By Christopher Rawson

Even over a quick salad during a break in rehearsal, Michele Lee is a lot of laughs. Like the vivid characters she's played on stage and screen, she opens up, interspersing quick, earthy laughter and self-dramatizing gestures with sotto voce confidences.

Those whispered asides are her way of saying something's off the record, which she often wants, because, although she's bold and frank and sees the comedy in life and showbiz, she doesn't want to hurt any feelings.

Lee must be just about the only star for whom a traditional one-week Pittsburgh CLO run, preceded by a breakneck one-week CLO rehearsal period, might seem almost expansive. That's because the show is "Mame," and the only previous time Lee played Auntie Mame was for just one night.

That was three years ago at the outdoor Hollywood Bowl, not a far cry from the CLO's own outdoor beginnings at Pitt Stadium. "The dress rehearsal, opening performance and closing all took place on one day," Lee laughs. "And there were no cue cards!"

There was, however, an audience of 18,000 and a stage 35 feet wider than usual -- "By the time you exited, you were out of breath" -- and then she had to make a quick costume change and get right back on.

Since then, Lee has longed to play the role for more than one night. Composer Jerry Herman promised if she did, he'd give her a revised version of "If He Walked Into My Life," in a more dramatic orchestration -- which she now has.

"Hell, if I didn't do this show again, I'd shoot myself," she jokes. So she was receptive when the CLO first called, but here she goes into whisper mode, explaining why it took so long to negotiate the details.

Having played the role even so briefly, she remembered vividly that Mame has some 15 costumes and five hairdos, so she insisted that her first day here, last Sunday, would be devoted to wardrobe. That way she wouldn't have to keep leaving rehearsals all week.

She also had a negotiation with her Pittsburgh hotel, involving its presidential suite. "I'm a homebody," she says, who needs her things around her, photos of her family and such: "I have to feel grounded."

The 60-something actress has been acting on stage, screen and TV ever since she got a start in a 1960 musical revue on Broadway. Still, she's been better settled than most, having spent 1979-93 playing Karen Fairgate MacKenzie on TV's "Knots Landing."

Her 344 shows over those 14 years have been called a record for consecutive appearances by a leading actress in an hourlong prime-time dramatic series. That limited what else she could do, but she also directed many episodes, drawing on the skills she'd already developed on stage, where she directed a 1979 revival of "Oliver!" with Tyne Daly (in her first musical) and Nehemiah Persoff.

She says that for some time "Knots" wouldn't let her direct, perhaps fearing that every cast member would make the same request. But finally she said, "You want me back next year?" and they relented. She'd further prepared by studying film at the American Film Institute and producing some movies, using the clout she'd gained from "Knots."

Even though she owes her renown mainly to TV, she literally owes her name to Broadway. After a short 1962 run in the musical "Giovanni," she joined the original cast of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," replacing the original Rosemary, who had gotten pregnant, then went on to do the 1967 movie. She'd been trying different stage names, none including her birth name, Dusik ("Russian-Jewish," she says), but she used Michele Lee for "How to Succeed," and it stuck.

Her only other Broadway roles -- she earned Tony nominations for both -- were as Gittel in the 1973 musical "Seesaw" and opposite Linda Lavin and Tony Roberts as Lee, another big character, in the non-musical "The Tale of the Allergist's Wife" (2000-02).

But mainly, she does musical comedy. She did a limited tour of "Hello, Dolly," another brassy role well suited to her. And you could add her title role in the 1998 TV movie "Scandalous Me: The Jacqueline Susann Story."

Lee's L.A. assistant hasn't been able to come to Pittsburgh, so David Farentino, her son by her second husband, actor James Farentino, has been here, helping her learn her role. He's been worried about the datedness of the script, the usual problem with old musicals, and she admits asking for a tweak or two, especially in one discussion of nudity that might offend contemporary sensibilities.

Her first husband was Fred Rappoport, a CBS executive, and her current mate is Stanley Frileck, a director. She's not, however, divorced from Farentino. "I love them all," she says, shrugging, but with a few off-the-record whispers, too.

In playing Mame, she sees the importance of "balancing her zest for life with her culture and with her ability to live without worrying about what people think." Sounds like a role where she should feel at home.