Yes, they had a better chance in 1e, but after 5th level and especially 7th, if the wizard got initiative he likely won.
Fly and Protection from Normal Missiles were pretty standard choices and if the fighter didn't have a magic bow, he wasn't doing much in the way of interrupting.
No. this is not true. IT depends on what you are being attacked with and the casting time of the spell. I believe that Fly and PNM both have a casting time of 3 segments.
Missile weapons are always fired before spells, so regardless of initiative if the fighter is using a missile weapon the magic-user gets attacked before he gets his spell off.
If the fighter attacks him in melee and the magic-user loses initiative he always gets attacked before completing his spell.
If the fighter attacks using a melee weapon and the magic-user wins initiative a bunch of things come into play:
1. IF the fighter has more than 1 melee attack that round he makes one attack before the spell completes and one after (at 7th level a fighter with specialization would get 2 attacks every round, a fighter without specialization would get one attack the first round, a two attacks the next round, then one, then two etc).
2. If the fighter only gets 1 melee attack that round you need to subtract the fighters losing initiative from the speed factor of the weapon he is using and compare it to the casting time for the spell (in this case 3), to see if the spell went off first.
For a magic-user to get a spell off before getting attacked, the attacker had to be using melee, he has to only get one attack a round and the Magic-User has to win initiative by enough to cover the casting time-speed factor.
RAW Magic-Users sucked in 1E!