How does Mike Wallace get people to open up? He's nosy — and prepared

Mike Wallace is a legend in his own time, so he deserves a second memoir, "Between You and Me" — a collection of ruminations about his most famous interviews over the past 60 years.

The man is 87 years old but looks and sounds much younger.

The founding star of CBS' TV newsmagazine show "60 Minutes" since its inception in 1968, Wallace just might be the greatest interviewer of all time.

Answering the phone at his New York office, Wallace was caught eating a sandwich; he thought he had a break between interviews. But he was completely gracious, genial, relaxed — and talkative. (I was the beneficiary of a glorious journalistic accident: 50 juicy minutes.)

Wallace had just returned from a hearing test. "You reach the point in this business when the hearing starts to go," he said. "It has something to do with using earphones all the time. A lot of broadcasting people have this problem. Walter Cronkite is virtually stone deaf." (I moved the microphone on my headset a little closer to my mouth before continuing.)

"I've always been nosy," he said when asked about his interviewing techniques. "Early on I learned to read thoroughly everything that has been written about an interviewee, see his films or whatever there is, then write on a yellow pad, subheadings such as 'motivation,' 'fear,' 'greed' — things of that nature.

"I may end up with 100 questions on the pad, but when I sit down, this person begins to see 'This guy knows a lot about me.' And that establishes what I call the chemistry of confidentiality. If I listen and let silences go, more words keep coming out. If you prepare, people you interview respect you and want to help."

Wallace recalled the earlier days of his career when he sometimes did "ambush interviews," obtained by surprise outside someone's office. "You get a certain amount of information that way, but they tended to be caricatures of themselves. They worked for awhile — but then we realized they were self-defeating. We generated more heat than light."

Sit-down interviews are better, he said — and he is especially grateful for a delightful run of "meeting interesting people, who had something to say." He believes now that some of his better interviews came out of left field.

Wallace calls himself "an old fiddle player" who "cares a lot about music." One of his favorite musicians is Vladimir Horowitz, perhaps the greatest pianist of the 20th century. By accident Wallace came face to face with Horowitz prior to the interview, and Horowitz shouted, "Mike Wallace — I watch you every Sunday."