Solitude, Sweet Solitude

Ava Gardner and her ex-husband Frank Sinatra, separately or in pair, have never stood high on the State Department's list of good-will ambassadors. That, as they make clear, is not what they are hired for. Last week Ava and Frankie were in Australia, she on location for her movie On the Beach, he for a concert engagement. Yet even their well-known aversion to crowds and the press could not keep the Aussies at a distance. The result was something special, even by Hollywood standards.

What got everybody burned up for fair was Ava's refusal to show up at two scheduled press conferences; then she irritated photographers by rarely appearing in public without a newspaper or purse to hide her pretty face. In answer, the papers served up juicy stories of a roaring party in Melbourne, Ava's bitter argument over her hotel room: it was newly decorated, but she insisted that it be done again with expensive English wallpaper. So sore was the Melbourne Truth (circ. 120.000) that it printed a shot of Ava emerging from the surf bedraggled and clutching at her bikini. Headlined the Truth: AVA ALL WET.

The battle was only starting. In Sydney a daily Sun reporter charged that he had walked up to Ava at a local pub and got a drink of champagne in his face, and the glass with it. Said he: "As I stood there dripping amid shattered glass, she gave me her views on the press in gutter language running mostly to fundamental four-letter words." Newsmen reported that she expressed the same views in roughly the same terms about the city of Melbourne to a nonplused officer of the aircraft carrier Melbourne, lent to the moviemakers by the Australian navy.

Frankie's arrival was the capper. He snarled "Nothing to say" to reporters greeting him at the airport, threatened (his weight: 140 Ibs.) a photographer at the Melbourne Stadium, where he appeared: "Take another picture and I'll ram that camera down your throat. You stink." Cried the Sydney Daily Telegraph: "Frankie plays hard to get--but who wants him?" The answer, obviously, was Ava; she haunted his dressing room at the stadium, a front-row seat when he sang "Why not take all of me?" and his suite at his hotel. But bodyguards were always outside to intimidate rubbernecks. When Frankie flew into Sydney, some 1,000 fans turned out to cheer; when he left last week, there were nine.

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