Salvador Dali Gets Surreal with Mike Wallace (1958)

Before he became a fix­ture on 60 Min­utes, Mike Wal­lace host­ed his own short-lived TV show, The Mike Wal­lace Inter­view (1957–58), which let Amer­i­cans get an up-close and per­son­al view of some leg­endary fig­ures — Frank Lloyd Wright, Eleanor Roo­sevelt, Rein­hold Niebuhr, Aldous Hux­ley, Erich Fromm, Adlai Steven­son, Hen­ry Kissinger, and Glo­ria Swan­son.

Then let’s also add Sal­vador Dali to the list. In 1958, Wal­lace tried to demys­ti­fy “the enig­ma that is Sal­vador Dali,” and it did­n’t go ter­ri­bly well. It turns out that sur­re­al­ist painters give sur­re­al answers to con­ven­tion­al inter­view ques­tions too. Pret­ty quick­ly, Wal­lace capit­u­lates and says, “I must con­fess, you lost me halfway through.” Hap­pi­ly for us, the video makes for some good view­ing more than 50 years lat­er.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Sal­vador Dali Con­tent:

Des­ti­no: The Sal­vador Dalí – Dis­ney Col­lab­o­ra­tion 57 Years in the Mak­ing

Sal­vador Dali Appears on “What’s My Line? in 1952

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­bound