Here's link, via Boing Boing, to a collection of Mike Wallace interviews from the 50s, including one with Gloria Swanson:
The Mike Wallace Interview Archive
Wallace's technique was to get as close to insolence with his guests, especially his female guests, as possible without crossing the line into rudeness. The lack of respect he shows to Swanson is sickening and she barely keeps her dignity intact. Swanson observes that "something has gone dreadfully wrong with the American man," and Wallace, puffing away on a cigarette throughout the program, proves her point.
There's also a touching interview with Jean Seberg, age 19, just after the disaster of her performance in Saint Joan, her first film, in which Seberg, too, struggles, somewhat more successfully, to keep her dignity in the face of Wallace's insinuating smugness. "What will happen to your career," Wallace asks, "when it comes time for you to get married and devote most of your time to your family?" "I hope I'll marry a man who lets me continue with my career," says Seberg, looking slightly bewildered by Wallace's attitude.
The two great stars, speaking from different ends of their careers, manage to make Wallace's cigarettes look like accurately-sized phallic symbols. What we're seeing in these interviews is the birth of modern journalism, in which hacks try to elevate themselves by patronizing their betters, treating their accomplishments as the same sort of hollow flim-flam the hacks are practicing.
What we're also seeing is further proof that modern feminism was a response not to an over-powerful patriarchy, but to a patriarchy in full-on psychic collapse. Wallace comes off here as a truly pathetic figure.