Tammy Grimes, tousled comedienne, who co-stars in "Hollywood Sings," Sunday, 8 P.M., Ch. 3. Interview by Harry Harris:

Debbie Reynolds' saccharine "Tammy," which once achieved jukebox eminence, is hardly a theme for Tammy Grimes, the tousled-blonde, hazel-eyed comedienne who costars in NBC's "Hollywood Sings," Sunday at 8 P.M. on Channel 3.
Although, offsite, she's ultra-feminine, creamy-skinned and curvaceous, there's a ribald, hoydenish, almost tough quality about the girl, too, which may help account for the fact that her varied stage, TV and night club career has frequently seen her cast as trollops and chambermaids.
With her almost Dickensian, sharp-nosed, lantern-jawed face, which she keeps contorting in strange and wonderful ways as she speaks, and her bro-a-d A accent, she strikes many people as an alumna of the rough-and-tumble British music halls.
They couldn't be more wrong. Tammy Lee Grimes is a former Boston debutante, from one of that city's tonier sections, a finishing school product, with a stage background that includes appearances in Shakespearean and other far-from-frivolous enterprises.
She can't quite understand that "British" tag. "The English don't think I'm English," she protests (she's been there in recent years, but only as a tourist, never as a performer). It's true, she says, that she hails from a part of Boston where "They are came over on that Mayflower", and that she has been linked with sundry British subjects (she starred on Broadway in a Noel Coward play, has appeared with Bea Lillie and Australian Cyril Ritchard, was married to Canadian Christopher Plummer, has been squired about of late by Rex Harrison), but she doesn't think that's enough to account for any confusion about her nationality.
"My accent?" she wonders. "When I'm with people in Boston it doesn't seem any difference." "My mother used varied accents, depending on her mood. My father speaks New England mostly. New Hampshire-style, flat-A Boston. My sister has such a New England accent you can't even understand her. People in Boston do have a peculiar way of speaking, I guess. Where I was brought up, in Chestnut Hill, they use a very broad A. My own accent must have gotten more broad on stage, trying to enunciate more clearly. Diction! Maybe it's the way I say things."
"Or perhaps it's just that I'm not very American. I'm very loyal to America you understand, but maybe I just don't look like the average American girl. Who's the average American girl? 'Average' doesn't mean anything at all.
"People who want to be in the theater when they're young don't think like other people, anyway. Most of my old friends have lovely homes now, two or three children and keep busy with the Red Cross and the Ladies aid. In the theater, life follows a different pattern. I envy them sometimes, but I couldn't live their way!"
Although she won coast-to-coast kudoes for her singing in an earlier Robert Saudek-produced TV special, "Four for Tonight," in which she shared the spotlight with Bea Lillie, Cyril Ritchard and Tony Randall, and stressed singing during a successful stint at Julius Monk's Downstairs at the Upstairs which led to an album, Tammy considers herself not a vocalist, but "a comedienne, and first of all an actress."
Critics comments that she "looks like a clown" faze her not at all. "To be a clown in the theater," she sighs, "is about the highest tribute. There aren't too many of them. I considered it a compliment."
On the other hand, she confesses that she's had moments when she's aspired to be a sexpot. "In general," she laughs, "I wouldn't say I'm a femme fatale. I couldn't possible be, and I've given up on things I know I can't be. But three years ago, for about six months, I went through a period when I tried to look like a high-fashion model. I wanted to be dark and glamorous like Hedy Lamarr and Vivien Leigh. I wore high-fashion clothes, lost weight, kept terribly quiet, smiled out of the corners of my eyes, kept them heavy-lidded- the whole bit. But I got so bored with myself!"
Tammy prefers a more rollicking way of life, both professionally and privately. As far as her career is concerned, "I'd like to do it all- I'd like to try and do it all- whatever's exciting that comes my way!" Offstage, she confesses, she's been involved in her share of escapades. Her parents aren't disturbed by the way-out things she's sometimes called on to do as a performer, she reports "because they've been so shocked by everything I've done since I was 16 that nothing shocks them any more!"
An example? "My folks are wealthy, but I softened them a bit here and there. I spent enormous quantities of money without having it. Charge acounts and other things. When I was about 18, I bought a mink coat when I had $55 in the bank, an allowance from my parents and no hope in the world of getting the money anywhere. Daddy paid it off, finally, or we'd all be in New Zealand or someplace.
"I was always renting cars in college and I kept hiring limousines to get uptown. You get seasick, you know, if you ride too often in cabs. Limousines are better!
"I can't abide money anyway. I refuse to let it be important, one way or the other. Even if there's not the faintest hope, you'll ever be a millionaire, why not live like one?"
Occasionally she's figured in scandalous occurences strictly by accident. Once, on stage, at Stephens, her pajama pants fell down. In San Francisco, while touring with Julie Harries as the Dauphin's mistress in "The Lark" she couldn't understand why the audience and her cast colleagues kept howling during one of her scenes. "There were all these hurrahs from the audience, tremendous male roars and everybody around me was breaking up. I was furious. I went striding off stage and asked the stage manager, "What's going on out there, amateur theater night at the monkey house?" He started laughing too. "I had played a 15-minute scene in a dress that was supposed to be low-cut, but not that low-cut! The next day the papers made wise-cracks about the Vice Squad and one critic referred to the 'scenic grandeur' I had added to the play!"
She's become dead serious about acting ever since the out-of town folding of "The Amazing Adele" four years ago after disastrous tryouts in Philadelphia and Boston. "Up until that time," she recalls, "I had been terribly cocky, sure I was going to be a big star. I used to wonder why we had to bother with three weeks of rehearsal, why I couldn't just learn my lines, walk on, get my laughs and go. In Philadelphia, I suddenly realized how little I knew on stage and off, that being a performer was more than just a lot of fun and laughs."
She's looking forward to another chance with local stage audiences Sept 19 via a new musical by Meredith (The Music Man) Wilson, "The Unsinkable Mrs. Brown."
As the result of her recently-dissolved marriage to Christopher Plummer, she has a daughter, Amanda, who was three years old week before last. Sighs Tammy: "She likes me all right on TV, but she can't stand to hear me sing at home!"