By Harry Haun
18 Jul 2005

The mistress of the Thighmaster looks great for 58 (actually, although she readily claims it, she won’t turn 58 until Oct. 16), and the story of those years she takes at 90mph in 90 minutes. Fasten your seat belts. "This business has been so good to me, even with all the conflicts I've had. I learned from every one of them. What I'm trying to say is, it doesn't matter what happened to you and it doesn’t matter where you come from — if you're willing to do the work, you can change your life. I did. And, if I can do it, so can you…"

In the great scheme of things, Somers sees herself falling somewhere between the resiliency of the Shmoo and the triumph of the human spirit. A Shmoo was a beach toy, armless and pear-shaped, with a weighted bottom, right out of Al Capp's Dogpatch. "My brother used to have one of those. You'd punch it, and it would come right back up," she said. "That's, pretty much, my life. I've been socked around so much, but I kinda roll up my sleeves every time and start all over again. My show is about the triumph of the human spirit. It takes you up and down and back up again. It makes quite a journey."

As roller coaster rides go, Somers' life and career have not been a straight line. "Eclectic" is the word that comes to mind. Her mute bit in "American Graffiti" (mouthing "I love you" to a seriously oversexed Richard Dreyfuss at a traffic light) led to appearances on the Johnny Carson show, which in turn led to four seasons of "Three's Company" and a very ugly public firing. Then she hung a right to Vegas, bumping and grinding into Sales.

"Who would have thought that dumb little $19 device would have revived my careers?" she muses about the Thighmaster she successfully peddled on television. "I was doing shows in Vegas, getting home at three in the morning, night after night. One night I said to Alan [her agent and husband of 37 years], 'We've got to find a way to make some money without showing up every night,' and he went out and found this Thighmaster commercial. I said, 'Do you think it'll hurt my career?' He said, 'Baby, for all intents and purposes, to the outside world, you don't really have a career. If it wins, you'll be a big hero. If it doesn't you’ll do another job.' Who knew 10 million people would buy that?"

Elaine Stritch: At Liberty set the highwater mark for confessional one-person shows, and, yes, Somers has seen it. "I saw it after we had put ours together," she was quick to note. "What I loved about it was there's no competition in these shows because her story is her story and my story is my story. They're completely different. If you tell your story well, people will come and they will get involved."

The Blonde in the Thunderbird plays to Sept. 3 at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.