The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 12

people 12 A Friday. July 13. 1979 Interview When you need a monster, Elam is hard to beat Gabe Mirkin on fitness: He's the sports world's oracle Profile 1 Jeffrey Kramer and Jack Elam By Sue Chastain Inquirer stall Wnlrr He doesn't own a suit or a tie, and has only one pair of leather shoes but there are 100 pairs of track shoes in his closet. "When I go to a restaurant that requires a jacket, I go to another restaurant," he says with no trace of apology. Gabe Mirkin.

The name, to athletes in this area, is practically synonymous with running and, as such, it fits its owner as smoothly as his worn Adidases. The most striking thing about former marathon runner Gabe Mirkin, 44, is that he has never stopped running. "I don't think I'm that much different from anybody else I'm just driven," said the tall, lanky Maryland resident, a physician, author and commentator who may be best known to Phila-delphians for his blunt, rapid-fire responses to sports and health questions on WCAU's nightly two-hour radio program, "Dr. Gabe Mirkin on Fitness." It may be the only way to explain how he maintains a rigorous 6 a.m. to midnight schedule that prompted an awed WCAU colleague to describe him as "the classic overachiever." In addition to doing the WCAU show live five nights a week, Mirkin is a commentator for the CBS radio network, recording five two-minute spots on health and fitness a week.

He also does one two-minute television spot per week for P.M. Magazine on WDVM-TV in Washington, D.C. He is a guest lecturer at the University of Maryland in a course based on his book, "The Sportsmedicine Book." He writes a syndicated column on sports medicine that appears weekly in 31 newspapers and he writes a monthly column for The Runner magazine. All those activities are just sidelights to his medical practice, which he describes as one of the largest in the country. (It's growing so rapidly that he has to refer 40 to SO sports medicine patients to other doctors each week.) And if there's any time left, he reads: 250 journals, some of which he listens to on tape while driving his two-year-old Chevrolet back and forth to work and to recording sessions, and at least 10 to 12 books a month.

"He's just a man of incredible energy, a tremendously eager and enthusiastic person," said William Rohrer, WCAU's director of news and programming. "I don't believe I've ever worked with anyone who was more competent within his field." Mirkin acknowledges that the schedule does not leave him much time to spend with his wife, Irene, and four children, Gene, 16; Jan, 14; Jill, 12, and Geoff, 10, in their five-bedroom colonial home in Rockville. In fact, he makes time in his work day for only one other activity: running, at least 40 minutes, maybe as much as an hour and 10 minutes a day. More amazing than the pace itself is the fact that Mirkin, who looks somewhat like a six-foot-tall, balding Woody Allen, says he loves it. "I'm having more fun than I've ever had," he says, efficiently dispatching veal scallopine, a baked potato and innumerable glasses of water at the Marriott a restaurant which did not require a jacket.

"There's not a By Jack E. Anderson Knifht-Ridder News Service LOS ANGELES When producers Arthur Fellows and Terry Keegan were putting together "Struck by Lightning," a modern comedy version of the "Frankenstein" classic, for the new CBS season, their instant choice for the monster role was Jack Elam, king of the heavies. No actor in Hollywood has done more to terrorize TV and movie audiences for years than this tall plug-ugly with the go-funny eye. When it came to personifying the mean, the rotten, the chillingly cruel human being, no performer has ever topped Elam. And, as Elam told a press conference here the other day, it seemed only proper to him that he should have been the first choice of the producers.

"Love the part," he said with a satisfying draw on a long, thin cigar. And what was additionally pleasing, he added, was that "I don't have to ride a horse. I'm getting a little too old to be messing with horses any more." "Struck by Lightning" has Elam playing the handyman in an old New England inn, recently inherited by a young Bostonian, Ted Stein, played by Jeffrey Kramer. Young Stein comes up from Boston intending to sell the inn as quickly as he can find a buyer: Elixir, please But our handyman, named Frank, tells Stein that he is the great-great-grandson of the scientist Dr. Frankenstein, and that he, Frank, is the self-same monster his celebrated ancestor created.

Frank now has a problem. His long life is going to end unless Stein can find the long-lost Frankenstein elixir that will prolong his existence. The frightened Stein doesn't want to be involved but is forced into it. The pilot film of the new series is loaded, of course, with Frankenstein monster one-liners. The show takes its title from the repeated lightning bolts that beset Frank's big, lumbering figure and keep his coat constantly smoldering.

Audiences may or may not find the series laugh-provoking week after week, but it will be hard to resist Elam's clowning. As the monster, he wears shabby modern dress. There was no need to swathe him in miles of bandages to simulate Boris Kar-loffs old makeup, which is copyrighted anyway. Elam's forbidding kisser, the producers decided, was all the monster countenance they needed. This is the second TV series for Elam.

He tried to make a go of another, "The Texas Wheelers," for ABC several seasons back, but network indifference to its scheduling doomed the series even though it was one of the best of the year. Often dispatched Elam, now in his SOs and some SO pounds heavier than in his last appearance on TV, delights in recounting the terrible things he did in the countless westerns he made through the years or rather, the terrible things that were done to him. The usual means of dispatching Elam in a typical western was to fill him full of lead (while theater audiences cheered), but there was an occasional exotic variation. "I think the worst thing that was done to me happened in a movie I made with Hank Fonda. He killed me with a pitchfork." Elam said he finds that despite all the evil roles he played in films, he was always popular with adults, but not with children.

This, of course, could be because in the movie "Raw- Spocial to The Inquirw BERNARD SCHOPPER Mirkin on the air, treating patient Caroline Heim and stepping out on his daily run hide" he shot a 1-year-old child to death. Elam made four films with John Wayne, including "Rio Lobo" and "Commancheros." "Duke was not only a fine actor but a fine human being. I guess what I remember most about the movies I made with him were the poker games we played between takes. They went on for years." When he was in Mexico some years back making a movie for producer Sam Peckinpah, Elam used to steal away from the set to visit Wayne, who was making a movie of his own a few miles away. "Sam and Duke just never hit it off and when Sam found out I was over on the Wayne set playing poker, he almost fired me." Good-bye, heavies Elam says he believes the day of the movie heavy, the classic villain, is over.

"They were such physical roles. Your modern heavy is just as likely to look like everybody else in the film. He's a harmless-looking con man or smooth crook. When we came on camera there was no doubt what we were." Although Elam was born and reared in Texas and is the grandson of an old-time Texas ranger, he says that didn't necessarily point him in the direction of becoming a western actor and a professional movie cad. He started his working life as a public accountant, and was ultimately a highly prosperous one in Los Angeles.

He became an auditor for movie companies and was also adept at raising money to underwrite films, but in 1947 he developed a serious eye problem. His good eye began overreacting to the blindness of the other, the result of a boyhood accident. His physician warned him that the bookwork of his profession might result in total blindness. "I ran the risk of looking more like a catfish than I already did," he said. He was told to give up being an accountant.

So he made a deal with movie producer George Templeton. He would get Templeton the money he needed to shoot a forthcoming film if Templeton would give him an acting job in it, preferably playing a heavy. Templeton agreed. Elam got his first role as a nasty in the 1950 movie, "The Sundowners," starring Robert Preston. single thing I'm doing I wouldn't want to be doing.

How many people do you know who can say that?" It was because of his extraordinary schedule that WCAU executives, when they approached him last December about doing a regular radio show, offered to do something almost unheard of in broadcasting circles: They built Mirkin his own mini-studio right in his Silver Spring, office, from which he broadcasts live on a remote hookup with the station every weeknight. "We knew very well there was no way we were going to pry him loose from his practice," Rohrer said. "If it was a matter of him not being able to come to the mountain. Mirkin, who had never done a broadcast before, plunged into radio with typical enthusiasm though in the early days he was once heard to inform a bewildered caller, "Hi, it's my turn to ask a question about fitness and health!" "I mentioned to him once that it would be good if he varied the way he greeted people on the air," Rohrer recalled. "The next day, in typical Mirkin fashion, he handed me a list of 40 different greetings.

The guy is unbelievable." His no-nonsense radio advice to runners with shin splints and tennis players with calcium deposits even earned him a "best" designation in the "Talk radio expertise" category in the August edition of Philadelphia Magazine. And if he comes across on the air as having total recall of the appropriate medical facts and statistics, it's not a false impression, Mirkin modestly admits. "I've never had a question I couldn't handle," he says. "You pick up a lot in 20 years, and it sticks. (He did get one question early in his radio career that he wishes he had handled a bit differently.

A woman whose husband refused to quit smoking or lose weight after a heart attack called, asking for advice. "I told her to have him raise his life insurance," Mirkin recalled with a grimace.) It's also obvious listening to "Dr. Gabe Mirkin on Fitness" that Mirkin does not have the usual medical reluctance to take on other doctors publicly when he thinks they are wrong. It's a rare night when he fails to refer to someone else's diagnosis as "stupid" or a treatment prescribed by another physician as "absolutely the worst thing you could do." "Orthopedists, podiatrists, osteopaths most of them don't know what the hell they're doing if someone brings them a sports-related illness," he said. "They still think sports medicine is surgery and cortisone injections (See ORACLE on 14-A) Newsmakers A prince, a young divorcee and a miffed queen Prince Charles, at 30 Britain's most 24th-floor room at the Hotel Toronto northwest Georgia district, but he Rockefeller, weighed 10 pounds 2 1 I.

1 i 1 1 .4 MAn. A Vn I 24th-floor room at the Hotel Toronto northwest Georgia district, but he residents of the Rockefeller, weighed 10 pounds 2 would meet with ounces and was born shortly before 6 probably doesn't know how lucky he eligible bachelor, was reported this area whenever possible. "If that turns out good, I probably will run," he said. Non-killers Actor Omar Sharif, known off screen mainly for playing bridge, says that women should continue to be barred from the game's Open Championships, because they lack "the killer instinct." In an interview in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he's moderator for the European Bridge Championship, Sharif claimed: "Men are simply better players, like in other sports. Women do not have the same concentration or physical resistance.

In bridge, you have to be strong." week to have a new girlfriend. And because she's a divorcee, his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, was said to be far from pleased. William Hickey, gossip columnist in London's Daily Express, named the woman as Jane Ward, 23, former wife of Toby Ward, a cavalry officer. Hickey said that she had been acting as assistant manager of the posh Guards Polo Club, whose headquarters are only a few miles from Windsor Castle. The prince is a keen polo fan and player, and Hickey said that Mrs.

Ward met him through their mutual love of horses. "The queen is said to be concerned about their friendship, presumably because it could cause problems if the heir to the throne became seriously involved with a young divorcee," Hickey wrote in the tabloid. At Buckingham Palace, the reply, as usual, to such such reports was a frosty "no comment." At Ap C3b IF Atndwd frmm a.m. at Charleston Memorial Hospital, a hospital spokeswoman said. The Rockefellers have three other children: Jamie, 10; Valerie, 8, and Charles, 6.

Gas crash West Virginia state delegate Tom Clark was trying to save gasoline, and it landed him in the hospital. The Monongalia County Republican said he was driving on U. S. 33 near the Randolph County community of Norton the other night when he decided to coast down Punkintown Dip. He turned off his ignition, and that's when the trouble started.

"The steering wheel locked," Clark said from his bed at Davis Memorial Hospital in Elkins. State police said the car dropped off the right side of the road and slammed into a small tree. Clark suffered head and ear injuries. A passenger in the car suffered a back injury, and both were listed in stable condition yesterday at the hospital. was that the occupant was out.

The room was rented to Wilt Chamberlain, former star in the National Basketball Association, who is more than seven feet tall. Indecisive son Jack Carter, 31, son of the President, said yesterday that he would wait until December before deciding whether to run for Congress from Georgia's Seventh District. The Atlanta Constitution and the Washington Post both reported that the younger Carter would challenge Democratic Rep. Larry McDonald in the 1980 primary. Carter said he "can't dispute" the reports, but he added: "I've been thinking about it for quite a while, and that's still about where I am." The newspapers said he would soon announce the formation of an election committee.

Carter confirmed that he was "close to that." He said he wanted to "see what the district thinks about me" before making a final decision. He said he didn't plan a formal tour of the Baby Rocky Sharon Rockefeller, wife of West Virginia Got. Jay Rockefeller, gave birth to a son yesterday, and both mother and baby were reported in fine condition. The baby, named Justin Aldrich Big loss Prince Charles (right) and Jane Ward take a stroll A thief who stole $2,500 from a.