A Happy Beginning for Actress, Partner : Television: Shelley Duvall and Enchante Ltd. plan to bring children’s shows to the networks. She created ‘Faerie Tale Theatre’ for cable.

Actress Shelley Duvall, whose quirky and clever “Faerie Tale Theatre” helped launch cable television and her own career as a producer of quality fare for children of all ages, has an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time.

A chance meeting at a party while Duvall was still in junior college led director Robert Altman to put her in the movies.

Now, she has found a partner that wants to help her expand into network TV--just when commercial broadcasters are under new pressure to improve their shows for kids or face tougher government regulation.

In a stock-purchase deal announced last month, Duvall sold half of her Studio City-based Think Entertainment Inc. formed in 1988 to Enchante Ltd., a small British entertainment concern with a similar focus on kids and families that is moving to Northern California. The deal’s financial terms were not disclosed.

Four-year-old Enchante, which so far has produced only two movies and five books, hopes to capitalize on Duvall’s well-known name in children’s entertainment.

Duvall gets much-needed cash for new projects, such as “Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle” for Showtime cable. Scheduled to premier next year, it is based on author Betty MacDonald’s books about a woman who lives in an upside-down house.

Think also plans to produce films, books, records and computer software aimed at the still-burgeoning market for such products created by baby-boomer parents and their kids.

“I couldn’t be happier,” Duvall said of the new partnership in an interview at Think’s modest offices over a sandwich shop in a Ventura Boulevard mini-mall. Here and there is a touch of whimsy: A Mother Goose lamp sits on her desk.

“Was it hard to sell half of Think to Enchante? No, not really because they are providing much more than just financing for the company. They’re coming in and providing management services--business acumen--that is better than my own.”

“Shelley Duvall has always been associated with good-quality children’s television,” said Kathryn Montgomery, co-director of the Center for Media Education in Washington, D. C.

If she goes into network TV, Montgomery said, the challenge will be to “maintain that standard. Once advertisers get involved they have only one interest in mind, selling products to kids.”

Children’s TV advertising is a $471-million-a-year business that is still growing at a double-digit annualized rate, according to industry trade publications, despite the recession. Duvall, who celebrates her 44th birthday Wednesday, favors polka-dot hairbows, ruffled anklets and platform shoes that make her seem taller than the 5 feet, 7 inches she is “barefoot at the doctor’s office.”

She realizes the effect. “I may look ditzy, but I’m not.”

Indeed, other entertainment industry executives say Duvall is a shrewd--not just lucky--survivor. She remains Think’s chairman and chief executive.

“Any time any production company can partner with another production company to stay alive and find other avenues to get product out, it’s a good, strategic business decision,” said Dennis Johnson, a Showtime senior vice president and longtime friend.

Duvall formed Think in 1988 with the aid of a $15-million investment by three of the biggest cable-TV companies: Telecommunications Inc., United Artists Entertainment and New House Broadcasting. Think grew over the next two years as it produced some of the first original programming for cable, beginning with “Faerie Tale Theatre.”

Popular with adults as well as children because of its knowing wit (and not a few double-entendres), the series debuted on Showtime in 1982, starring Duvall and featuring many of her own friends--from Robin Williams to Jean Stapleton to Mick Jagger. It starts a new two-year run on the Disney Channel next year.

In 1990, Duvall bought out her cable partners when their ground-breaking deal expired. Think has had a hard time financially since then. On her own, Duvall faced a harsher climate for independent producers because of the recession, tight credit and mounting production costs that have forced many small entertainment firms out of business.

To keep the company afloat, Duvall had to shrink it to nine employees from 22 previously and make a deal giving MCA Inc. a first look at new projects. She still had to subsidize the company herself.

“It was very hard,” Duvall said. “Network license fees were lower than ever before. It was difficult to just keep it alive and not disappear off the map.” But, she added with obvious satisfaction, “I did it. And that’s all I care about.” She declined to discuss the company’s revenues and profits.

Think’s new president, Michael Lopez, said Think (and Duvall’s predecessor Platypus Productions Inc.) has a catalogue of more than 55 hours of programming with a market value of about $6 million.

Enchante, virtually unknown in the United States, is moving its headquarters to Santa Rosa, Calif., from London. The company’s only movies so far, “Magic Boat” and “Palooka,” were distributed to European television last year. They have not been seen in this country.

The company launched its book series earlier this spring at the American Assn. of Booksellers convention. The books feature “Mrs. Murgatroyd,” who helps children get over emotional issues--feeling sad, jealous or angry, for example--with her magic paints.

Duvall also signed a separate book deal with Enchante, marking her first venture into publishing. The agreement calls for her to write and also perhaps illustrate children’s books. Think also plans to market anthologies bearing her name.

A second Duvall interactive CD-ROM, “It’s a Dog’s Life” written by the actress, will soon follow “It’s a Bird’s Life,” out now for about 18 months.

Both star some of Duvall’s pets, which include dozens of birds, eight dogs, two cats and two goldfish. Her boyfriend of the past several years, musician Dan Gilroy, also lives in her Studio City house set on three acres.

Enchante’s two co-founders, both divorced fathers in their late 30s, have interesting backgrounds.

The money behind the company comes primarily from Aymam Sawaf, scion of a wealthy Syrian-Lebanese family involved in oil and banking.

After getting an engineering degree at Ohio State and the equivalent of a master’s in business administration abroad, Sawaf started and ran a successful lighting company.

Then, he realized “he’d rather be in the enlightening business,” according to a news release put out by Real Music, a British record company that Sawaf also owns. The news release promotes “composer/keyboardist/producer” Sawaf’s own New Age album.

It notes that he is also a partner in InnerSense Inc., whose “Vibrasound” beds cure illnesses by “transmitting healing frequencies directly into the body,” and a nutritional company called Lightforce.

Becoming a single parent with two children piqued Sawaf’s interest in child development.

It eventually led him to form Enchante with Christian Eddleman, a former stockbroker. Before heading for Wall Street, Eddleman ran his own hot-air balloon company near San Francisco.

Think’s new president Lopez, installed by Enchante, is a former business consultant to several entertainment companies, including Columbia Tri-Star Pictures, Home Box Office, CBS and Vestron.

Enchante said in a statement about forming the partnership with Duvall that its goal is to help kids build self-esteem and enhance their general well-being “by encouraging them to use their creativity and imagination in exploring their own thoughts and feelings.”

When Duvall first met Enchante’s principals she said she was wary.

But now, “I’m very glad (about the meeting). I needed help. You cannot do it alone. You can have dreams, thinking oh, wouldn’t it be great to do it alone?

“But it’s not great to do it alone. I can verify that.” The partnership is already set to pitch several half-hour prime-time family shows to the major networks this fall, said Duvall.

The networks’ new pact to put warnings for parents on programs containing violence, announced last week, is evidence that the industry is worried that Congress won’t wait any longer for it to raise the generally dismal level of shows for kids.

The Children’s Television Act of 1990 ordered commercial broadcasters to produce a certain amount of “educational and informative” programming, or risk losing their broadcast licenses.

Instead, public-interest groups have charged, many stations have tried to promote reruns of hackneyed cartoons and sitcoms such as “The Jetsons” and “Leave It to Beaver” as being somehow instructional.

The Federal Communications Commission has responded by imposing fines on several stations and has delayed granting others license renewals.

Duvall has always won plaudits from children’s advocates. Her “Faerie Tale Theatre,” along with “Shelley Duvall’s Tall Tales and Legends,” “Shelley Duvall’s Bedtime Stories,” her current animated series on Showtime now in its second season, and a Disney Channel special, “Mother Goose Rock ‘n Rhyme,” have received more than three dozen awards.