Lee Falk

Lee Falk was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 28, 1911 and is best known as the creator of the popular superheroes comic strips “The Phantom” and “Mandrake the Magician.” He was also a playwright and theatrical director/producer, leading him to work with actors such as Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston, Paul Newman, Chico Marx, and Ethel Waters. Lee married three times; his wives were Louise Kanaseriff, Constance Morehead, and Elizabeth Moxley, a respected stage-director. Elizabeth sometimes helped Lee with scripts in his last years. She also finished his last Phantom stories after he died. Lee became the father of three children, Valerie (daughter of Louise) and Diane and Conley (children of Constance). He lived the last years of his life in New York, in a luxury apartment not far from Central Park. He literally wrote his comic strips from 1934 to the last days of his life; in the hospital he tore off his oxygen mask to dictate his stories. Lee's biggest passion, however, was the theatre. He ran five theaters, produced around three hundred plays and directed one hundred of them. He wrote twelve plays, two of them musicals: HAPPY DOLLAR and MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN, based on his comic strip creation. Lee was proud to tell of the time in 1953 when Marlon Brando turned down an offer of ten thousand dollars a week to act on Broadway in favor of working for Lee in Boston in Shaw’s ARMS AND THE MAN for five hundred dollars a week.