ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, June 7, 1996 TAG: 9606070009
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: TED ANTHONY AP NATIONAL WRITER
No alien culture sent him to become Earth's savior. He wasn't invulnerable, wasn't bitten by a radioactive spider, wasn't a playboy holed up in a mansion with a faithful butler and a dark obsession.
No, indeed. This gun-toting hero lived in the jungle, rode a white horse, wore a skin-tight purple suit - purple! - and was just as human as the legions who followed his escapades in daily and Sunday newspapers.
Before Batman, before Superman, a masked swashbuckler fought evil in style from his cave headquarters deep in a lush, vaguely defined jungle named Bengalla. His name was The Phantom, and Lee Falk knows him well.
Matter of fact, Falk - who dreamed up the Phantom in 1936, drew the strip at first and still writes every story for distribution to more than 500 newspapers - likes to think his creation added just a little to the modern definition of a hero.
``When I was a kid, I loved tales of gods and heroes - Thor, Ulysses, Rolanz, the Knights of the Round Table,'' says Falk, who gives his age as ``just plain old.''
``All those heroes went into the Phantom. He's that kind of a hero. But I don't remember those heroes as self-effacing,'' he says. ``The Phantom would be in the middle of guns and he'd joke about it. That's not unusual now. And it makes the hero more likable.
``Ulysses,'' he hastens to add, winking, ``wasn't self-effacing.''
The Phantom, aka Kit Walker, is the 21st in a family of men who have passed the crime-fighting mantle from father to son since 1535, when the first Phantom took the job to avenge his father's death at the hands of pirates. Their seeming longevity begat the legend that the Phantom never dies.
This weekend, Falk's creation comes to life at theaters, the latest of American cartoon heroes to make the leap to the big screen. It's a fun ride - and, Falk says, a natural extension. ``The Phantom,'' a Paramount Pictures release, stars Billy Zane in the title role and co-stars Treat Williams and Kristy Swanson.
Falk's Phantom may not top the A-list of mythic American comic superheroes, but it has certainly proven its longevity.
``Superman, Batman - they all came afterward,'' Falk says. ``There were a bunch of guys around New York who wanted to be cartoonists, and this strip captivated them.''
New superheroes emerged during the next few years that would become American legends: Superman, Batman, the Blue Beetle, the Green Hornet. All shared many traits with the Phantom - a secret identity, a skintight costume, apparent unexplained powers.
``In Marvel and DC, there are so many superheroes. They're not humans,'' Falk says. ``I wanted him to be human.''
Falk always has tried to write for adults, not for children; besides mythology, he drew on everything from Edgar Rice Burroughs' ``Tarzan of the Apes'' to Kipling's ``The Jungle Books'' to fashion his Phantom.
``When you're writing for Esquire or Rolling Stone or even Screw magazine, you're writing for an audience. I'm writing for 80 million people. Some of them are sun worshipers,'' he says. ``So I couldn't go around asking different people, different religions, what they liked. So I wrote for myself. And I guess it worked.''
Falk, whose narrow, benevolent face evokes Jason Robards behind dark amber glasses and an immaculately trimmed, white mustache, himself resembles an adventure strip character - The Kindly Old Gent, stylish in a porkpie hat, a paisley scarf draped dramatically over his shoulder.
He arrives at a publicity appearance with all the accoutrements - a Phantom's head cane (made by a fan) and the two Phantom rings: the ``good mark'' of crossed sabers on the left hand and the bad one - a skull - on the right, or punching, hand. Those punched by the Phantom bear the skull scar for the rest of their lives.
But sit back and listen: The stories that flow from Falk's lips are not merely those of heroes, damsels, villains and far-off lands. He tells, too, of show business, of the theater, of friendships with the cartoonists who have enchanted America for a century.
For Falk, writing the stories for the Phantom and ``Mandrake the Magician,'' the other strip he created, has been only a slice of a career varied even by show-business standards.
He has compared notes with George Herriman, creator of the strangely ingenious ``Krazy Kat,'' who lived on a hill near Hollywood with 50 cats. He has counted among his friends George McManus of ``Bringing Up Father,'' who, Falk says, ``was just like Jiggs - but nice looking.'' He has shared wisdom with Johnny Hart (``B.C.''), Charles Schulz (``Peanuts''), Chic Young (``Blondie'').
He is a playwright, a producer, a director, even a theater owner. He has staged Shakespeare and Noel Coward, though never his own plays - too self-indulgent.
He has directed hundreds of actors, from screen legend Charlton Heston to Conrad Bain, who went on to become Mr. Drummond in ``Diff'rent Strokes.'' Comedian Leslie Nielsen crossed Falk's path during his leading-man years (``He let out a yell when I told him he had the part.'').
``I had stars who were on the way up and on the way down,'' Falk says. ``I loved watching them. I always liked the theater the best.''
Thus, he is pleased with the theatrics in the film, a combination of a ``Superman'' movie and ``Raiders of the Lost Ark.'' It is great fun - delightfully and deliberately cliched in a way that ``Dick Tracy'' wasn't.
There are swinging vines, rickety wooden bridges, a plucky tomboyish female lead, a vague jungle location (Falk says it's supposed to be Africa, though the ``Bengalla Jungle'' and the evil ``Sangh Brotherhood'' evoke the colonial subcontinent), native manservants and British Empire soldiers.
The dialogue is fast-paced and lampoonish in a Cary Grant sort of way - just the way Falk loves it:
``These are dangerous and turbulent times, gentlemen.''
``Have you any idea what it means if the brotherhood gets hold of the skulls?''
``They adapted my strip so well. It's the same feel, the same ambience,'' Falk says. It's obvious he loves the idea of the Phantom coming to life; he can't stop grinning while talking about it.
But he keeps coming back to heroes. They aren't, he says, what they used to be.
``Heroes used to be handsome leading men - Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Ronald Coleman,'' he says. ``Now what heroes do we have?''
So with determination and inspiration, Lee Falk plans to keep the epic forces of good alive as long as he can. Because, men and women come and go, but the heroes of pen and ink last forever.
``I guess that's what I am - a storyteller. Some kids sing to impress their parents. I would come down and tell stories to my parents' friends - weird stories that only a kid would tell. I guess I never stopped.''
He smiles, covers the Phantom head on the tip of his cane with a clutched fist and reflects for a moment, absorbed in thoughts of the 1,200 stories he has told about Mandrake and the Phantom.
``Endless, endless people. So many people I have met,'' he says. ``I had a lot of fun, didn't I?''
LENGTH: Long : 129 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP Lee Falk is the creator of "The Phantom" andby CNB"Mandrake the Magician" strips. After 60 years in print, "The
Phantom" has become a feature film. color.