Legendary TV personality Mike Wallace was a correspondent for CBS's 60 Minutes from 1968 until his departure in 2006. He passed away in 2012.

Myron Wallace grew up in Brookline, Mass. and found his calling at the campus radio station while a student at the University of Michigan. Settling in Chicago after graduation, he worked as a news writer and broadcaster before leaving for World War II, serving as a Navy communications officer. After the war, Wallace returned to Chicago and bounced between the worlds of news and entertainment, hosted a couple of talk shows (Night-Beat, Mike Wallace Interviews, Newsbeat) then moved back to hard news and headed off to cover Vietnam for CBS. In 1968, he was tapped by Don Hewitt to co-host a new CBS show called 60 Minutes. Although the show delivered relatively unimpressive ratings its first few years, it soon turned into one of the network's most successful programs. After four decades on the show, the baritone-voiced presenter retired in 2006, although he remained with CBS News as a "Correspondent Emeritus" through 2008.

Wallace made a name for himself with his aggressive, bullying interviews; famous for his "gotcha" segments, he was one of the first to use hidden cameras to confront scam artists. Over the course of his career, his interviews generated plenty of controversy and the occasional lawsuit. General William Westmoreland waged a decade-long legal battle against Wallace and CBS over a report in the early '80s. And both CBS and Wallace were sharply criticized when an interview Wallace had conducted with Jeffrey Wigand—a former big tobacco executive—was killed in what was widely seen as a cave-in to corporate pressure. (The events became the basis for the movie The Insider.) But Wallace had plenty of moments of glory, too: He sat down with just about every major figure of the past half-century, including John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Yasser Arafat, Ronald Reagan, Deng Xiaoping, the Ayatollah Khomeini, Muammar Qaddafi, and Johnny Carson. [Image via Getty]