His mood brightens when the subject returns to basketball. Speaking of the recent backboard-shattering antics of "Chocolate Thunder" Darryl Dawkins, O'Brien reports that the star "said that he certainly could adjust his dunk shot to prevent further incidents." The most difficult aspect of his job so far, says O'Brien, has been to enforce the compensation agreement that players and owners signed four years ago. "Compensation means that when a player has terminated his contractual obligations to a club, the new club that acquires him must make compensation to the other team, and work that out between them. And then if the two teams fail to reach an agreement, the case comes to me and I determine what compensation is appropriate. In making the losing club whole, I can assign draft choices, players, money, or any combination thereof. It's extremely difficult -- weighing players against players, and deciding how much money is valid compensation. There's no sure way of doing it, unless you were Solomon or you had a crystal ball as to how it would turn out." ******** WESTSIDER MAUREEN O'SULLIVAN Great lady of the movie screen 3-4-78 As recently as 10 years ago, most of the motion pictures filmed in this country had a single run at the theatres, and then were seldom seen or heard from again. Television has changed that. Now, with longer broadcasting hours and the abundance of new channels, vintage movies are enjoying a second life, often with a bigger audience than the first time. Maybe that's why the name Maureen O'Sullivan is practically a household word even today. Between 1930 and 1965 she made dozens of films, ranging from Marx Brothers comedy (_A Day At The Races_) to classics of English literature (_David Copperfield_, _Pride and Prejudice_) to Tarzan films, in which she played Jane. But unlike so many of her contemporaries, Maureen is neither dead nor retired. She maintains a busy schedule of acting, writing, traveling, and enjoying her status as a mother of five and a grandmother of many. Maureen shows me around her large, beautiful apartment facing Central Park, right across the hallway from Basil Rathbone's last home. "I keep this part for the children," she says, indicating a section of several rooms. There are photos of her children everywhere, including a good number of her actress daughters Mia and Tisa Farrow. Mia lives in England and Tisa is in California, but they still get together frequently. "I'm doing an autobiography now. It's about halfway done. My agent has the manuscript. But I'm not writing any more until I see if there's any interest in it. ... I started it two years ago, then put it away. I wasn't even interested in it myself. Then a friend of mine, John Springer, had me to lunch. He said, 'You ought to do an autobiography.' I said I had already started one. ... So I went back and worked on it some more, and condensed it into 10 pages. I had to do it myself -- every word, syllable, comma."