Q. When you look back over your time in Hollywood, what are the highlights for you personally?

A. They were mostly wonderful times, mainly because of the people I worked with-Bob Mitchum, Richard Egan, Clark Gable, Jeff Chandler, the director Howard Hawks. I was so glad to finally work with him on Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, because he was supposed to direct my first picture, The Outlaw, but he and Howard Hughes had a falling out and Hawks left at the beginning of the picture.

Q. Any truth to the story that Hughes found you working at his dentist's office?

A. None. I had been working with the photographer Tom Kelly, and an agent swiped some pictures of me and began taking them around to different offices. Hughes was looking for a woman who was half-Irish and half-Mexican, and decided I was close enough.

Q. Was all the attention over The Outlaw, which made you so famous, overwhelming for you?

A. It was exciting, but I didn't know what I was getting into. My mother had been an actress, so she knew something about the business. But I was just 19!

Q. Did you always want to act?

A. My brothers and I used to put on shows at home, but I wasn't really determined to act. My mother steered me toward either art, music or drama. I was actually going to go to design school and had the check in hand to enroll. Well, it was the end of the week there and they said why don't you come back on Monday? So on my way home I went by Maria Ouspenskaya's drama school, where a good friend of mine was taking classes, and thought that would be fun. I ended up turning in the check there, and took classes for six months.

Q. And wound up in the movies. What are some of your favorite films?

A. One movie I really like that nobody ever gets to see because it's black and white was called Fuzzy Pink Nightgown. I had a ball doing that one; it was shot when I had an independent company. But it should have been in color. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was probably the best one all-around, because of Hawks and Jack Cole, the choreographer.

Q. What was it like working with Marilyn Monroe on that film?

A. She was like a little sister. It was only her second picture with a leading role; she'd never had a dressing room before. She was very shy, very bright, but a little afraid to go on the set. Her makeup man talked to my makeup man, who talked to me. And so I'd go by her dressing room when I was ready and say to her, "Hey, baby, it's time to go now" and kind of get her going.

Q. Any movie regrets?

A. Well, The Outlaw took nine months to shoot when it should have taken eight weeks. That's because Hughes directed it himself. Now he was a darling, sweet, polite gentleman, but it was nothing for him to do 35 takes of one scene.

Q. Did you lose touch with Hughes later?

A. Oh, yes. He got to a point where he didn't see any of the old gang, just the new people-the Mormon Mafia, we called them.

I didn't really have a lot of Hollywood friends. I lived in the Valley, and when I went out there I'd just forget about the whole Hollywood thing. My brothers would tease me and say [in a mocking voice], "Here comes the movie star."

Q. That probably helped keep you grounded. That and your religious faith. Was that hard to keep in Hollywood, especially with your bombshell image?

A. No, I always hung on to the Lord. My mother was a Bible teacher, and growing up on a ranch in the Valley she'd ring a bell and we'd all come sit under a tree and get a Bible story. But it wasn't a religion with a lot of tight rules in it. My mother didn't care if we danced, and I think she was pleased at the sight of my name up in lights.

We didn't really have any problem with the actual movie The Outlaw, either, which by now is PG-rated. Any problems with that came out of the publicity campaign for it. You know, I'd get up every morning and the photographers were shooting all day, rolls and rolls of film. And if any of the stuff they got was risqué, they made sure to use it. That displeased my mother, and my aunt, and my husband, and myself. We'd go by the magazine stands and not even look.

Q. For many years you were involved with an organization called WAIF that helped place orphans from overseas here in the States. How did that come about?

A. When my first husband and I were married, we didn't have children and we wanted to adopt. Every agency we went to, they'd say it was a two-year wait. I didn't want to wait. Finally I got a phone call about a baby being born that asked was I interested? I certainly was. My daughter was born on my birthday.

As a girl growing up I always wanted an older brother, so I looked for one for her, and again the agencies said there weren't any one- to two-year-old boys. I thought it was hogwash. When I got the chance to go to Europe, I began to go into orphanages. Doors opened for me, and I saw all these kids who were available for adoption, while so many people were waiting in line at home. It took several years, but we finally got a bill passed through Congress that made it easier to bring these babies into the country. We started WAIF in 1955 and have placed 51,000 children in all.

Q. What are you busy with now?

A. My husband Jack died in 1999, so my kids moved me from Santa Barbara to Santa Maria to be closer to them. We have Bible class once a week, and I have friends here I've known for years. One of them started a little theater here years ago, so we go to a lot of plays.

I'm actually thinking of singing again, with my piano conductor Hal Schaefer, who's just one of the best musicians in the world and the man who taught Marilyn Monroe to sing. He's in Florida and lost his wife recently and he's very blue. So I thought working together might help him get through it. My friend Connie Haines, who I sang with for years, lives in Florida now, too.

Q. Sounds like you've kept a lot of good friends over the years.

A. We've all been through a lot together, good, bad and indifferent. I loved Bob Mitchum, whom I worked with on Macao. In Santa Barbara my husband did big barbecues and all these guys would come-Mitch, Jonathan Winters, Stuart Whitman. It's wonderful to be with people who remember the good old days.