A LADY AND HER COURT

A string of high-profile trials have made Court TV's Cynthia McFadden the hot media ticket. GEORGE KALOGERAKIS tunes in

GEORGE KALOGERAKIS

'I drove a U-Haul truck from a log cabin to 119th Street and Amsterdam and said, 'What have I done?' "

What Cynthia McFadden had done was leave small-town Maine for Columbia Law. What she has done since is become a very hot TV ticket, the darling of some high-powered New York media types and a growing number of televised-trial buffs all over. McFadden, who graduated from Columbia in 1984, has never practiced law. Instead, she was snapped up by Fred Friendly, broadcasting's eminence grise, to produce his Media and Society seminars for PBS. Now, at 37, she's an anchor and senior producer at Courtroom Television, where the recent string of high-profile trials (William Kennedy Smith, Rodney King, the Menendez brothers) has swelled her cult way beyond Maine. Nora Ephron is "just completely besotted'' with her, calling her "poised beyond imagining.'' Steve Brill, who brought her on when he launched Court TV in 1991, says bluntly, "Cynthia's not afraid to be smart on television." Barbara Walters thinks she "has a huge future," and adds, "I hope that she'd come here [to ABC]."

Off the air, McFadden runs with a gang of prominent New York women—including New York City parks commissioner Betsy Gotbaum, writer Marie Brenner, and columnist Liz Smith. They like to whoop it up periodically in restaurants. But mostly she works, which is not always easy: she has Crohn's disease, a serious autoimmune disorder, now in remission but still a fact of her life. She's comfortable discussing it—indeed, she's comfortable discussing anything. She's a terrific talker. "Puh-leeze" punctuates her conversation. "Jeez, Louise" is another favorite. At one point she says something that sounds alarmingly like "Oh, doggies." Her clothes are more Bean than Beene. This exuberance and lack of pretense ("I'd rather be a hick than whatever passes for sophisticated") is a key to her charm and success. When talking to the camera, she says, she's really addressing her parents, whom she adores. Her father assembled his own satellite dish and cleared some pine forest so he could watch her. "He told me, 'Yeah. You're a 10-tree daughter,' " McFadden says.

McFadden's mentor is none other than Katharine Hepburn. Twenty years ago, the teenage Cynthia was introduced to the actress on a Connecticut beach, and they've been close friends since. They've traveled together, McFadden essentially lived at Hepburn's for a time, and in 1989 she was married at Hepburn's house (to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Davies, from whom she is now "amicably separated").

"She was at a point in her life where I think she was looking for someone to pass it on to," says McFadden of the friendship. "She wanted to show someone how you should plant a garden, the right way to fix a comforter at the foot of a bed, how to arrange flowers on the diningroom table, how to fix a fire. She took pleasure in showing me, and I took pleasure in learning." Among the "rules for living" McFadden has picked up from Hepburn: "Never buy wood—steal it or cut it yourself. Think twice before buying anything yellow. Only sleep on white sheets—anything else would change your personality. Never use an electrical appliance before nine A.M."

And Hepburn? She tends to explain McFadden this way: "Illegitimate." McFadden's always loved that one: "I would say to her, 'Who is Daddy? Was it Spence-ah?' " Regarding McFadden, Hepburn admits, "Well, I don't watch TV much. But I watch her in real life. She's brilliant. Some people are called brilliant." A chuckle. "They're not. She is."

This month, both are nominated for ACE Awards, for hosting documentaries. "I mean, imagine," says McFadden, her face aglow. "The thrill of losing to her is going to be so enormous." It's a thrill she shouldn't necessarily count on.