People, Jul. 29, 1974

• Share

"I only know what I read in the paper," said Australian Songwriter Peter Allen, 30, commenting on reports that his wife Liza Minnelli, 28, will marry Movie Producer Jack Haley Jr., 40. Then he signed official divorce papers, saying "When you've been separated longer than you were married, it's time to get a divorce." Peter and Liza were married in 1967 but have lived apart since 1970. He denies that marriage to an ambitious star maimed his own career as a singer. "I found out I was a writer rather than a performer." Now Peter is working on an album of his own songs. "I wanted to call it Overnight Success," he said ironically, "but I've settled on Just Ask Me, I've Been There."

Back home in Sydney for only the second time in 23 years, Australian Soprano Joan Sutherland, 47, wasted no time in exercising a native's prerogative. She criticized the city's flamboyant new $148.5 million opera house that perches on the harbor like a multiwinged gull. "I can see it's too small," said 5 ft. 10 in. Joan before she made her operatic debut there in Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann. "The designer is even making my costumes smaller so the scale is right." Then she added, "What you need now is an opera house." She grew more conciliatory later, after an audience of 1,547 acclaimed La Stupenda rapturously at the opera's end, pelting her with 600 red roses specially sent to chilly Sydney from Holland for the occasion.

He is an improbable easy rider. At San Clemente, the President's press secretary Ron Ziegler, 35, has abandoned his car and makes the 16-mile run between the Western White House and the Laguna Beach press headquarters by Honda CB-360. Ziegler, donning crash helmet and tennis shoes, leaps on the borrowed bike and threads his way through traffic more easily than he picks his way through reporters' questions. To show off his new skills, Ron even gave a demonstration to a posse of reporters on a back road, only to run out of gas and | wheeze to a halt under the unblinking gaze of a herd of Herefords. Said one wry observer: "After Evel Knievel has jumped the Grand Canyon, Ron is going to top his act—he's going to try to jump the credibility gap."

Wake up, America.