Morgan Fairchild is old enough to have worked with the late legends Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, Bette Davis, George Burns, Jack Lemmon, Shelley Winters and Bob Hope.

She's also young enough to wage a series of three free-swinging catfights with Bo Derek in the new MyNetworkTV's Fashion House. Hey, it's a living, and the 56-year-old Dallas native knows how to earn her Hollywood keep."I'm very proud of being a survivor," Ms. Fairchild says while visiting the city that once knew her as Lake Highlands High School graduate Patsy McClenny. "I credit it partially to just being so Aquarian and always looking for the new and cutting-edge stuff. ... Every five years, you have to reintroduce yourself to a whole new audience."

She's still a notably curved traffic-stopper who's otherwise thin as a signpost. Yes, she'll willingly play the mother of a grown man, as she did on Friends with a recurring role as Nora Tyler Bing. But, no, she hasn't forgotten what put her on the map. Nor have MyNetworkTV publicity materials, which hail her as "renowned for her ability to play elegant and brutally conniving villainesses."

There's a single-word summation for that talent, which Ms. Fairchild first exhibited in prime time as an evil sorority queen in the 1978 TV movie The Initiation of Sarah. Its producer, Chuck Fries, gave her advice that she soon took to the bank as the she-devilish cover-girl star of NBC's Flamingo Road.

"He told me, 'I can find a good ingénue anywhere. But a good [rhymes with rich] is hard to find."

"And, also, I've always made them funny," Ms. Fairchild adds. "There aren't many girls who look like me who can do that, and so, suddenly, you get cast that way a lot. Some would say my characters are over the top. But I would say they're fun."

Fashion House, premiering Sept. 5 on KDFI-TV (Channel 27), finds her as "power-hungry" Sophia Blakely in a stripped-down, 65-episode English-language version of a previously aired Spanish-language telenovela. MyNetworkTV's no-frills schedule has its two featured stars working at a pace akin to Lucy and Ethel's in the frantic chocolate factory episode of I Love Lucy.

Six-day workweeks, with Saturday nights regularly spilling over into early Sunday mornings, keep Fashion House on pace to film a full one-hour episode for each day of shooting. Its already completed running mate, Desire, had the same aggressively cost-efficient blueprint. MyNetworkTV executives say the goal is to make each episode for $200,000, the equivalent of a hold-the-lettuce, hold-the-mayo bologna sandwich in today's TV world.

Pant-pant, Ms. Fairchild is diplomatic.

"Everything is relative," she says. "It's just going a little faster and trying to come in really prepared."

She's yet to film her climactic third fight with Ms. Derek, who plays fashion mogul Maria Gianni. First, they slapped each other around outside a parked car. Then Ms. Fairchild upped the ante by "trying to stab her with a syringe in her hospital room."

Ms. Fairchild hasn't yet "seen the choreography" for the pair's grand finale. "I think it'll be a doozy. But no mud, no water so far."

She's well-schooled in fisticuffs after taking four years of kung fu lessons while living in New York City and getting her first big break in the 1970s on the daytime soap Search for Tomorrow. By then, she'd become Morgan Fairchild, having concocted the name at a pizza parlor with longtime friend and writer Camilla Carr.

"I had never felt like a Patsy," she says. "It never seemed to suit me."

As a primo sex siren of the 1980s, she appeared on a number of Bob Hope specials, including 1982's Stars Over Texas from San Antonio. Mr. Lemmon, also a guest, came to her rescue after Mr. Hope invited them to a "big gala" sponsored by a Texas bank.

"Well, some drunk banker grabs me and drags me onto the dance floor," Ms. Fairchild recalls. "And I'm in a strapless gown, and he tries to stick his hand down my dress. And Jack Lemmon comes over and says, 'Unhand that woman!' To be rescued by Jack Lemmon. My hero."

She has lots of these stories. Here's another:

Ms. Fairchild, Mr. Peck and Mr. Grant were flying together to Las Vegas to host a Chinese New Year's event at Caesar's Palace. Mr. Peck asked her how to get in touch with Willie Nelson, one of her close friends. This prompted Mr. Grant to lean over and ask, "Who is this person?"

Ms. Fairchild clued him in, prompting Cary to try carrying a tune after further inquiring, "Oh, is he the one who sings that song about being out in the street?"

"So he starts singing this song. Coming out of Cary Grant it sounds like 'On the Street Where You Grew Up.' Only it's 'On the Road Again.' "

She laughs uproariously in the company of an interviewer of roughly the same vintage. Otherwise, her tales often are lost on today's young actors.

"They don't know who any of the people I worked with are. You can sit in the makeup room and talk about working with Bette Davis [on the pilot episode of ABC's Hotel], and they don't know who she is. They don't know who Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart were, and they don't know what Casablanca is. They don't know anything about the industry in which they're trying to make a living. Sometimes, it's a little frightening."

In that context, Ms. Fairchild is something of a golden oldie. More important, though, she's bracingly resilient. Imagine where her career might have gone had she landed the key role of Jacy Farrow in 1971's classic The Last Picture Show. Instead, it went to Cybill Shepherd, on whose CBS sitcom Ms. Fairchild appeared more than a quarter of a century later.

"I thought I had that part," she says. "So did my agent."

Oh, well.

"Life is a series of 'what ifs,' " Ms. Fairchild says. "Whatever I'm supposed to get, that's what I'll get. There are always disappointments. ... But if you dwell on that, you're just going to make yourself old and angry before your time. And I see a lot of that in Hollywood."

E-mail ebark@dallasnews.com