LOS ANGELES (AP) -- On June 3, 1955, an ex-prostitute was strapped into a chair at the execution chamber of San Quentin, a black ban over her eyes.

The guard who had escorted the codemmed woman told her to take a good whif of the gas. "It won't hurt," he said. She said, "How the hell do you know?"

Barbara Graham was the last woman to be executed in California.

Actress Lindsay Wagner will portray Miss Graham in the ABC telecast of 'I Want To Live.' It is a remake of Susan Hayward's Academy Award-winning performance in the 1958 movie.

"I was a little concerned about doing the role from the very beginning -- if not from an acting viewpoint then because I saw the character differently than she did," Miss Wagner says. "I saw her as more vulnerable, not that hard cookie. So, my concern is, will people look at it with an objective eye."

Ms. Graham, who was executed for joining two men in the murder of a Burbank widow during an attempted robbery, drew very little outcry when she died. Few believed in her innocence. She was decribed as a hard woman, difficult to take and a person who inspired little sympathy.

But Miss Wagner says those feelings now have changed and questions have been raised regarding her innocence. "Everything automatically takes on a different color," she said. We tried to show more of her life and how she came to be involved.

Don M. Mankiewicz, who recieved an Academy Award nomination as co-author of the original film, wrote the new screenplay with Gordon Cotler.

"I am more convinced than ever that Barbara Graham was innocent" he said. I don't think the present film suggests anymore than the original that she was innocent.

"But Lindsay Wagner does present a much softer image and gives a much more human interpretation than did Susan Hayward. We don't assert her innocence.All we say is that her guilt was not proved.

Mankiewicz said the story was redone because he thought it would be interesting to look at the law as it was in the early '50s.

"We thought it would be interesting to show people today what it was like to be a defendant when you had few rights, he said. "There's no question her life and death reflected a total lack of opportunity for women with no education."

Miss Wagner says she was first offered the part four years ago, after she completed her Emmy Award-winning role in "The Bionic Woman."

"I don't like to do things unless they're going to be benificial to people," she said. "I thought, why do something so devastating?"

"But now there's a new controversy over capital punishment and new evidence has become available about the trial," she said. "We now have a statement by John True, the man who fingered her in court, made prior to the trial. That statement, which was never introduced in the trial, says that another woman, not Barbara Graham, accompanied them the night of the killing."

Miss Wagner says she prepared for the role by talking to people who had known Barbara Graham. She did not look at the 1958 film until she knew how she was going to interpret the part.

"I felt the interpretation was due to the period the film was made in," she said. "At that time there were only two kinds of women in the movies -- good and bad."