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Hay Bolger, who is old enough to be Gower Champion’s father but isn’t, still has more energy at 50 than a barracuda on the end of a fisherman’s line. The very fact that he is 50 will come as a shock to his more juvenile viewers and may serve as a much- needed blessing for men in their thirties whose children consider them hopelessly decrepit. The best of all Scarecrows in “The Wizard of Oz” back in 1939, Bolger today is still at it, working five days a week on his filmed TV show, Where’s Raymond?, and winding up with a frenzied filming session that runs anywhere from 12 to 15 hours. Whereupon Bolger explodes. “Earl Carroll! Now there’s a likely combi¬ nation for you! General of the Army Douglas MacArthur and Earl Car- roll!” He collapses onto a couch in his dressing room, dying with laugh¬ ter. “Ye gods!’’ he pants, “all I wanted was permission to do a show on Goodenough Island and I had to sit and reminisce about Earl Carroll.” Minutes later the man is out on the sound stage, tossing a girl around, leaping through the air like some great whooping crane and lighting only long enough to pay lip service to the law of gravity. Still Dancing At Fifty Bolger’s face is as mobile as his feet. His eyebrows shoot up and down, his chin waggles and his eyes pop in and out. He is a great and enthusi¬ astic storyteller. Like most thorough¬ ly extroverted actors, he can’t tell you the time of day without illustrating the point, changing his voice and ges¬ turing with his hands and arms. “I was in the Pacific, too,” he says. “Saw MacArthur once. Wow-ie! Stood there in his office like a West Point plebe, trying to brace against a wall that wasn’t there.” He braces against a wall that isn’t there. “The general—pardon me, the Gen¬ eral—just sat there staring at some papers and keeping me waiting. Then he looked up, all hearty-like,” (Bol¬ ger looks up, far more heartily than MacArthur ever looked up at any¬ thing) “and boomed out, ‘Well, my boy, and how is my old friend Earl Carroll?’ ” Question: how does he do it? “Most men,” he says, “are active during high school or college, play¬ ing football and baseball and stand¬ ing on their hands to impress some female. But the minute they go to work they quit exercising. Their muscles get soft. And all of a sudden they’re physically old before their time. “I can still dance at 50 for the simple reason that I’ve never stopped dancing. My muscles have never had a chance to slip. I’ve never given ’em time. So who’s old at 50? It’s all a state of mind, anyway.” Ray’s own state of mind has always been strictly youthful. He laughs a great deal. He has been called “the comic spirit” by no less a critic than Gilbert Seldes, and he finds comedy all around him. If he doesn’t, he makes some up. He is never unhap- pier than when unhappy.