored by Philip Morris.

Acrobatics and balancing acts were not confined to Leasing Mall negotiations. The convention opened with a dazzling circus performance.

Wallace later hosted The Mike Wallace Interview for ABC, and then he co-founded 60 Minutes in 1968, where he has remained.

One of the most moving interviews of his career, Wallace said, was with Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent assigned to protect President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Speaking more than a decade later, Hill recalled the scene and his own lingering guilt.

“If I had reacted about five-tenths of a second faster, I would not be here today,” Hill told Wallace. “And that would be fine with me.”

Wallace’s career has also included several meetings with Yasir Arafat, longtime head of the Palestine Liberation Organization. During the most recent interview, the embattled Arafat, elected president of the Palestinian National Authority in 1996, continued to insist that he desires peace and that he remains the favored leader of his people. But Wallace says he now has doubts about Arafat’s commitment to peace.

“He had me,” Wallace said. “I believed him.” But recent events, including several suicide bombings the day of Wallace’s ICSC speech, have led him to question that belief. “Peace may be coming, but it’s hard to see it now. The question now is whether Arafat is willing to do what needs to be done.”

Other clips Wallace showed his audience included one with the Ayatollah Khomeini not long after the seizure of U.S. hostages in 1980. Wallace’s tough questions included asking Khomeini for his reaction to the charge by the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat that he, Khomeini, was a “lunatic.” Khomeini said simply that he didn’t see much of a future for Sadat, and shortly afterward he called for Sadat’s assassination, which was perpetrated in 1981.

Wallace had kind words for President Richard M. Nixon, who had offered Wallace a job as his press secretary in 1968, which he declined. In one of his first pieces for the show, Nixon talked with Wallace about restoring honor to the presidency.

“Can you imagine?” Wallace asked ruefully. “But he was one of the most intelligent and capable [men]. I liked him, and he liked me.”

Industry newcomers had a networking opportunity of their own at ICSC’s first Spring Convention Next Generation party.

Not even Nancy Reagan, a friend from the 1940s, was immune from tough questions. Having agreed to a 60 Minutes interview as she promoted her autobiography, Reagan was clearly unhappy with Wallace’s questions regarding her husband’s role in the 1986 Iran-contra scandal and her $2 million compensation for a trip to Japan.

“She wouldn’t speak to me for a while after that, and after a few weeks, I decided that might be the end of our friendship,” Wallace recalled. Sometime later, all was forgiven, and the two are again close.

Not all Wallace’s interviews have been with people who decide the fate of nations. Among his favorites is one with a woman he loves — “and my wife knows it,” he said — actress, dancer and author Shirley MacLaine. MacLaine, a well-known believer in reincarnation and extraterrestrials, discussed her belief that she once lived as a Moorish girl who romanced Charlemagne.

“How could you fail to love a woman like that?” Wallace asked.

Wallace’s career has allowed him to talk to people who have brought themselves “center stage for the world to admire, deplore or be enchanted by,” he said. “You can imagine what a joy and voyage of discovery it has been.

Mixing it up at The Rouse Co.’s Fashion Show Mall gala. The party included a runway show featuring designer Roberto Cavalli’s fall collection.

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