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As she strode to the witness box, she might have hoped that her longtime musical director, John McDaniel, would bang out Everything's Comin' Up Rosie on an upright piano. She might have wanted to pass out free Taboo T shirts to the standing-room-only crowd. It might have helped if the star she called "my Tommy" — Cruise, not Selleck — were there to say what a wonderful person Rosie O'Donnell is.

But this was not Broadway, where she played feisty, fun-loving Betty Rizzo in a Grease revival. This was not her G-rated TV chat show, which ran for six years and won her the sobriquet the Queen of Nice from Newsweek. This was New York State Supreme Court, and last week O'Donnell was testifying as the defendant in a $100 million suit brought by Gruner+Jahr USA, publisher of the short-lived monthly Rosie. The charge, as articulated by G+J CEO Daniel Brewster Jr.: she "walked away from her obligations" after a battle over editorial control of the magazine. O'Donnell has countersued for $125 million, charging that, by cutting her out of key decisions, G+J violated the contract.

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O'Donnell is the underdog in this battle, since she has admitted she never read the contract she is contesting (which gave Brewster veto power over her decisions). But beyond the legal dispute is a conundrum about the nature of fame. What is that fragile commodity called celebrity? Who is "Rosie"?

Back in 2000, when it signed the deal, the publisher bought the public Rosie: the cuddly, funny, blue-collar Long Island girl who mother-henned the world, gave lavishly to charity, acted like a star-struck kid meeting her idols — and like Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart, had a daily TV show to promote herself and her magazine activities. What they got, two years later, was a new Rosie: a heftier, more assertive, left-wing, out-of-the-closet lesbian — with no show.

On the stand, O'Donnell said Brewster had asked her, "Are you going to be a controlling bitch like Martha and Oprah?" and she replied, "Martha and Oprah are pretty successful controlling bitches, don't you think?" But Oprah gave women a vision of how to be better; Stewart gave them advice on how to get it done prettier and more tastily. The new Rosie — out, stout and lout — was chancier as an icon for mainstream moms.

Tales of O'Donnell's taut temper and bossy style — later reported in rancorous rehearsals for the Broadway version she is producing of the Boy George musical Taboo, scheduled to open this week — went public, further diminishing her likability quotient. Her LQ suffered another jolt last week when Cindy Spengler, G+J's chief marketing officer, testified that O'Donnell had called her a liar and added, "Liars get cancer." (Spengler is a breast-cancer survivor; Rosie later confirmed and apologized for the slur.) By the end, G+J had to be wondering, Why didn't we just start a magazine called Leona?

So O'Donnell had a complex role to play when it was her turn to testify. She began jauntily, saying she had launched "a full-figured Rosie doll with thighs twice as big as Barbie's." Judge Ira Gammerman, who kept Woody Allen from getting too hilarious in a civil suit last year, and whom court watchers call the Director, admonished O'Donnell to "try not to editorialize."

Her lawyers no doubt counseled her to play to the judge; this is not a jury trial. But O'Donnell has a double agenda: to win the case and to charm, amuse and bulldoze the largest audience she has had since her show went off the air. Nonetheless, she took direction well and bore up under a stern cross-examination, never sniping or exploding. Briefly, she dabbed her eyes — less Betty Rizzo, more Camille. It was a Tony-worthy, possibly career-saving performance.

Thursday night, after a hard day in court, O'Donnell was on a more congenial stage — at Broadway's Plymouth Theater, to introduce the glittery, tres gay Taboo. "I don't know if you heard," she deadpanned, "but I have this little court case ..." From a front row, Donny Osmond bounded up, hugged her and proclaimed, "We love you, we support you, and we wish you all the best." For a moment, the years and tears dissolved into a time when Rosie O'Donnell was America's favorite big sister.

• Richard Corliss