Mike Wallace

NEW YORK >> Within five months of each other, two of the men who helped make “60 Minutes” the most distinctive news show on television have died.

First it was Andy Rooney, the cantankerous commentator who died last November, a month after delivering the last of his show-closing essays. Late Saturday night, it was Mike Wallace, the hard-charging interviewer who frequently led “60 Minutes” and gave it journalistic heft with a showman’s flair.

Rooney made it to age 92. Wallace beat him by a year, although he spent the latter stage of his life in the New Canaan, Conn., care facility where he died.

“More than anyone else he was responsible for the continuing success of ‘60 Minutes,’ “veteran correspondent Morley Safer, a longtime colleague and frequent competitor of Wallace’s in chasing after big stories, said on Sunday’s show. “We are all in his debt.”

60 Minutes” plans an extended tribute to Wallace next Sunday.