D/ges/ Digested

Columnist Herb Caen of the San Fran cisco Examiner, who likes nothing better than balancing on the knife edge of propriety, last week passed along to readers a choice item about Cinemactress Ava Gardner. One night, while gambling at Lake Tahoe, said Caen, Ava announced: " 'I want to roll the dice for $1,000.' She picked up the dice and began rubbing them up and down the front of her dress, all the while chanting 'Come seven, come eleven'--and each time she rubbed, her neckline got lower, wow. Finally, she threw the dice hard, shouted, 'There's my eleven!' grabbed her winnings and ran ... As she was disappearing, one croupier turned to the other and asked in a daze: 'Uh--did you see that eleven?' 'No,' said the other softly, his eyes still riveted on Ava's departing shape. 'Didn't you?' "

Caen's column was hardly on the streets when readers began to phone the paper. They pointed out that an almost identical story about an unnamed woman had appeared in the August issue of Reader's Digest. Two days later Caen printed a brief apology for the slip, and sent the magazine a check for $20 to cover reprint rights on the story--the same sum Caen has often been paid for an item by the Digest.

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