Actress Bridget Hanley of "Here Come the Brides" and "Harper Valley PTA" TV fame has always been intrigued by nuns. Dressed in a nun's habit for her role in the musical "Nunsense" opening June 9 at Theatre West in Hollywood, Hanley confessed to her fellow castmates after a recent rehearsal that she once went to great lengths in pursuit of nun knowledge.

"I went to San Francisco College for Women for my first two years in college having grown up Catholic," recounted Hanley, who plays a ballerina-dancing novice in the show. "It was my first time in a Catholic school and the Sacred Heart nuns at that time wore what looked like fluted horse blinders.

"It was fascinating. I remember I pretended I got sick one time. I went into the infirmary because I wanted to know what they wore under the habits. The infirmary was right over the laundry."

Fellow cast member, Lee Meriwether, former Miss America and veteran TV star, said she even considered being a nun after getting to know a couple of Episcopalian nuns while attending summer camp as a youth.

According to Meriwether, who starred in the "Nunsense" 20th Anniversary All-Star Tour directed by the show's creator Dan Goggin in 2004, nuns are some of the show's biggest fans. "Every time nuns come to the show, they are the loudest. They slap their knees and just howl," said Meriwether.

When Goggin heard Meriwether was in the same Theatre West company as Betty Garrett, the 80-something legendary star of MGM musicals, he added new material and a new song written especially for Garrett, who plays Sister Julia of the Child Jesus.

In the play, Sister Julia, the cook for "The Little Sisters of Hoboken" creates a dire emergency requiring some fast fund-raising on behalf of the community. The sisters decide to put on a singing, tap-dancing show with hilarious results.

"It's like the musical 'A Chorus Line' in a way, but with nuns," said Garrett. She confided she briefly attended a convent school in Canada at the age of eight where she experienced a "sign" of things to come.

"One thing I loved about it was the drama of the services, particularly the evening service," Garret noted. "When we would go in groups of four into the chapel, we would stop and dip our fingers in the holy water, cross ourselves, and go up to the altar for a very deep genuflection and go to our seats. But if you were late to chapel, you got to go solo, and I guess in the back of my mind I wanted to do that.

"I was late for chapel one day, and I walked in very dramatically, dipped my fingers in the holy water, crossed myself, walked up to the altar and did a deep, deep bow. All of a sudden, I looked and everybody was laughing, including the nuns. I had bowed with my back to the altar and my face to the congregation," laughed Garrett.

She grew up to perform in front of Broadway stage, movie screen and TV audiences ("Laverne & Shirley," "All in the Family"), winning an Ovation Lifetime Achievement.

"Nunsense" will run June 9-17 at Theatre West, 3333 Cahuenga Blvd. West, Los Angeles. Show times are 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays with 2 p.m. performances on 6/10 and 6/11. Tickets: $25 for adults, $20 seniors, $15 students. Information: (323) 851-7977 or www.theatrewest.org.