Ask ANYBODY who has worked with Tammy Grimes to describe her appeal and the trouble commences. Bob Precht, who is restaging several of her numbers in "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" for presentation on Ed Sullivan's show Sunday night (CBS), is no exception.
"Tammy has a very unusual quality," he begins. "She's, uh, well, there's a brand of uniqueness, an emotional quality that, er, projects...Oh heck- whatever it is, I'm for it." That's as apt a description as any.
"I'd rather be something they don't quite understand," Tammy says. She was born in Boston in 1934 and the name Tammy (an old Scottish feminine name) is hers. Also the mop of hair (coiffure by Beulah Witch), sharp chin, and a nose that remains in perpetual salute to our first astronaut.
There's no middle ground in appreciating her talents. Either you agree with the majority of Broadway critics that she is something delectably special, or you're looking for the exit (or channel selector) when she comes into view. Tammy has been discovered more times than a good, inexpensive summer resort.
But it was TV that gave her the big boost, early in 1960, on the special, "Four for Tonight," in which she stole the show from such stalwarts as Beatrice Lillie (one of her idols), Cyril Ritchard and Tony Randall. "I just adore Miss Lillie," she says.
Tammy acts and sings with simple straighforwardness that is not only believable but wonderfully fresh and new. These qualities partly explain what her friends describe as her "common sensical" approach to life and "her whim of iron." It also explains a missing scatter rug in the Greenwich Village apartment she maintains for herself and daughter, Amanda, 3, whose daddy is Christopher Plummer.
A friend who found her muttering at a rug one afternoon reports that she picked it up and threw it out the window. Just didn't like it.
Says Tammy: "You have to love the person you're playing."

The article is accompanied by the color full page cover photo of Tammy seated in a black sleeveless dress and black hat with white brim facing the camera with lips pursed and a ring on her marriage finger; and a quarter page color photo of Tammy in a blue dress holding a jewelry pin in front of her right eye while smirking at the camera.