Most people who opt for a writing career do not expect to accomplish much before the age of 30. But Leonard Maltin, a 27-year-old Westsider, breaks all the rules. His book _The Great Movie Comedians: From Charlie Chaplin to Woody Allen_, published in June by Crown Press, is the 30th volume to bear his name on the jacket. One of America's foremost film historians, he has written nine books and edited 21 others, while contributing articles to such publications as _TV Guide_, _Esquire_ and the _New York Times_.

_The Great Movie Comedians_ is one of his most ambitious projects to date. In 240 pages of text and more than 200 photographs, the author a.n.a.lyzes the careers of 22 comic stars from the days of silent film to the 1970s. Sales have been brisk so far. The book is already in its second printing and has been picked up by the Nostalgia Book Club.

Leonard was born on the West Side, moved to New Jersey at the age of 4, and became hooked on old movies by the time he was 8. At 13, he began to write for a magazine called _Film Fan Monthly_. Two years later, he took over as editor and publisher -- a job he continued for nine years. His work with the magazine led to his first book contract in 1968 -- a thick paperback t.i.tled _TV Movies_ with summaries of thousands of films. The third edition is coming out this fall.

In 1975, when Leonard got married, he and his wife Alice moved to the West Side. She, too, is a film buff; their favorite Westside movie theatre is the Regency (Broadway at 67th).

Leonard's literary career has never been in better shape than now. Two of his other books will appear in new editions this fall. And the 10th book that he has auth.o.r.ed, a comprehensive history of American animated cartoons treated _Of Mice and Magic_, will be published next year by Signet.

EASTSIDER JEAN MARSH Creator and star of _Upstairs, Downstairs_

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_Upstairs, Downstairs_, the saga of a wealthy London family and its staff of servants in the early years of the 20th century, is one of the most popular television series ever filmed. The first episode of the British-made series was released in England in 1971, and since that time more than one billion people in 40 countries have watched the exploits of the Bellamy family. Introduced to American public television in 1974, _Upstairs, Downstairs_ won seven Emmy Awards, including one for Best Series each year it was shown.

If any single performer could be said to stand out over all the others, that would be Jean marsh, who received an Emmy for Best Actress for her portrayal of Rose, the head parlormaid. But what most of Marsh's American fans fail to realize is that, with her, without would be no _Upstairs, Downstairs_: she co-created the show with another British actress. A New Yorker on and off for the past two decades, Jean Marsh now lives in an apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side. It is here that I meet her to talk about _Upstairs, Downstairs_, which returned to American television in January with 39 hour-long segments, eight of which have never been seen before on this side of the Atlantic.

"Sometimes it drives me crazy that n.o.body ever speaks to me about anything else," says Jean, a slender, pretty, soft-spoken woman who has the knack of putting visitors immediately at their ease with her charm and lack of pretension. "I start to drivel after a while, because I tell how I devised _Upstairs, Downstairs_ and how the cast was chosen." There is no irritation in her voice, only humor. With her lively eyes and childlike appearance, she is reminiscent of Peter Pan.

_Upstairs, Downstairs_, says Jean, "didn't spring new-minted. My friend Eileen Atkins and I had been talking about trying to devise a television series. We thought we should write something we knew about -- about our pasts. And it became servants more than anything else, because her father had been a butler. She was showing me pictures of her family one day; she had photographs of servants going to a pub in a horse-drawn bus. So the first thing we wrote about was servants going on an outing. And later we decided it wouldn't be nearly as interesting unless we included the people upstairs."

Jean herself was born in a poor section of London, the daughter of a laborer and a barmaid. From her earliest years she aimed for a show business career as the surest route out of her social cla.s.s. She began as a dancer -- "I could teach cla.s.sical ballet or tap if I wanted now" -- and danced in stage productions and films from the age of 7 until she gave it up at 20. As an actress, she became an instant success at 15 when she played the role of a cat opposite one of England's leading comic actors.

"The play opened, and I stole the review," recalls Jean with a grin. "It was a regional theatre, and they asked me to stay in their company. It was a peak of happiness in my life. There was no time to think of money or boys or clothes or anything -- just work."

Her Broadway debut took place more than two decades ago, and over the years she has dazzled British and American audiences in an endless number of plays and movies. Cla.s.sical theatre is her specialty; Jean recently completed a tour of American regional theatres with plays by Shakespeare, Shaw and Oscar Wilde.

"Regional theatres are usually more professional than Broadway. I couldn't do _Twelfth Night_ on Broadway, but I can do it on the road and make money," she says of her favorite Shakespearean play. "At one performance, I was playing in britches and split them, and I managed to make up a rhymed couplet. Somebody came backstage and said, 'How can you split your britches at exactly the same time every night?'"

Her current project is a film t.i.tled _The Changeling_ with George C.

Scott. "I leave for Canada next week to do the exteriors. I'm going to get crushed to death in the snow. I play George's wife. My role is over very quickly, but then I appear in flashback soon afterward. It's a ghost/murder mystery. My death makes him susceptible to phenomena." Asked about Scott, she says, "I've known him for about 20 years. I think he's a dear.

His image seems to be spiky and alarming. People say, 'How can you get along with him?' But I think he's like a teddy bear. He's adorable. Rather shy, too."

Married and divorced at an early age, Jean now lives alone and likes it.

She acquired her Eastside apartment a year ago but has been unable to spend more than six weeks in it so far, due to her extensive travel. "I go out and get the bread and newspaper in my pajamas," she says.

Jean explains her amazingly youthful appearance by saying, "I'm very young in my head. I'm quite daft; I'm sillier than most people I know. I believe in G.o.d, and I believe you should lead a good life. ... One thing I'm one hundred percent for is ecology. I'm so anxious that we don't bequeath the next generation with an ugly world. I'd like them to go on the walks I have had, and breathe the air I have breathed."

_Elliott_.

EASTSIDER JACKIE MASON Co-starring with Steve Martin in _The Jerk_

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Jackie Mason admits that the most famous thing he ever did was to be caught with one of his fingers pointing upwards on the _Ed Sullivan Show_. "The most famous and the least helpful," he says of the 1964 incident. "At that time there was a great wave of excitement about my type of character, because I was new and fresh and different. In those days, every comedian talked like an American; n.o.body talked like a Jew or a Puerto Rican or an Italian. ... There was a lot of heat to give me my own series, but all the offers were canceled after that incident."

Asked whether he actually did make an obscene gesture, the short, stocky comedian with the broad New York Jewish accent shakes his curly head.

"The truth is that I didn't -- because I wouldn't be ashamed to tell you if I did. There's nothing wrong with it today. But the truth is that I was making with my fingers -- I have a very visual act, you know -- and Sullivan got panicky because President Johnson had just cut into the program, and when the camera came back on me, it looked like I was giving him some kind of message. The next day, I became headlines all over the world. ... I maintained enough success and enough imagery to be able to do all the other shows as a guest, but the sponsors were afraid to be a.s.sociated with me as the star."

Jackie is telling me this in his dressing room at Dangerfield's (1118 First Avenue), where he's performing six nights a week until December 17.

The affable Mason is quick to defend his caustic brand of ethnic humor.

"I don't see how it can be harmful. If people do feel any prejudice, it provides an outlet for them to be able to laugh at it. The people who decry ethnic humor are afraid of their own prejudice. You remind them of the ridiculous nature of prejudice. ... Most of the things I say are universal: they're about marriage, about minorities, about social problems -- the issues of the day."

He also pokes fun at doctors, weathermen and every profession in between. Then there are his highly exaggerated impressions of Menachem Begin, Jimmy Carter and Ed Sullivan ("He always asked me to do an impression of him on his show. He found out from me how to do _him_."). Another of his ploys is to razz the audience members. "In 21 years," he said, "I only had one incident where a guy got mad and wanted to punch me in the mouth. Thank G.o.d I move very fast. He wanted to kill me. Obviously he didn't catch me. That's why I'm still here for the interview."

Born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, he was raised in New York's Lower East Side from the age of 5. Following in the footsteps of three older brothers, he studied to become a rabbi to please his father. "I knew it wasn't for me. I have all license to be a rabbi, but I'm not a rabbi." A bachelor and Eastside resident, he loves New York because "this is a melting pot that doesn't really melt. There's a pot, but it's full of unmelted people."

Dangerfield's, he says, is the only club in New York where major comedians still perform. "Seven, eight, nine years ago, there was about 12 clubs that played comedians. There was the Copacabana, the Waldorf Astoria, the Latin Quarter, the Plaza: all those rooms were wiped out."

Consequently, Jackie does a lot of performing in such clubs as the Riviera in Las Vegas and the Fontainebleau in Miami. Nowadays, however, he's more interested in making movies. His first one, directed by John Avelson of _Rocky_ fame, was "a big success without anybody seeing it." His second film, _The Jerk_, is now being heavily promoted for its December 14 opening. Also starring Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters and Catlin Adams, it is about a poor black sharecropper's adopted son (Martin) who leaves home and begins wandering on the road until he ends up at the gas station of Harry Hartounian, played by Mason.

"He's an uneducated kid who doesn't know anything," explains Jackie.

"He doesn't know how to handle himself, how to talk, how to act. I give him a part-time job at my place, and I give him a room. He doesn't know what a job is, and he doesn't understand that you get paid. He never saw money. He thinks you're supposed to eat it. He's a crazy lost kid and I play the father figure."

On December 20, Jackie will appear on the _Merv Griffin Show_ with Steve Martin and Carl Reiner, the movie's director.

Jackie loves being a comedian because "I'm my own boss and I do what I like ... When young comics say it's a hard business to enter, it's because they have no talent. If a young comic has talent, he's more likely to make a big living than in any business you can think of, with comparatively less effort, and more opportunity, and greater longevity. I never saw a good comedian in this business who hasn't made a comfortable living at it."

WESTSIDER MALACHY McCOURT Actor and social critic

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"I never take anything seriously -- least of all myself," says Malachy McCourt, one of the wittiest, most outrageous Irish personalities in New York. "I find my life is cyclical, and so I move every five or six years from one interest to another. Now that I'm doing acting sort of full-time, I thoroughly enjoy the uncertainty of it. But I do appear almost also every Wednesday at the unemployment office at 90th Street. I do a matinee from 2:15 to 2:45."

He concludes the remarks with his customary gust of laughter. As opinionated as he is entertaining, Malachy McCourt is one of those larger than-life characters who has mastered the art of conversation to such a degree that no matter what people think of him, they cannot help being magnetically attracted by his words.

In 1968 he had his own talk show in WOR-TV that was canceled because of the controversy it raised. From 1970 to 1976 he had a weekend show on WMCA radio, and lost that as well -- for publicly condemning the station's treatment of an employee whose job was abolished. "They called him in on a Friday at five minutes to five, and told him to clear his desk.

He had been there for 28 years."

The airwaves' loss has been the theatre's gain, because in the past three years, Malachy has developed an ever-increasing reputation as a character actor. Well-known for his roles in Irish plays -- especially those by John Millington Synge -- he has also been seen recently in movies and television. His films include _Two for the Seesaw_ and _The Brink's Job_, while on television, he appeared in last season's _The Dain Curse_ with James Coburn and in Thomas Wolfe's _You Can't Go Home Again_.

His current vehicle is _The Shadow of a Gunman_ by Sean O'Casey, the great Irish playwright. In the role of Seamus Shields, whom Malachy describes as "a snivelling, sycophantic swine of a braggart," he is co starring with Stephen Lang at the Off-Off Broadway Symphony s.p.a.ce for the Performing Arts, 95th Street and Broadway.

The action takes place in Dublin in 1920. "It was during the time of what they euphemistically call 'the Troubles,'" explains Malachy in his broad, breezy irish accent. We're sitting in his Westside living room. The walls are so loaded down with books that they seem ready to collapse. "The English brought in a bunch of gangsters from their prisons, called the Black and Tans. They were paid an extraordinary amount of money to go over and pacify the country. They could do anything they pleased. You could be tortured, raped and robbed."

Born in Limerick in 1931, Malachy quit school at the age of 12. "It was an equal struggle. They couldn't teach me and I couldn't learn." He joined the Irish Army at 14, was kicked out at 15, then went to England, where he worked as a laborer prior to emigrating to the U.S. at the age of 20.

His conversational brilliance soon made him famous as a saloon keeper.

At one time he ran a Malachy's and a Malachy's II on the Upper East Side. "I gave it up," he quips, "for the sake of the wife and the kidneys."

Now the only bartending he does is on the ABC soap opera _Ryan's Hope_, where he is a regular. "I much prefer that. It's a fake bar, and everybody else cleans it up."

He has few happy memories of his native country. "There should not be a united Ireland," he a.s.serts. "In the South, the government is subject to enormous pressures by the church all the time, in the areas of birth control, contraception, abortion. People should have the rights to their own bodies and their own lives. ... Consequently, those of us who escape get very savage about it. Very savage.

"Someone I was talking to the other day said, 'I can't understand how you can be an atheist and have of fear of death.' I said, 'I have no fear of death because I grew up with it.' It was all around. I woke up one morning when I was 5 and a half to find my brother dead beside me.

Another brother had died six months before. My sister died in her crib.

So therefore, what can you fear, when you know it so well? I'm alive today. I'll probably get up tomorrow. There's great comfort in the fact that we're all going to die eventually."