TO NEW YORKERS, LUCY’S JUST ANOTHER BAG LADY

“It was a strange feeling,� Lucille Ball said. “I mean, there I was sitting on a pile of garbage bags on Madison Avenue, people passing by, and nobody taking the slightest notice.�

The reason, of course, is that swathed in bundles of old clothing and heavily made up, she looked like just another bag lady. And New Yorkers are used to them. Nobody noticed the camera being set up across the street.

“Stone Pillow,� airing Nov. 5 at 9 p.m. on CBS, marks Ball’s first dramatic appearance on TV. She plays Flora, a tough and gutsy old bag lady, and although there have been a couple of big-screen previews of the film, she has refused to see it.

“I didn’t see the rushes,� she said this week. “I was always too tired at the end of the day. And I haven’t seen it on the big screen either. Don’t ask me why--I don’t know. I’ll probably watch it like everyone else on Nov. 5.�

She took the role, she says, because she wanted to work with eight-time Emmy Award-winning director George Schaefer. And because the script was by Rose Leiman Goldemberg, who wrote last season’s “The Burning Bed� for NBC.

“Anyway, most of the stuff I’ve been offered recently has been so icky that I thought I might as well play an honest bag lady. . . .�

She found it hard going. Production was supposed to start in midwinter but for various reasons was postponed until May, when New York was sweltering in 100-degree heat.

“Since it was supposed to be freezing for the story, I had to be swathed in all these clothes--a wig and a cap and a man’s shirt and muffler and heavy sweater and coat and gloves and boots. I perspired nonstop. I lost 23 pounds.�

The weight loss, plus a torn tendon suffered during a scene where she gets into a fight, landed her in a hospital for several days.

Hiding behind the heavy makeup for this dramatic role was a new experience for her.

“The moment I stepped from my trailer in all that makeup, I became that character of Flora,� she said, “so it didn’t surprise me that people passed by without a glance. It was only when I forgot what I looked like and tried to get into a restaurant for lunch that I got a surprise. Fortunately, Gary (Morton, her husband) was with me and explained the situation.�

Ball has no idea how viewers will react to her in “Stone Pillow.�

“Nobody seems to want me to change my image,� she said. “But I’m certainly not going to try to top the things I did before. Maybe I’ve stuck my neck out further than I meant with this, but I do want to work. There are no laughs; it’s just 24 hours in the life of a bag lady. I hope people like it.�

CATCHING UP: The new ABC miniseries now shooting in Spain with Omar Sharif and Ava Gardner has had a change of title. Originally called, obscurely, “D’Ardenelle,� it has resurfaced as “Harem.� Gardner plays the first wife of a sultan (Sharif). The setting is Damascus.

“Nobody’s going to offer me another job after this,� Gardner said after appearing on CBS-TV’s “Knots Landing� earlier this year. “I looked like hell. . . . “

Apparently not everyone thought so. And, as British producer Paul Mills, one of her oldest friends, says: “Ava still has some mystery attached to her--unlike most of today’s stars.�

She’s tickled to be playing Sharif’s wife, she says. Last time she worked with him, on the 1969 remake of “Mayerling,� she was his mother.

NO CHANCE: Among Raymond Daum’s revelations about Greta Garbo in his unpublished book, “Double Image,� is this curious item:

“Some characteristics she finds objectionable. ‘I can’t stand people who hum,’ she says. ‘Once I saw a newly married couple, and when there was the slightest pause, one of them started to hum. I thought to myself, that’s not going to last--and sure enough, it didn’t.’ �