NO. 12 STRETCHES FOR A PART

Hanes Inspector No. 12 is one tough broad. She pushes and pulls, yanks and tugs, stretches elastic and pokes and twists cotton bottoms, all in the service of underwear perfection.

“They don’t say Hanes,” says No. 12 emphatically, “until I say they say Hanes.”

Polly Rowles, 72, who has been portraying No. 12 for five years, is, in some ways, just like her character: feisty, sharp as the proverbial tack, a no-nonsense person who nevertheless displays generous doses of warmth and humor.

“I always think,” says Rowles wistfully, referring to the good money and major-league recognition that the Hanes commercials have bestowed upon her, “if this had been around 50 years ago, I wouldn’t have had to work so hard.”

Rowles says this while seated in her co-op apartment located in a 130-year-old building in Greenwich Village. The apartment is tastefully furnished with antique furniture and numerous pieces of bric-a-brac, all so neatly set out it gives the appearance of a room in a “please touch” museum. Old prints cover the walls, and in the small back room that serves as her office, Rowles has hung pictorial mementos from her 50 years in show business.

Daughter of a steel industry executive, Rowles was raised in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and attended Carnegie-Mellon University’s prestigious drama school. Following graduation in the midst of the Depression, she was flown out to Hollywood by Universal Pictures, screen-tested and offered a contract.

Rowles then embarked upon what she now refers to as “a completely nothing career” in the movies: mostly B-pictures, a few A films with titles like “Wings Over Honolulu” (starring Ray Milland) and “Vogues of 1938” (she played Mischa Auer’s wife). She worked in B-Westerns for a while, capping her career as Gene Autry’s co-star in “Springtime in the Rockies,” which still attracts fan mail when it’s shown on cable TV.

Back in Pittsburgh, she was married and had a daughter, but when the marriage failed, she returned to New York and stayed. Except for small roles in two recent films (“Power” and “Sweet Liberty”), most of her career has been spent on the stage or in TV. She appeared on “Playhouse 90” and “The U.S. Steel Hour,” has worked in the soaps and performed for public TV. Her stage work: “Forty Carats,” “The Women” and “Steaming.” She also created Vera Charles in the original Broadway “Auntie Mame.”

Inspector No. 12 is her most lucrative, and most visible, role. “I started doing commercials around 20 years ago,” says Rowles. “At that point in my life, I had decided that I didn’t want to act too much any more. I was tired of going to the theater at night, I wanted to concentrate on commercials.”

She first worked for Minute Rice, portraying a woman “who went around to people’s houses and told them how to make Minute Rice, which any 3-year-old with his hands tied behind his back could do.” She’s since done about 50 different spots, for such products as Comet cleanser, Pampers and Downey fabric softener.

Hanes No. 12 came up about five years ago, when an agent sent Rowles to a casting director who “handed me a pair of men’s drawers and said, ‘Just inspect them.’ I thought that was hysterical.”

Hysterical or not, Hanes liked what it saw; the company signed her to a three-year contract, with an exclusivity clause that prohibits her from doing other ads for men’s haberdashery. She now makes “up to six figures per year” as Inspector No. 12, but, says Rowles, “people in the business seem to feel that when you’ve got the kind of contract I’ve got, you can buy a yacht. And that’s not true.”

Ever since the commercials have been on (eight to date), consumer research has shown an ascending curve in terms of Hanes awareness and sales. People seem to respond to No. 12’s tough but tender stance, and the addition of a younger, apprentice inspector in the commercials has added to their “family” tone. Rowles also seems to recognize this and has invented a whole life for her character: “She’s a career lady; she’s got a husband who’s a blue-collar worker, maybe four kids who are grown up and have gone to college. She’s not without humor, has a work ethic that she’s grown up with, and likes to instruct people.”

But the Hanes spots have done little for Rowles’ career opportunities. Her recent role in “Power,” for example, came about because she and director Sidney Lumet were old friends (she had appeared in his 1966 film, “The Group.”). And as for Alan Alda’s “Sweet Liberty,” Rowles feels that “I don’t think he’d ever seen me before.”

But on the street, Rowles is stopped all the time. “Lots of people say, ‘Aren’t you. . .?’ and I say, ‘Yes I am.’ There’s absolute awe, because you’re on TV.”

Rowles works “maybe six days a year” for Hanes. Besides shooting the commercials (all done in New York), every once in a while she’ll hop on down to North Carolina or Puerto Rico, to shake hands with the workers at the Hanes plants.

Is Polly Rowles/Inspector No. 12 happy? “I’m a cat who’s fallen into the cream pitcher,” says Rowles. “I’ve got cream all over my paws. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”