Hot Property

The lights dim, and a single spot pokes over the silhouetted shoulder of the inquisitor into the eyes of his chosen victim. The victim fidgets in the straight-backed chair and the third degree commences. The victim might be Social Lion-Huntress Elsa Maxwell. "Miss Maxwell, how old are you?" Miss Maxwell, nonplussed: "Why, 73." "Miss Maxwell, if the moral climate of your set is so stifling, why don't you get out of it?" Miss Maxwell: "If I withdrew from everyone who bounced from bed to bed, I'd have very few friends." Or the victim might be Toots Shor, the New York restaurateur and drinking man. "Toots, why do people call you a slob?" Shor: "Me? Jiminy crickets, they must ha' been talking about Jackie Gleason."

The inquisition is called Night Beat, and the inquisitor is a tough young veteran of radio-TV named Mike Wallace. On four nights a week, as many as a million and a half New Yorkers stay up late (11 to midnight) and tune in to independent station WABD to watch with a mixture of suspense, fascination and sympathy while Interviewer Wallace, a onetime $20-a-week announcer, pokes at the privacy of celebrities, public officials and others who like to ventilate their egos. In only 13 weeks the show has transformed ambitious Mike Wallace into one of the most ardently wooed personalities in television. Last week both NBC and ABC were pleading with him to sign long-term contracts.

Hard Look. Night Beat is built around Wallace's ability to probe convincingly and assert glibly, to be sulphurous and rude--all in the name of inquisitiveness and good, often gamy fun. He induced Humorist Abe Burrows to talk freely about his psychoanalysis, enticed Theatrical Director Joshua (Picnic) Logan to say: "I demand provocativeness and exposure of the human flesh because that's the way to portray romantic love; people understand raw flesh.'' He badgered the high priestess of radio interviewing, Bacheloress Mary Margaret McBride, into confessing: "I never found the right man, but I contemplated having a baby with an Italian I was in love with." The questioning often gets embarrassing for the living rooms, as when he asked Milliner Mr. John about the "extraordinary number of male homosexuals in the fashion industry." Mr. John minced words.

When Irish Actress Siobhan McKenna appeared, a question about the Jewish mayor of Dublin led to some McKenna comments that set the WABD switchboard ablaze before the show was over. Advised next day that more than 1,000 New Yorkers had called in accusing her of antiSemitism, Actress McKenna hastened to reappear on Night Beat next night to explain, with soft, deep-throated embarrassment, that her listeners had misunderstood, as indeed they had.

No Smiters. Under the circumstances one of the surprises of Wallace's show is that he continues to line up willing victims at the rate of eight a week. "They come on,'' he says, "because they're exhibitionists, or because they rather like the challenge, or because they have something to say and haven't had an opportunity to say it anywhere.'' Only a handful, e.g., Maurice Evans, Eartha Kitt, have refused, and so far none of his victims has run up to smite him with a microphone.

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