100 New Yorkers of the 1970s Part 8

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-auth.o.r.ed 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 appet.i.te 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."

Lee Falk estimates that "over a period of 40 years I must have written about 800 to 1,000 stories. They would fill this whole room." Where does he get his inspiration? "A lot of it comes from my travels. It's all grist for the mill. Now and then I see something in the news and adapt it to my features. For example, once I saw a story in _Life_ magazine about a Swiss scientist who was experimenting with back-breeding. He managed to breed some European cattle back to the original aurochs, which has been extinct for several hundred years. ... I put his idea into Mandrake.

A scientist started with a lizard and ended up with a dinosaur."

The veteran storyteller never gets tired of spinning his yarns. "I enjoy it.

It's something I can do. ... Both The Phantom and Mandrake are translated into about 20 languages. After all these years, they're bigger than ever -- except in this country, because we've lost so many papers."

WESTSIDER BARRY FARBER Radio talkmaster and linguist

8-12-78

"Dull" is a word that could never be used to describe Barry Farber. He is a totally unique individual with so many far-reaching ideas that his conservative label seems to fit him poorly, even though it was as a conservative that he ran for mayor of New York last year and garnered almost as many votes as his Republican opponent Roy Goodman.

During that campaign, Barry quit the syndicated talk show on WOR Radio that he had hosted for 16 years. In March of this year his mesmerizing Southern drawl took over the 4 to 7 p.m. Monday to Friday time slot on WMCA (570 AM). The ratings have gone up at least 50% since he joined the station.

I meet Barry for an interview one August afternoon at a Chinese restaurant near the studio. To my amazement he orders the meal entirely in Cantonese. Then he withdraws a stack of index cards from his pocket on which are printed vocabulary words in Finnish, Italian, and Mandarin chinese -- a few of the 14 languages that he studies during spare moments in his hectic work week.

The lank 48-year-old, neatly garbed in a pin-stripe suit, is surprisingly low-keyed in our hour-long conversation. Yet the verbal gems still trip as neatly off his tongue as they do when he's putting an irate telephone caller in his place, to the delight of radio listeners. Never hesitant to voice his opinion on any topic, Barry pounces on my questions with an eagerness that belies his calm exterior.

New York's reputation outside the city limits, says the widely travelled Farber, has gone way downhill in recent decades. "It used to be, where I grew up, that people would brag about coming to New York four times a year. Today they brag about never coming here. The large companies send their salesmen to Manhattan for a 45-minute conference like an Entebbe raid. ... New York needs not a slow, gradual, ho-hum comeback.

It needs a dramatic voice who is going to say that the city's priorities for the last 40 years have been wrong. New York is a s.e.xy woman who's been running around in the mud. Turn the hose on her and she's going to regain her allure."

The tax revolt, he believes, "should definitely come to New York. You cannot expect to live as sinfully economically as we've lived, and avoid a rampage. The politicians have brought this upon themselves. And don't let them get away with telling us that they have to cut police, firemen, and sanitation before they cut themselves, because they don't.

"When John Lindsay was mayor, he flung back his head and inhaled the vapors of the 1960s. And it was left, baby, left. He bet his presidential hopes on that. But in the last mayoral election, it was the conservatives who did the best. Koch was the most conservative Democrat running."

His anticommunist sentiments come to the surface when the subject turns to the 1980 Olympics. "I think we should have never allowed it in Moscow on the grounds that we have never had the Olympics in a dictators.h.i.+p in the modern era. I'd like to see the athletes of the world say, 'We're not going to Moscow to play sportive games by rules when the Russians live in violation of the rules of civilization itself.' Russia is guilty of the world's worst cast of unsportsmanlike conduct. ... Yes, we should pull out. But the Olympics is small potatoes. I say, start a new United Nations for the free countries of the world -- a UFN, a United Free Nations, which shall be an a.s.sociation of all nations governed by law, of all free democracies that want to remain free. In 1945, we did not seek to build a fraternity of dictators.h.i.+ps where tinhorn tyrants would outvote democracies 10 to one."

Barry has lived on the West Side ever since he came to the city from Greensboro, North Carolina 21 years ago, and now occupies a 17-room penthouse overlooking the Hudson River. "The West Side and the East Side are like East Berlin and West Berlin in terms of the rigidity of lifestyle," he says. "There's a feeling on the West Side that we don't have to impress each other. We know where it's at."

Recently divorced from his Swedish wife, Barry makes frequent overnight trips to Sweden to see his children. He has to be back at the WMCA studio on Sunday at 11 a.m. for his four-hour live show with guests. Two weeks ago, he asked Robert Violante, who was shot and partially blinded by Son of Sam, what it felt like to be shot in the head. Questions like this tend to provoke as many listeners as they fascinate, and that is why Barry prefers not to be too specific about his address.

"I don't do a Merry Mailman kind of show," he says with a half-smile.

"One of my fantasies is to have a hit man from the Communist Party, the n.a.z.i Party, the PLO, and the Black Panthers approach me from four different directions and fire all at once -- and I duck."

WESTSIDER SUZANNE FARRELL Star of the New York City Ballet

5-19-79

She arrived in New York like a fairy princess -- a wondrous creation whose beauty and talent left audiences gaping in astonishment. At 16, she became the youngest person ever to join George Balanchine's New York City Ballet, and at 19, she was promoted to the rank of princ.i.p.al dancer.

Since that time, 14 seasons have come and gone, but Suzanne Farrell, the girl from Cincinnati, is still the darling of America's foremost ballet company.

In a dressing room interview last week at the New York State Theatre, the slender, angelic-looking Miss Farrell spoke at length about her public and private life, quickly revealing the two qualities that have enabled her to remain one of the world's top ballerinas for so long. First is her boundless energy; second is her genuine love for people and the world of ballet.

Warm, funny, and articulate about her art, she discussed with enthusiasm the upcoming television special, _Ch.o.r.eography by Balanchine, Part One_, which will be aired May 23 on Channel 13.

"This is one of four programs we taped in Nashville," she said, in a voice as clear and melodic as an actress's. "The name of the ballet I'm in is _Tzigane_; the music is by Ravel. We did the finale before the beginning because they wanted to let go the four extra couples that were needed for that part. It was very strange -- like having dessert before the meal." She laughed lightly, tossing back her long, silky brown hair. "The TV studio is very small, and the camera sees things differently than the audience sees when you're on stage. Things that are done in a circle look like an oval.

And diagonal movement has to be done in a straight line."

Suzanne's brightest moment in the program is a solo at the beginning, which she performs to the music of a solo violin. "One of the things I like about doing ballet on television is that you can reach many people who have never seen live dance before. About two years ago I got a beautiful letter from an older man in Oklahoma who was certainly not in the habit of writing fan letters. Now, every time I tape a new program, I think of that man.

"_Tzigane_ is one of my favorite ballets, because it was the first one that Balanchine ch.o.r.eographed for me after I returned to the company in 1974."

In 1969, Suzanne left the New York City Ballet and spent the next four seasons with Maurice Bejart's Ballet of the 20th Century in Brussels, Belgium. When she finally wrote to Balanchine to find out the chances of dancing with him again, he simply asked when she could start.

"In Brussels, the type of ballet they're used to is different, so they react differently. If you were to give them a beautiful, wonderfully stark ballet, with little costume and scenery, they might not take to it as much. ... But it was a good thing to have in my career. I demand that I get something constructive out of any situation. Because life is so short that you can't afford to not give everything, every time you go out there."

For the past 10 years she has been married to Paul Mejia, a former dancer who is today the artistic director and ch.o.r.eographer for the Ballet de Guatemala, one of Latin America's major companies. Although the couple must undergo some long separations, their marriage is a happy one.

Spending time alone at her Lincoln Center area apartment does not bother Suzanne. With a steady diet of exercise cla.s.ses, rehearsals and performances, and her nine pets (eight cats and a dog), Suzanne has little time to be lonely.

"When I have a free night, it's terrible," she lamented, "because every time the phone rings, I think, 'Oh no, they want me for a performance.'

I dance just about every night. By the time I go to bed, it's about 2 o'clock. I happen to get up about 6. ... On Monday, my free day, I teach at the American School of Ballet. It's such a shock to do two performances on Sat.u.r.day and Sunday, and none on Monday. It's hardly worth it, because the body can't adjust. ... I have always thought that actors have it easier than dancers, because it doesn't matter so much how tired your body is: all you need is your mouth."

A Westsider for most of her career, Suzanne lists reading and cooking as her preferred pastimes: "I'm a great short-order cook. I think if I weren't a dancer, I'd be a waitress." Two local restaurants she likes to frequent are Rikyu (210 Columbus Ave.) and Victor's Cafe (240 Columbus).

Asked about her salary, Suzanne admitted that "you'll never make a lot of money in ballet. It's something we do because we love it, and we have to do it to be happy. ... The sole attraction is working for Balanchine and the New York City Ballet: that's something you can't put down in dollars and cents. I just a.s.sume that the company is paying us as much as they can." She smiled radiantly and added: "Most dancers wouldn't know what to do with a lot of money anyway, because they wouldn't have time to spend it."

WESTSIDER JULES FEIFFER Screenwriter for _Popeye the Sailor_

11-5-77

Imagine a movie starring Dustin Hoffman as Popeye the Sailor and Lily Tomlin as his girlfriend Olive Oyl.

Anyone who has seen the old Popeye cartoons, or the new computer animated ones, might think that the fighting mariner does not have the dramatic qualities needed for a full-length film. But according to Westsider Jules Feiffer, who is now writing the script for _Popeye the Sailor_, the original comic strip in the daily newspapers was the work of "an unrecognized genius." E.C. Segar created Popeye and drew him from 1924 to 1938. After that the character changed. Feiffer finds the original strip to be his biggest source of inspiration.

"The cartoons," says Feiffer, sitting on one arm of a chair in his Riverside Drive apartment, "exploit the violence between Popeye and Bluto. That was never part of the strip. It's more along the lines of the traditional cartoon of the 1940s, which could find nothing more interesting than one character dismembering another. I didn't find that funny when I was a kid and I don't now."

Feiffer developed his unique style of humor long before he sold his first cartoon. Today, though still perhaps best known as a cartoonist, he has gained a reputation as a playwright for both the stage (_Knock, Knock_ and _Little Murders_) and the screen (_Carnal Knowledge_). He is also a respected prose writer, having recently published his second novel, _Ackroyd_.

A product of the Bronx, Feiffer recalls that after graduating from high school he went through "a series of schlock jobs to buy food and drawing materials. And long periods of unemployment." He planned all along to become a cartoonist. "I was prepared," he says, "for the eventual success which I was certain was going to happen if my work remained true to myself."