PLEASE, LET HIM BE FRANKLIN WITH YOU.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

It never fails. Phil Soinski will be at a party, and the conversation will get around to what he does for a living.

``I'm Ben Franklin,'' the Studio City actor will say.

That's when he sees the looks change in people's eyes as they start slowly backing away from him - wondering how this wacko got invited to the party.

``No, really, I'm Ben Franklin,'' Soinski will repeat, but it's too late. They're gone.

It doesn't matter that it's the truth. That Soinski has only one job - being Ben Franklin. That he works full time portraying the country's first printer for the International Printing Museum in Carson.

That in the four years since the museum's former Ben Franklin retired, Soinski has brought the persona of one of America's founding fathers and greatest inventors alive for thousands of schoolchildren in this state when he drops by their schools in his mobile colonial printing shop.

Soinski's no wacko. He's just a guy with a very unique job. Fifty-two weeks a year, he brings Ben Franklin back to life.

``I've been in acting 30 years, and it's the best gig I've ever had, next to the three years I was Groucho (Marx) up in the Bay Area,'' he said Friday, preparing for a busy week.

Ben Franklin turns 299 on Monday, and he's booked solid at the print museum, schools and a few gatherings where people who still think the Gutenberg press was mankind's greatest invention meet to celebrate Ben's birthday during International Printing Week.

Soinski says he enjoys it all, but he especially likes bringing Franklin's legacy to school kids the most because it's the greatest challenge. You really have to stay sharp because, like Art Linkletter said, kids say the darnedest things.

``How come you're not dead by now?'' one little boy asked, doing the math.

``Because genius never dies,'' Soinski told him.

No, it doesn't. It just keeps growing in legend. Even providing a full-time living for an actor almost 300 years later.

Half a dozen visitors are being given a tour of the printing museum Saturday by director Mark Barbour while Soinski is in his dressing room - a broom closet in the back - getting ready for the big finale: a personal visit from Ben Franklin in his colonial print shop.

``Like most people, I knew Franklin was one of the founding fathers and that he had flown a kite in a thunderstorm, but that was about it,'' Soinski said, putting on his bifocals and wig.

``Now I'm hooked on the guy. He had such an incredibly balanced life. He never beat himself up, and was always looking to improve himself. I've found myself taking much of his personality and trying to incorporate it into my own life.''

He has a letter he reads before he goes out on stage. It's from a little girl at one of the schools Franklin's colonial print shop visited last year.

``I want to thank you for coming to my school,'' she writes. ``I was laughing and learning at the same time.''

Soinski figures Franklin would be pretty proud of this letter. At 299, he's still making school kids laugh and learn.

Another letter from a teacher thanks Soinski for doing something none of the history teachers in her school could do when they tried to explain the Constitutional Convention to their students.

``You made a dusty document come to life,'' she wrote.

Soinski's been working on a new Franklin tour that he hopes to start this year, in addition to the visits to schools to let another generation of kids meet this incredible man.

He wants to reach out to their grandparents and great grandparents in convalescent homes.

``Franklin never gave up on life, even as an old man,'' he says. ``He invented bifocals, the rocking chair, and when he was too old to reach the books high on his shelf, he designed a pair of long, metal arms to reach up and grasp the books to bring them down to him.

``I think Ben Franklin has a lot to tell people living in convalescent homes about never giving up.''

With that, the actor leaves his broom closet dressing room and walks past a couple of Gutenberg presses into his colonial print shop, where some people are waiting to meet him.

He's not Phil Soinski anymore. He's Ben Franklin.

``He's so good at it,'' says Barbour, the museum's director, watching him. ``Franklin had so many facets to his life, and Phil never tires of exploring and capturing them all.

``He assumes that character and makes audiences believe.''

If only Ben could pull it off at the parties he's invited to.

(For more information on the International Printing Museum and Ben Franklin's mobile colonial printing shop, call Barbour at [phone] or [phone]. Or log on to www.printmuseum.org.)

Dennis McCarthy, [phone]

dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

Phil Soinski, an actor from North Hollywood, presses a point as Ben Franklin during tours of the International Printing Museum in Carson.

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer