Part 17

Mignon and her husband recently bought a house in Connecticut, but they will keep their Westside apartment. "We have three acres," she says proudly. "I hope we'll get a couple of horses and I would love a goat. I love goats. They're so cute. I love animals -- we have a Great Dane and a Labrador -- and I'm very much into the business with the Animal Protection Institute. Most of the experiments that are done with animals today: there's just no reason for it. ... I mean, I don't think we need another shampoo on the market, really."

Her voice rises with feeling as she pursues the subject. "It is really the slavery of today. People don't have any feelings for animals, and I'm just rabid. I really am. It is so disgraceful. Anytime anybody wants me to do a benefit for animals, just call me and I'll do it any day I've got free. I would like to do more benefits. Actually, I'm hardly ever asked to, but if I were asked, I would do it."

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EASTSIDER DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS JR. A man for all seasons

7-14-79

Six times he has received an advance to write his autobiography, and six times he has returned the money because of the enormity of the task. The life of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is too rich and varied to be condensed into a one-volume narrative.

The only child of Douglas Fairbanks Sr., America's first great matinee idol, he has acted in more than 75 feature films, produced 160 television plays and a dozen movies, performed in countless stage plays and musicals, made numerous recordings, written screenplays, published his articles and drawings in many of the nation's leading magazines, and given his time freely to at least 50 public service organizations. Ten countries on four continents have presented him with major awards for his diplomatic and philanthropic activities.

"One morning I woke up and said, 'I suppose I must have retired,'" notes the tanned, vigorous 69-year-old at his Madison Avenue office, from behind his huge antique desk with brass lions' heads for drawer pulls. But in our long discussion, it becomes obvious that he has never actually retired, either as an entertainer or as a force in public affairs. His office is fairly cluttered with mementoes of his world travels -- swords, statuettes, novelty lamps, old photographs, oversized travel books. The white-haired, melodious-voiced actor sits looking very comfortable as he tells about his ongoing stage career.

"My favorite type of work right now is doing plays for limited periods. In 1940 I gave up stage acting, but in 1968 I did the first big revival of My Fair Lady, and since then I have been in several other plays. This summer I'm doing My Fair Lady again in Reno for eight to 10 weeks. ... I didn't want to copy Rex Harrison, but I was prevailed upon by Lerner and Loewe to do this. I've known them since before they knew each other. They're going to make a number of adjustments for me. My other project, which is still in the planning stages, is a new Broadway show. But it's really too soon to talk about it."

On August 13, the classic 1939 film Gunga Din, in which Fairbanks co stars with Cary Grant, will be shown at 9 p.m. on Channel 9 with a single commercial-interruption. His other hit films include Sinbad the Sailor and The Prisoner of Zenda. He acted in his first movie in 1923 while barely in his teens, and in 1932 he was designated a star. He continued to make films until 1941, when he joined the U.S. armed forces and served for more than five years. Then he resumed his film career with much success before turning his hand to producing in 1952.

"Everybody misuses the word 'star' today," he explains. "Legally, it only means having your name above the title. There's no such thing as a superstar. That's a term we have let creep into the language. Actually Charlie Chaplin may have been a superstar, but he's one of the very few." He laughs and tells about another aspect of modern-day moviemaking that amuses him. "Very few of the great producers in the past paid any attention to credits at all. Now, they all like to get their names in the billing and in the ads, as big as the stars' names -- as if anybody cares who made the film!"

Asked whether his career was helped by having a famous father in the movie business, he replies that "the advantages were ephemeral. They were limited to people being polite and nice, but that wouldn't necessarily lead to any jobs. It usually meant that I would be underpaid rather than overpaid, and they would expect more of me. By the time I became a star, my father had already retired."

His stepmother Mary Pickford, "America's sweetheart," who died in May at the age of 86, joined with Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith in 1919 to found United Artists. The following year she married Fairbanks, and together they virtually ruled Hollywood. Douglas Junior, who became close to his father only in his late teens, grew up in New York, Hollywood, London and Paris -- which helps to explain his love for travel and his endless quest for variety.

As the creative force behind the acclaimed TV series Douglas Fairbanks Presents, he produced an average of 32 one-hour films a year from 1952 and 1957. "My studio manager had a heart attack and my story editor had a nervous breakdown, just from the pressure of getting out these films. I thought I would be next, so I decided to quit," he says. "They were very elaborate productions. We used to have the scripts six months in advance. Now, if you start shooting on Tuesday, you'll get the script on Monday."

Today, with his multiple business interests and philanthropic pursuits, he maintains a house in Florida, an office in London, and, since 1956, an apartment on the Upper East Side. He and his wife Mary have been married for 40 years and have three daughters, two of whom live in England.

His overall career, concludes Fairbanks, "does not have a single theme, because it's been so diversified. It's been a series of themes. Maybe it's cacophonous. The things I find most interesting don't pay a penny. But possibly all my activities blended together have something to do with a person who's got a lot of curiosity and energy and capacity to enjoy and appreciate life."

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WESTSIDER LEE FALK Creator of The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician

5-27-78

Who is the most widely read author in the world today?

Not counting Chairman Mao, whose quotations are required reading for one-fourth of the earth's population, the honor probably belongs to a dapper, soft-spoken man in his early 60s who could walk from his Westside apartment all the way to Times Square without being recognized. He is not a familiar figure on book jackets or talk shows because Lee Falk happens to be a comic strip writer. His two creations, The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician, are published in more than 500 newspapers in 40 countries. His daily readership: close to 100 million.

"One of the few places in the world where my strips don't run is in New York City," says Falk, leaning gently forward in his chair. "They ran in the New York Journal American for 25 years. That was the biggest afternoon paper in America until the newspaper strike, about 10 years ago. Then it folded, as did most of New York's papers; we were left with the Times, the Post, and the Daily News. But my strips do run in El Diario, the Spanish-language newspaper, and in the New York News World."

He arrived in New York from Missouri during the Great Depression, while still in his teens, carrying a sample strip he had written and drawn. King Features bought Mandrake the Magician and two years later added The Phantom to their syndicate.

In the beginning, Falk did both the drawing and the writing himself. "Then for a long time I used to make rough sketches and give them to my artists," he recalls. "Now I just give a description of each panel. I might say 'close-up' or 'long shot' like you do in a film. Then I put in the dialogue. ... Some of my early artists are dead. They've gone on to their reward -- to that big bar up in the sky, where all artists go. ... Now there's one group drawing my strips on Long Island, and another one on Cape Cod. Very often I don't see them from one year to the next. Collaboration works best that way."

Since giving up his drawing pad, Falk has increased his literary output many times over. Besides doing all the writing for his strips for the past 40-odd years -- which now takes up but a small part of his time -- he has written five novels and a dozen plays. He owns five theatres; he has directed about 100 plays and produced 300. None of his own dramatic works has been a big commercial success, although one is currently doing well in Paris. Then there was the comedy that he co-authored with a young American he met in Rome just before World War II. "It almost made it to Broadway," says Falk. "It was redone about two years ago on the West Coast. My collaborator was there to see it too; we've remained friends to this day. You may have heard of the man. He's a senator from California, the senate majority whip. His name is Alan Cranston. ... You see, it's best to save the punch line for the end."

Another of Falk's main pastimes is travel. He has visited enough islands, jungles, and out-of-the-way places to keep the story ideas flowing for years to come, but his appetite is still unwhetted. Early this year he toured Scandinavia, when "they were making a big fuss about the Phantom's marriage. There were so many press conferences to attend. One guy made me wear a mask, and the next day as I got on the plane, there was my picture on the front page. I said, 'But your paper doesn't even run The Phantom.' He said, 'The Phantom belongs to all of Norway.'"

In April of this year, Lee and his wife Elizabeth, a cosmetics executive turned mystery writer, spent three weeks in the People's Republic of China. Ironically, although that is one of the few places in the world where Falk's name is completely unknown, neither he nor anyone else in his touring group could escape the public eye. "They were fascinated by seeing us, because for a whole generation the Chinese have been shut off from foreign visitors. They crowded around us 10 deep, and held up their babies."

An action-oriented man who loves to play tennis, ride his bicycle, and go swimming, Falk has lived on the West Side for over 20 years because "I find the East Side a little too chichi for my tastes." Another Westside characteristic he likes is the abundance of Puerto Rican residents: "They're very sweet, gentle people. ... [Deputy Mayor] Herman Badillo is an old friend of mine. He knew my comic strips from Puerto Rico."