The Mike Wallace interview of Frank Lloyd Wright are notable for Wright gleefully taking provocative positions on just about every topic Wallace could think to raise. Wright is clearly enjoying tweeking the collective nose of 1950s America and equally clearly, he is spinning a myth, creating on television a version of himself that to be remembered after his death.
The Mike Wallace interview have long been available for purchase, now they are available for viewing on the web. Mike Wallace donated tapes of his interviews to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin and 65 of them, including the two-part interview with Wright can be viewed on the website. Subtitles have been added, and transcripts of the entire exchange are also available.
WALLACE: You said many years ago, that you would some day would be the greatest architect of the twentieth century. Have you reached your goal?WRIGHT: Well, now I think I never said it.
WALLACE: Well, I’ve done a considerable amount of reading…
WRIGHT: (LAUGHING) I know.
WALLACE: by you and about you, this week. And I don’t think there is a good deal of doubt about the fact that over the years, you have said it not once, but many times. Maybe not… maybe not in that specific form.
WRIGHT: You know, I may not have said it, but I may have felt it.
WALLACE: Uh-huh. You do feel it?
WRIGHT: But it is so unbecoming to say it that I should have been careful about it. I’m not as crude as I am generally reported to be. I believe, like this matter of arrogance. Now what is arrogance?
WALLACE: What is arrogance?
WRIGHT: Arrogance is something a man possesses on the surface to defend the fact that he hasn’t got the thing that he pretends to have.
One Comment
I knew this link would be up if I came to this site.
What shocked me about them the first time I saw the Mike Wallace interviews was the feeling that 90 year old Wright just runs circles around Wallace. It’s so entertaining.
I think my favorite part of the two interviews (the first, I think?) is when they return after a commercial break, and Wallace says something like, “Ladies and gentleman, I can’t go on with the interview because Mr. Wright has taken my notes and he won’t give them back.”
Oh, that and when Wallace asks Wright how it feels to be characterized as a “pompous windbag” in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
I still like the DVD because it has footage taken at Taliesin, but checking out the interviews every few years is always enjoyable.