Ustinov Counts His Creative Blessings

To his pleased surprise, Peter Ustinov has been voted into membership in the Academie Francaise. He will occupy the seat left vacant by the death of Orson Welles.

“Someone has to die before a new member can be admitted,” Ustinov said over lunch at the Polo Lounge last week. “It puts something of a shadow on the honor.”

It seems peculiarly fitting that Welles’ seat should go to Ustinov. Both men have been blessed and cursed by the kind of artistic versatility that makes lesser artists and most executives nervous.

“I know what it is to be mistrusted,” Ustinov said. “You’re not really allowed to do more than one thing.” Welles had the compounding misfortune to make his masterpiece, “Citizen Kane,” at the beginning rather than the end of his career.

“It’s cruel at the start of a marathon to be asked to sprint,” Ustinov said.

He now lives in the Swiss countryside near Geneva but maintains an apartment in Paris. The academicians wear elegant uniforms, and Ustinov will be fitted for his at Cardin when he gets back to Paris. His ceremonial sword is being designed by his son, who is a sculptor, and his daughter, who is a jeweler. Ustinov will make his maiden speech to the Academie, in French, bien sur, on Dec. 12.

He has been in Los Angeles for his role as the skeptical emcee of a live, nationally syndicated program, “The Secret Identity of Jack the Ripper,” which will air here Wednesday night at 8. (KTTV-TV Channel 11).

It is 100 years since the serial killing of prostitutes in the East End of London, and there has been a flurry of attention, including CBS’ two-part miniseries starring Michael Caine which concluded Sunday night.

“I suppose the case has retained its fascination because it was never solved,” Ustinov says. “I suppose, too, that it’s the first modern crime. It took place about the time Dostoevsky was writing ‘Crime and Punishment,’ and there was beginning to be great interest in the psychology of crime, the false confessions and the serial aspect.”

Ustinov, who will host a panel of experts including a Scotland Yard man and a forensic scientist, is presumably involved because of his detectings as both Charlie Chan and Hercule Poirot. He suspects his Poirot series is over, although David Suchet is appearing in some Poirot stories on British television.

Admittedly, he says, the Jack the Ripper case “had a cast of suspects even Agatha Christie might have balked at inventing, even an heir to the throne (Queen Victoria’s grandson, the Duke of Clarence). You couldn’t have fit them all in a country house.”

Last Wednesday Ustinov drove to Geneva from Yugoslavia, where he had finished his role in a six-hour, miniseries version of “Around the World in 80 Days.”

The next day he flew to Los Angeles for the television show. He continues to be both peripatetic and versatile. He gave 40 performances of his play “Beethoven’s 10th” in Berlin, in German, to notably flattering reviews. He has another novel in the works and some short stories.

“I couldn’t sleep last night, and I began one about a retired spy who’s jealous of Peter Wright and his ‘Spycatcher.’ ”

Ustinov was in Leningrad a few weeks ago for the opening of an art museum dedicated to his mother’s family and housed in a building erected by his great-great-grandfather.

The change in the society is astonishing, Ustinov says. “It’s been like an abscess bursting and health returning.”

Ustinov, who did fine miniseries about Russia, based on his remarkable book “My Russia,” was once asked what he might have done if he had had only one career to follow.

“I said I hum quite nice little tunes in the bath, and I suppose I might have been a third-rate 18th-Century composer, terribly jealous of Salieri.”

Salieri, Mozart’s villainous colleague in “Amadeus,” was actually quite a fine composer, Ustinov believes. “The instrumental music was only so-so, but the operas are spectacular. And he founded the first charity for the benefit of economically distressed musicians.”

But Ustinov, who has won two Academy Awards and written long-running plays and best-selling books adds: “I couldn’t possibly be happy with a narrower career. I’m much too inquisitive.”