Marathon Pundit: Mike Wallace, onetime host of Chicago's "Miss Tavern Pale Beauty Pageant"

This is my Mother's Day post. With Mike Wallace being fresh in the news with tonight's already controversial interview with Mitt Romney airing this evening, now is a good time to hop in the "Wayback Machine."

A few years ago I was at the Marathon Pundit boyhood home in Palos Heights, Illinois, and "60 Minutes" came on.

There was a report by Mike Wallace, and my mother remarked, "You know, that Wallace is so smug, but I remember when he was the host of the 'Tavern Pale Beauty Pageant.'"

Space considerations were undoubtedly the reason this important part of Wallace's career were left out of his official CBS biography.

She explained in the early days of Chicago's WGN-TV, pro wrestling, hosted by Chicago Cubs announcer Jack Brickhouse, was one of its most popular programs.

During the intermissions of that show, WGN switched over to the beauty contest. Tavern Pale, a now-defunct local brew popular with blue collar folks, sponsored both the matches and the the Wallace-hosted beauty pageants.

The pageants, my mother told me, usually took place in bars in industrial neighborhoods such as South Chicago and Belmont-Cragin, and featured gum-smacking women, probably named Angie or Stella, competing to become Miss Tavern Pale for a week.

My mom's recollections of Wallace as pageant host are pretty clear--she says he was an enthusiastic emcee, and at the time, it seemed to her an impossibility that he'd be the serious journalist he became just a few years later.

Tonight I'll be at at my mother's house watching Wallace ask Governor Romney and his wife if they had pre-marital sex, I'll be wishing Romney replied back, "Hey, Wallace, didn't you used to host the Miss Tavern Pale beauty pageant....and did you ever...you know...with one of the contestants...."

Or can ask. So Mike, "Did you?"

Oh, Happy Mother's Day, Mom. Thanks for the inspiration for this post.

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