Daily News from New York, New York • 35

33 Arts Entertainment ftii---ir-fMagaMKr- nuniri spot 'Wilderness' star a laugh a minute By BILL BELL Sv5 V. AT-. A WHEN SHE went back to Columbus, Ohio, for a gala high school reunion last year, her male classmates were all heart "well, actually," she recalls, "they were all heart surgery, you know, bypasses, and things like that." One by one, it turned out, that old reunion gang went to a microphone to report on the ups and downs of life since the North High class of '32 went its various ways. The big deal for the guys was that they were still breathing. That's it, Dody Goodman, go where jthe laughs are.

She'll be going for laughs tonight, opening in the Roundabout Theater 50th anniversary production of "Ah, Wilderness!" co-starring with Philip Bosco in a six-week run at the Haft Theater on W. 27th St THE PLAY is the only major comedy that Eugene O'Neill wrote, and Dody plays the lead, the matriarch of a large family living in New London, in 1906. Bosco plays her husband. "It's a terrific play and a terrific part," Dody said, "and Phil wonderful." Recalling that class reunion, she remembers her French teacher saying, "I saw you on TV, I just couldn't believe it, because you were so-o-o-o quiet in class, and there you were, talking a blue streak. How did you do it?" And Dody replied, "They offered me $750 a week to talk, which did it" This was back in 1957, when Dolores Martha Goodman, nicknamed Dody by her brother, became an instant celebrity on the "Tonight" show (hosted then Columbus until a few years ago when she moved to California she now calls Marina Del Rey home.

People are always asking her what it is that makes her funny. "WELL, MY voice," she says. "It's a sort of drawl, and I extend my vowels like this" and here, she goes, "e-e-e-e" and "ah-ah-ah-ah" so enthusiastically that a couple at the next table in the look up, slightly startled. "Also my face is funny," she says, "especially my mouth, and I've always thought funny things. A lot of my humor comes from my mother.

In fact, I've noticed that most funny women get their humor from their mothers." She didn't intend to make her living by making people laugh. When she arrived in New York, it was to dance. "I came to the city with a girlfriend whose brother was a singer on Broadway," she says. "We were all going to become stars, but my girlfriend was too tall for a dancer. She and her brother finally left show business." Dody, who stands Meet 5, was so naive that she knocked on the stage door at the Radio City Music Hall and asked the doorman for a dancing job.

He told her to come back Friday, when auditions were held. She did, and after two weeks in New York, she had a job with the corps de ballet. LATER, SHE would appear in many hits and misses "High Button Shoes," "Call Me Madam," "Miss Liberty," "Wonderful Town" and, after her Tonight success, "Born "Yesterday," "Bells Are Ringing," "Once Upon a Mattress," and "George Washington. Slept Here," for starters. (It was Imogene Coca, who was then starring in the road company of "Wonderful Town," who talked Dody Into concentrating on her comic talents, which led to a lot of TV work with Berle, Caesar, Martha Raye and other top bananas, then to revues and inally Tonight).

Most TV viewers know her as Mary Hartman's mom, but she turns up on shows as different as "Diff'rent Strokes" and "Search for Tomorrow." She Is no great shakes as a chef, but she still pops up on celebrity gourmet shows to demonstrate her skills works better if there's a micro-wave oven," she says). Lady Macbeth is not one of her acting ambitions. "I don't think the public will accept me in any dramatic role," she says. "Besides, I don't feel comfortable with vulgar dialogue. I'd probably make it, 'Out, darned spot, out, I TWMmmmmmmmm 4 0 twi mmmmmmmM liMllllillll llllllllllll illllllililllill ililllllii Mm WlUiAM LAFORCE JR.

DAILY NEWS Dody Goodman: no "Macbeth," and no naughty words by Jack Paar). "I WAS DOING an Off Broadway show, 'The Shoestring she remembers. "Chita Rivera was in it. So was Bea Arthur, who was later 'Maude' on TV, and Arte Johnson, and oh! a lot of other marvelous people. One of Jack Paar's writers saw it and liked it and suggested that he hire me for his show.

I was going to make my first appearance on the second week of the show, in July of 1957. But I started the same week Jack did, because his first guest, Stanley Holloway, who was in 'My Fair fell and broke a collar- They split in 1962, partly because Paar did not want anyone to think she was his co-star. They do not stay in touch. A quarter-century later, people still remember her "Tonight" days. "I'll get into a taxi and tell the driver where I want to go," she says, "and he'll say, 'Hey, Dody She lived in Manhattan, on Seventh Ave.

and then Ninth from the day she arrived in the Big Town from bone or something, and I went right on, cold." And hot She had a special talent for the logically ridiculous misuse of words as in, "It's not the heat, it's the humility." When she passed in front of a camera in those live TV days, she would apologize to viewers, "Excuse me, America." She and Paar clicked because of their gift for swift shifts in conversation, and a certain telepathic sense of each other's interests. and interests of that more than could oe designed to.show the variety of moods strange and complex man, succeeded By PATRICIA O'HAIRE 5 to if New York Choral Society. Bach. Stravinsky, Mendelssohn. CAMI (165 W.

57th 7:30 Personally Yours. New Kenneth J. Ellner comedy, opening. ATASar-gent Theater (314 W. 54th 8 American Ballet Theater.

"Airs," "Giselle." New York State Theater, 8 Richard Belzer. Comedian. Caroline's Dinner Club (332 Eighth 9 Kansas City Blues Reunion. Fat Tuesday's (190 Third 9 and 11 First, there was the Mingus Dynasty. Then, a group of unusual dancers, led by Moses-Pendleton, called Momix, who gave a very comic performance to a special piece written for them.

Later, a trio of exceptional guitarists Tal Farlow, Larry Coryell and Joe Beck performing "Ysabel's Table Dance" and the delightful "Good Bye Pork Pie Hat" After, Gunther Schuller and members of the Philharmonic plus the Mingus Dynasty, played "Revelations," one of the last pieces he What's the worst, the most embarrassing thing that could happen to a musician who is sitting in for the late Charles Mingus at a Carnegie Hall concert that is a tribute to him? Reggie Johnson, a bassist of note and authority, can tell you. During the first number of that concert of music by Mingus and called "A Night of Genius," the entire lower part of his stand-up bass became unglued fell apart with a loud, decidedly off-key noise. And he was forced to leave the stage for repairs. He made them, and returned as soon as he could while the other musicians of the Mingus Dynasty group covered his passages neatly and with dispatch. But a Mingus melody without a bass solo doesn't exactly sound the same, does it? But that was about the only quibble jazz fans might have with the concert, which took place Sunday, the third night of.

the 10-day Kool Jazz Fest in The Charles Mingus.