Clive James: A 20th-Century Fame Game : Television: He hosts the eight-hour TV series on celebrity and notoriety that wowed British viewers. The show premieres on PBS Monday.

“At the start of the century,” Clive James is saying, “there was Madame Curie, who was a terrific scientist, and not at all interested in fame. And today we have Madonna, who’s only an average singer and dancer. And she’s obsessed by fame. Consumed by it.” He gives a “go figure” shrug.

Clive James has spent much of the last three years brooding over the subject of fame--its nature, how it changes people upon whom it is thrust, and how it has altered our society, which places such emphasis upon it.

His findings are reflected in an eight-hour TV series, “Fame in the 20th Century,” which premieres on PBS Monday and is being heavily touted by the network. (It runs Monday through Thursday, 9-11 p.m. on KCET-TV Channel 28 and 8-10 p.m. on KPBS-TV Channel 15 and KVCR-TV Channel 24, then will be repeated in one-hour weekly installments beginning June 14. It begins airing on KOCE-TV Channel 50 on June 20.)

James has written 350 minutes of voice-over to accompany a remarkable selection of film footage, ranging from rare clips of turn-of-the century figures such as Thomas Edison, Leo Tolstoy and Queen Victoria to modern-day icons such as Princess Diana, Mother Teresa and, yes, Madonna.

The series was made for the BBC, and its latter episodes attracted audiences of 9.5 million--about 15% of the entire British population.

While the show is undoubtedly compelling to watch, James makes it intriguing to listen to. One of the most popular and respected broadcasters in Britain, he is a true rarity: a genuine intellectual with an enthusiasm for popular culture, which he conveys effectively through the medium of television.

Born in Australia, James attended Sydney University, but arrived in England in 1962 and went to Cambridge. For a decade he was TV critic for the London Observer, and is as revered by other TV critics as is Pauline Kael by film writers.

James has also written three novels, four mock-epic poems and four books of literary criticism. Three published volumes of autobiography have only covered his life up to his Cambridge days in the mid-’60s.

But he is best known in Britain for his TV series “Saturday Night Clive,” in which he peruses what passes for entertainment on TV in other countries. Sheep-shearing contests in New Zealand, brutally violent game shows from Japan, home shopping networks in the United States: All come under his amused gaze.

“Fame in the 20th Century” is the biggest project he has undertaken.

From the beginning, James saw the show as a chronological survey rather than a sociological analysis, which would have meant seeking the opinion of experts. “I wanted famous people to be the story, with a narrative that went forward while tackling themes as it went along. I did 20 drafts of the first episode alone. I thought it couldn’t be cracked.”

Six months into the project came another revelation: James had assumed “Fame in the 20th Century” would be a series of clips of celebrities, with the camera cutting back to him in the studio after each one. “Then I realized there was no need for me at all, except briefly at the beginning of each show.”

Then there was the problem of whom to include and leave out. A few names were obviously in: Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, John F. Kennedy, Frank Sinatra, the Beatles. But it took the production team a whole week to agree on 250 names from this century who were world famous beyond question.

The criterion was always universal popularity. As James says: “Placido Domingo was out because his name was known only to everyone on Earth who liked the sound of good singing. Luciano Pavarotti was known even to people who couldn’t tell good singing from bad, so he was in. Stefan Edberg was out because you had to be interested in tennis. John McEnroe was in because everyone was interested in bad behavior.”

James is in his early 50s, a thick-set, balding man with a crooked, crinkly eyed grin.

His main thesis for “Fame in the 20th Century” is that fame has grown along with the development of the moving image and the explosion of the media. It is largely, though by no means exclusively, an American phenomenon. And he believes that the cult of the celebrity shapes reality, and possibly distorts it.

The series also examines people who were unwitting victims of fame. Aviator Charles Lindbergh became justly famous for flying the Atlantic solo--but that same fame contributed to the kidnaping and murder of his baby. Marilyn Monroe, Sharon Tate and John Lennon all succumbed to fame in various ways.

“People in America only see the corrosive side of fame when there’s a murder,” says James. “What they don’t see is the constant danger of the isolation you impose on yourself to protect yourself. If you’re a star in any field, you put a large amount of money into your own security. Once you start doing it, you have to keep doing it.”

Then there are those, like Elvis Presley, who achieve fame early or suddenly.

“I don’t know how anybody survives it. Most don’t. It’s no mystery to me why they crack up. There’s a sudden isolation, which means your ability to learn from other people is restricted. It’s restricted. It’s restricted to the people around you, the entourage, which is usually a hotbed of neuroses.”

Now, James thinks, famous people continue to be famous simply through their fame. He thinks the turning point for this phenomenon was Elizabeth Taylor around the time of her romance with her “Cleopatra” co-star Richard Burton.

“I think demand started to exceed supply,” says James. “The growing media interest in famous people meant people had to go on being famous, even though they’d run out of qualifications. Burton and Taylor’s romance outstripped their romance in the movie. Their life became a movie. Now she’s been famous for being famous longer than she was famous for being an actress.”

American politics, he believes, have suffered from the enormous growth in media attention. “There are now unreal expectations about a politician’s life. No past politician we admire could have passed any of those tests. Not one. Even (Dwight D.) Eisenhower, of all people, had a mistress--his chauffeuse.

“Everyone has something to hide. A private life can virtually be defined as having something to hide.”

James notes that many fame-management techniques that now protect politicians are “modern skills which came straight out of Hollywood. If Fatty Arbuckle had had the kind of advice Bill Clinton got in the run-up to the last election, he’d never have ended up in court.”

It remains to be seen whether PBS viewers will accept an extended lecture on a largely American phenomenon from an Australian who has adopted England as his home.

“I’m acutely aware I’m in that position,” James admits. “But a lot of America’s cultural influence was exercised through its famous people. It’s easier to see that if you’re an outsider.

“America’s main fault is a consequence of its virtue. It’s a society of abundance, and it doesn’t really know what it’s like to be deprived. The problem is you lose touch with the real world; America has become isolated, even in its internationalism.”

Working on the series gave James intriguing insights on dealing with fame. He admired the way comedian Jack Benny handled it: “He didn’t put his price up, he simply did fewer TV shows for it. His rarity value increased.”

Yet even the shrewd Johnny Carson, according to James, finally stumbled: “He was as clever as you can get. He got to the point where he only had to show up occasionally to do his own show. He stayed in good physical shape, earned so much money he could even afford his wives, and there was a platoon of them. But I think he went on too long. He didn’t ensure the succession (of host for “The Tonight Show”) and it looked as if he was trying to queer everyone else’s pitch.”

On a personal level, James says he is well known in Britain and famous in Australia. He thinks he has developed guidelines for staying sane under fame’s pressures.

“Never talk about your private life,” he said dryly, “because you can’t have your cake and eat it. Whatever the temptation, and no matter how sympathetic the interviewer, don’t start talking about your wife, your children and your houses, because when you wake up the next morning they won’t be yours anymore.”

James on the Famous

The series “Fame in the 20th Century” is characterized by a host of trenchant musings, epigrams and verdicts on famous people by Clive James. Here is a selection:

* Arnold Schwarzenegger: “He looks like that so the rest of us won’t have to. Most of us don’t want to look like a rubber life raft which has been randomly tied up with string before being suddenly inflated and dipped in liquid bronze.”

* Adolf Hitler: “To the detached observer, he looked like a 6-year-old boy throwing a tantrum in tight underpants. But at the time it was hard to remain a detached observer.”

* Marilyn Monroe: “Foreign (actresses) looked as if they were thinking about sex. Monroe looked as if it was something that might happen to her while she was thinking about something else.”

* Frank Sinatra: “He showed up in nightclubs with other men of Italian extraction who had never sung a note, even to the grand jury.”

* Madonna: “Actually she was called Madonna Louise Ciccone, but in her burning ambition for universal fame, she didn’t want to rule out the large section of her potential audience that might have trouble remembering more than one name.”

* Warren Beatty: “Perhaps his greatest public relations coup was to fall in love with Madonna for exactly as long as it took the resulting press coverage to help ‘Dick Tracy’ break even.”

* John F. Kennedy: “(He) was as physically attractive as Marlon Brando and a lot easier to understand. He didn’t look like any previous presidential candidate. He looked more like people who were famous for other things: movies, upmarket sports, fooling around in the sun with beautiful women.”

* Ernest Hemingway: “(He was in Spain) to watch the bulls bite the dust. Or else he was out in the gulfstream killing fish. Or else he was in Africa killing animals again. Hemingway was always killing something. He called it an appetite for life.”