Speed Dial

No matter where I am, I'm on the goddamned phone," says Robert Halmi Sr., the 74-yearold wunderkind who, as chairman of Hallmark Entertainment (a subsidiary of the greeting-card company), produced such television events as Moby Dick, The Odyssey, and Gulliver's Travels. If literature and TV seem strange bedfellows, consider that the Hungarian-born Halmi was a World War II Resistance fighter, a photographer for Life, and a documentary filmmaker before turning to television production. And now he makes daily trips around the world by phone from his midtown-Manhattan office.

"It's a long day on the phone," says Halmi, who starts calling Australia at seven A.M. and stays up late to speak to L.A. But his speed dial, programmed for 24 numbers, makes life easier. The first four connect him to shooting locations around the world—Budapest for Crime and Punishment (scheduled for broadcast this month), London for Alice in Wonderland (February), and Australia for Noah's Ark (May), all for NBC, and Morocco for Cleopatra (May), which will air on ABC. There's also a spate of movie stars from past productions— Gregory Peck, from Moby Dick (he's No. 9), Joanne Woodward, from Mr. & Mrs. Bridge (10), and Jon Voight, who plays Noah and was in Return to Lonesome Dove (11). Despite the fact that Halmi himself has 25 different phone numbers (he has homes in Manhattan, Westchester, Kenya, Marbella, and London, plus a yacht), it's not impossible to reach him. Halmi describes getting a call on his satellite phone in a New Guinea rain forest: "There were about 20 naked warriors around me trying to figure out what the hell I'm doing. They never heard the phone ringing in their lives before." Not a claim Halmi can make, even for a day.

BETSEY OSBORNE

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