Spectacle and publics: Ava Gardner in Australia 1959

Ava Gardner’s famous line about Melbourne being the right place to film a story about the end of the world was part of the spectacle created by the print media to capitalise on her presence here to film, On the Beach in 1959. Gardner’s refusal to appear in public created different responses from the Australian print media the most interesting of which was Melbourne’s The Truth. With the help of a fledgling paparazzi, Truth used Gardner’s non-appearance to create a fictitious image of her which was mediated to create extremes of public opinion in order to generate sales. This paper examines The Truth ’s response to Gardner in the context of the creation and manipulation of public spectacle.