If there is one thing-- Edge of Night grande dowager Geraldine Whitney would never do, it is empty garbage and clean the halls of a gigantic apartment complex. Not so the lady's alter ego, actress, writer, director, and Mets baseball fan par excellence, Lois Kibbee. "The building has been hit by a maintenance strike. I am on garbage and housekeeping detail. I am having a great time. I really wield a mean broom," she says in her delicious, prickly rose voice.

Garbed in denim slacks with applique daisies down the seams, Lois sits in her cream-toned Manhattan apartment, its walls covered with scads of beloved holographs she collects (they carry the photos and signatures of Eleanor Roosevelt, author P.G. Wodehouse, early American actor Henry Irving). Hundreds of books are crammed into book shelves that wrap around the room (they include volumes on Shakespeare, E.S.P., cookbooks, history, and assorted novels) along with photos of four generations of her family which have been in the American theatre.

"Guy Kibbee (the famous stage and screen actor) was my father's brother. My grandparents were actors. My mother and father were actors. There were four children in our family. I was the only one who followed the theatre."

"My parents were very supportive and delighted that one of the brood wanted to become part of the family profession."

Lois first graced a stage when she was five. "I remember the part with great joy. I played Rip Van Winkle's daughter. I wore the most marvelous costume, a little Dutch cap, wooden shoes, and a country apron dress. I also had lines to say."

She may have loved her role, but there was another part in the production she yearned "My brother got to wear a crepe beard and carry a keg of schnapps on his back. He also got to do pantomime. I thought it was a marvelous character role and felt I could do a better job in it than he."

Lois is delighted that her nephew Alex Zonn will become the fourth generation of the Kibbee family to appear in the American theatre. "That isn't uncommon in the English theatre, but over here there are few families than can match our record.

"Some people have always found something a little raffish or bizarre about the acting profession. As a small child I can remember signs in hotels that said, "No prizefighters, dogs, or actors allowed." Lois pauses for a minute and then blurts out, "I always took umbrage at that billing.

"I always had great respect and pride in what I did. My parents were very strict. We were not theatrical brats. We toured as children and were always taught that the theatre was a very special place. The theatre was a place of business, not somewhere to play with props or costumes.

"I always felt being an actress was the most wonderful thing a person can be. My brothers and sister didn't take to it as I did. When I was four, I used to listen outside the open doorway to shop talk when I should have been in bed.

There were times in school-- I went to dozens of different schools-- when I was met with derision because I was 'the actor's kid.' I would always say with great pride that my father was an actor because I thought it was a wonderful, magical thing to be. Since my father was a wonderful human being, I knew what he did was wonderful."

Before Lois ever stepped before a soap opera camera, she appeared in over 300 plays including The Little Foxes, Virginia Wolfe , A Man For All Seasons , and Auntie Mame .

"I've had great good luck in my acting career, not only on the stage but in television. I have done over 500 performances on daytime." She mulls over the figure, "Of course, when you think of Mary Stuart, (Search For Tomorrow's Joanne Tate) who has played at least 3,000 times, my record isn't that swell.

"I think Geraldine is a marvelous character. She really is one of the most interesting women on daytime television. She isn't one-dimensional. This may sound shocking, but I think my portrayal has made her viable. I don't want that to sound immodest. Henry Slesar, the show's writer, is fantastic. He watches the show every day. If he sees a little mannerism or a piece of business that intrigues him, he'll start using it in the character.

"Writers are like actors; they steal things from the people in the world. We're terrible theives. Any good actor is and any good writer, too. Part of Henry's job is stealing parts of the actors for his characters. He is one of the best robbers in the business, therefore one of the best writers."

Lois readily admits that Geraldine isn't an easy role to play. "I've done a number of things with her. She has to have variety. I can't identify with the things she does. I don't manipulate people. I am much too practical a person for that, but I understand a great deal about her, and playing her is heaven.

"So many times you get stuck with a one-dimensional character and you have to play that. As an ingenue you play a darling, sweet thing; as a leading lady you can do no wrong, you're perfect, you look beautiful, are divine and act like a storybook character. But Geraldine is a woman who is strong, demanding, and used to power. I think that is her big thing-- power, and using it to her own advantage. She isn't an evil woman. She always has the best of intentions, but as they say 'the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.'

"I really think I allow Geraldine's good side to shine through." One letter Lois recently received is a testimonial to that thought. "One woman told me I represented the mother she never had. She placed a picture I sent her on a night table. She would talk to that photo at the end of the day as she would have talked to her mother. I can't tell you how touched I was by that."

Lois answers all her mail except for the ones she brands "the crazies."

For a short period, Lois' life was threatened. "I was going to the drugstore heavily veiled-- I was afraid to go out of my apartment."

"When you are hit over the head with a shopping bag at Bloomingdale's or accosted atop the Empire State Building it is scary."

While she can now offer one of her great good laughs at the Empire State Building, at the time it happened Lois had a bit of a struggle seeing the humor.

"I was with my beautiful grey-haired mother, who was visiting me from California. We decided to be tourists and see all the sights. While Mother and I were standing on the top floor, a very handsome woman suddenly grabbed me and said with a wild look in her eye, 'I hate you.' I thought, we're 102 flights in the air. My mother, who is a marvelous, beautiful, wonderful lady of 5 feet nothing, drew herself up to ten feet and said, 'How dare you address my daughter like that?' Suddenly the woman realized what she had done and we all started to laugh. 'I didn't mean I hate you, I meant I hate what you're doing on television.'

"I said 'thank you,' because that really is the nicest compliment you can receive as an actress. Before we left, she asked if I was like Geraldine. I said, 'I pray to God every night I'm not.' "

As every soap opera viewer and performer knows, there isn't a character who can't be killed off. "At one point," says Lois, "they were considering doing Geraldine in. When you're about to go, our producer, Mr. Nicholson, takes you to lunch. Don't ever accept a luncheon date with Nicholson. The minute he picks up a check you are out of a job," she says with a randy laugh.

"I was very upset over Lucy Martin's departure. For the sake of one sensational half hour they killed off a marvelous character. I'm sure they are sorry after it's done, but then it is too late. Lucy and I are close friends. I love her as an actress and a friend. The day after she was killed off I took one look at the empty dressing room chair and burst out crying. I adore Lucy because she is a great laugher and fantastic actress. Of course, we will still see each other. I am mad for her family, but it is not the same as being on the set together.

"I always thought becoming your character was so much sliced salami, but I guess some people get involved with that. I think it is absurd. I find it posed and pretentious. I've heard of actors putting on the cloak of whatever they are playing, but I've played murderers, pregnant women, queens and junk dealers. I couldn't possible become any of those."

Even if she wanted to, she wouldn't have the time. She walks over to a large desk that is situated by a spacious window. It is laden with a white lauquered French telephone, dozens of sharpened pencils, a typewriter and a manuscript. Picking up the ream of typewritten pages and thumbing through them, she thrusts it forward. "I am working on a self help book with Charles Nelson Reilly (God I adore him), and I have only delivered 20,000 words. I am afraid I will have to lock myself up at my friends' house in the Poconos for a few weekends. It is the only way I can avoid the phone, television, and all the invitations I love to accept."

Lois is truly one of those "when does she catch her breath" sort of people. Besides the book she is working presently, she ghost wrote Christine Jorgensen's autobiography. "We were in a play together. I read her manuscript, and said I didn't like it. When she asked me why I didn't write one, I jokingly told her I would." She co-authored the Bennett Playbill , a book on the famed Bennett acting family, with Joan Bennett.

"In my checkered career I owned a theatre in Texas. I had it for eight years and directed forty-six productions. I adored directing and would do it tomorrow if I could."

At one point, Lois was directing and acting in a production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie , editing her book, and getting future ideas together. "It was the busiest six weeks in my life and I adored it. I love having too much to do and not enough time to do it in. I have been blessed with great good health and inquisitiveness about things. I just have to keep going.

"I think a person has to choose his priorities, find out what the important things are and do them first. Whatever time is left over you can spend it at a Mets game or whatever. When I do loaf, I feel guilty. I think I should be writing, or studying lines or something productive. I forget relaxing can be productive. Sometimes I think it would be great to say, 'let's have a double martini and have a good time.' I do love to laugh and I love to achieve, I simply adore anyone who is a doer. If a person can combine those two things, he has it made."