She’s out and proud about being 91 years old. And, should we all be so lucky as to live that long, we could only hope to be in the wonderful physical and mental condition that Shannon Bolin enjoys.

You might recognize her name from The Student Gypsy or the Prince of Liederkrantz (1963), but chances are you know her from Damn Yankees (1955). Bolin, of course, originated the role of Meg, the devoted wife of Joe Boyd, the man who leaves her to become Joe Hardy, the star of the Washington Senators. With Damn Yankees having an encore at Encores! this week, a stop by Ms. Bolin’s apartment for a chat was a must.

Peter Filichia: Some Damn Yankees memories?

Shannon Bolin: When we tried out in New Haven, Moss Hart came and said, “Close the show.” He’d told everyone in advance that a show about baseball couldn’t work. But that wasn’t what the show was about; it was about a man’s selling his soul to the devil. I had three songs, so when Gwen (Verdon) said to me, “Shannon, I’d like to have breakfast with you,” I knew what that meant. Don’t misunderstand; she was a sweetheart. But at breakfast when she said to me, “Shannon, I have nothing but ‘Whatever Lola Wants,’ I said, “Gwen - you’re the star.” So they took away what I had and added “Who’s Got the Pain” and “A Little Brains” for her.

PF: But for the movie, you got another song, “There’s Something about an Empty Chair.”

SB: But I only sang a few lines of it, and then they cut away from it. I didn’t much care for the song, anyway.

PF: Any memories of (co-composer and co-lyricist) Jerry Ross?

SB: Poor soul, he died so young. Was he even 30? We knew he was sick. For “A Man Doesn’t Know (What He Has until He Loses It),” he wanted to add some recitative between Joe’s section and mine, so he said to me, “Shannon, what would you say at a moment like that?” and I told him, “I’d say something like, ‘I know what you mean Joe, only too well, because I’m lonely just like you are.’” And he wound up putting that in. I remember the night he died, when I got to that section. I looked out and saw that Hal Hastings, our conductor, had tears streaming down his face, and soon they were coming down mine, too.

PF: Ray Walston?

SB: He really was a devil. He loved to play jokes. The scene where he shows up at my house as the representative from City Hall? One day I opened that door, and he had long red hairs pouring out of his nose. I don’t know where he got them. When he was leaving the show, he said to me, “Shannon, I want you to collect money for the gift.” I said, “Ray, how do you know you’re going to get one?” He said, “Oh, come on - everyone gets a gift! I want a typewriter.” Well, I did wind up collecting the money, so he got his typewriter, and he was so thrilled with it that at his final performance he brought it on-stage with him. If Mr. Abbott had seen that, he would have been furious.

PF: How heartbreaking for Stephen Douglass to be one of the only people in the original cast not asked to reprise his role in the film.

SB: I never even wanted to talk to him about it. Mr. Abbott didn’t want Tab Hunter, but because he got the rest of the cast, he gave in. Stanley Donen, who co-directed with Mr. Abbott, didn’t want to bring the whole cast, or anyone. He wanted Cary Grant as the devil and Mitzi Gaynor as Lola. Gwen once told me that when someone suggested that Stanley “get a nice shot of her on camera,” she heard him say, “I don’t want to; she’s ugly.” Anyway, Stephen was wonderful on-stage, but if you got a close-up of him, he would have looked a little too old. He’s only 10 years younger than I. Yes, he’s 81 now.

PF: Did anything you did wind up on the notorious cutting room floor?

SB: “Near to You,” my big scene with Tab. It was shot quite beautifully, then someone noticed that you could hear the sound of pounding all the way through it. That’s because someone near to us was making some set for some other picture. But I’d only gone to California for three weeks – I’d rented Hermoine Gingold’s apartment and had already come home – and they didn’t want to spend the money to bring me back. So they cut it.

PF: How does a girl from Spencer, South Dakota get interested in theater?

SB: Yes, a town of 500 people, where my father raised horses in the middle of dust storms and the depression. I’d sit in our window seat and wish to go somewhere, anywhere. I always sang, so I got a scholarship, though it was for a South Dakota school. Then, when I was 20, after my sister got married and moved to Washington, DC, she said, “Why don’t you come visit?” I did - and never went back. I just walked up to CBS and asked for a job as a singer. I thought you could do that. A telephone operator who looked just like Lily Tomlin told me “We don’t need singers,” But out came this redheaded guy who’d heard me, and he said, ‘Can you read poetry, too?’ Of course, I told him I could do anything.” He told me that a lady was leaving, and they needed a replacement. He was Arthur Godfrey.

PF: People don’t remember him today, but there was a time when he ruled the airwaves - if not the world.

SB: He certainly did. The opportunity he gave me led to CBS’s giving me my own show – Shannon Bolin Sings - where I’d interview soldiers from little towns everywhere. After four years in Washington, I decided I just had to try New York, and got into a Broadway show you never heard of called Helen Goes to Troy.

PF: Hmm, ibdb doesn’t have you down for that.

SB: Maybe that’s because I changed my name to – are you ready for this - Anne Boleyn!

PF: I hope you had it for three years, so you’d be Anne of the Thousand Days.

SB: No, just for that one show! I never liked the name Shannon - it’s my middle name - though I liked it more than my first name, Ione. My father named me Ione because I was born on the first of January, which is 1-1, or 1-one. That’s South Dakota humor for you. Then I worked with Marc Blitzstein for two years while he was writing Regina.

PF: Hmmm, ibdb doesn’t have you down for that, either.

SB: Because I never played it. Marc wanted me to, but the producers couldn’t get money to do an opera on Broadway. I think the reason Jane Pickens got the job was because she could help raise the money, so I became her understudy.

PF: Did you go on?

SB: On opening night in Boston, Jane had a cold, and (director) Bobby Lewis said, “You’re on” - so I went through the whole thing with the orchestra and then she went on. Bobby didn’t realize she was a Christian Scientist.

PF: And would rise above it. The Golden Apple is your first ibdb reference.

SB: Oh, The Golden Apple! When the show went from downtown to Broadway, they decided to replace a girl with me. (Librettist-lyricist) Johnny Latouche was a scoundrel, such a manipulative rascal. When everyone in the company asked him why the girl was fired, he said, “The new girl is sleeping with one of the producers” rather than take any responsibility for it. So, for the first week, nobody spoke to me or helped me. Finally, Priscilla Gillette, who I knew from Regina, told me. I’ve always wondered which producer everyone thought I was sleeping with.

PF: The Student Gypsy?

SB: We didn’t run long. Two weeks. It was written and directed by Rick Besoyan, who wrote Little Mary Sunshine. I adored that one, because it wasn’t overplayed, but with Student Gypsy, we hammed it up too much. Me, Dom deLuise, Eileen Brennan, all of us. I did have a funny song, though, that made fun of “Climb Ev’ry Mountain.” You don’t get famous from that. If people know me at all, it’s from doing a Denny’s commercial, where I played one of two sisters who went there to eat. I was the ditzy one who kept calling the place “Lenny’s,” and my sister -- played by Libi Staiger, who was the original Sophie Tucker in Sophie – kept correcting me. Then I did a DeBeers diamond commercial with my husband Milton Kaye that was supposed to run only a few weeks and ran for years. More character parts! I never was a girly-girly ingenue, not with my deep voice. When I was doing Promenade off-Broadway (in 1969) with George S. Irving, I was supposed to be someone in my 90s. I said to his wife Maria Karnilova, “Oh, Maria, I’ll never play any other parts but older women.” She said, “But Shannon, they’re the best parts.”

PF: Promenade is being done this year by New York Theatre Workshop. I say they'd be smart to get you to reprise your role, now that you’re finally the right age. I am totally confident you could do it, too.

You may e-mail Peter at pfilichia@aol.com