RONA GOES LAVENDER.

RONA BARRETT, THE FORMER QUEEN OF HOLLYWOOD GOSSIP, NOW RULES OVER A FIELD OF LAVENDER THAT SHE'S PUTTING TO WORK FOR CHARITY

It was perfect timing. As I made the two-hour-plus trek from Los Angeles to Rona Barrett's Luvland Ranch--nestled near the end of a dirt road in the rolling hills of Santa Ynez, just inland from Santa Barbara--the media had just gone through another wave of speculation about the breakup of Hollywood uber-couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman and that mysterious miscarriage. It's an undying story that trails along with it a lot of unsubstantiated gay gossip, and it's one that I imagine Barrett--who broke the news of Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon's divorce--would have loved to cover.

"Every once in a while there's a big story that comes along--not often," says Barrett, who left the celeb news biz in 1991. "I would have loved to have been there for the O.J. Simpson stuff." But finally, with her tiny hands linked on the solid oak dining room table of her sprawling log cabin-like home, she shakes her famous highlighted head. Not even Tom and Nicole could pull her back in. "I'm in a second career," she says, laughing. A second act, maybe? "It's a very good second act, and it may go into a third act."

Today, the petite Barrett, who helped pioneer what we now call entertainment journalism in print and on TV, is an organic farmer, the CEO of a beauty and food products company called the Rona Barrett Lavender Company--and no longer charmed by the lights of Tinseltown. "I can't begin to tell you what a wonderful life I have," she says. "I can't think of giving this up and going back into Hollywood. I just can't."

After over 40 years, Barrett gave up on Hollywood marriages and divorces, crunching box-office numbers, and celebrity profiles for a more noble pursuit. On her ranch she grows lavender, a cash crop that in part funds the Rona Barrett Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports senior citizens in need. Naturally, she took her cue from the celebs she once reported on. "I wanted to find a crop I could grow to make a line of products, like Paul Newman, that would support a charity or foundation," says Barrett, 64. "No one thought that lavender could be made into food."

Luvland now boasts five acres of lavender plants, making it one of the largest commercial lavender farms in the country, and Barrett has plans--and the room--to plant many more. The product line, Lavender by Rona Barrett, already includes beauty and skin care products and a host of lavender-enhanced foodstuffs such as salad dressing, cooking spices, tea, honey mustard, applesauce, and mayonnaise. She has ideas for at least 20 more items, plus a lavender cookbook.

Barrett's first act began when she left her hometown, New York City, for Los Angeles in the late 1950s, just as contract, players were being let go and film studios were losing their exalted, untouchable status as conglomerate, theater-owning monsters. Always a self-starter, Barrett soon became a fixture on the Hollywood circuit by running a stable of star rags under her name (Rona Barrett's Hollywood, Rona Barrett's Preview, and Rona Barrett's Daytimers) through the '60s and '70s before helping to launch ABC's Good Morning America in 1975.

By then, gay-spun gossip--true or not--often made for the biggest stories. Barrett rehabilitated Burt Reynolds in the press in the 1980s, when rumors about AIDS and his sexuality nearly ruined his career, by asking the tough, taboo questions--although she wouldn't out Rock Hudson. "I just don't believe in it," she says. "I think it's wrong. A person is entitled to some degree of privacy in that part of his or her life."

They may have called her a gossip columnist (Carol Burnett parodied her as Rona Rumor)--"I think that if a man had been doing what I was really doing, they'd call him a columnist"--but she helped turn gossip into news, opening the door for People, Entertainment Tonight, and, of course, the E! Entertainment Network (where I work).

Barrett left when the "business" overshadowed the "show"--and certain subjects were suddenly off-limits. "I could not be the kind of reporter or interviewer I wanted to be because the executives at various networks were more or less ball-less wonders," she says flatly. "As long as you didn't make a wave, they'd handle you. Besides, I was beginning to ask stars a lot of questions I already knew the answers to, and I always prided myself at being on the cutting edge all the time. So I said, `Time for a new life.'" And she found it out here among the lavender bushes, her dogs, a pair of buffalo, and a baby grand piano covered in framed memories. There's Rona with Alfred Hitchcock. There she is with John Wayne. There are photos of her renewing her vows with her husband of 28 years, William Trowbridge, with Bo and John Derek among the guests. "She's so beautiful," Rona sighs.

Just before I climb into my car for the long ride back to less civilized country, Rona turns the tables on me. "So, just what are you going to write about?" she asks with a sly smile, arching her brow. She knows better and so do I, but I indulge her anyway.

"They want to know why you left Hollywood," I say.

"I left because Mae West left," she says. She laughs to herself, adding, "As Walter Cronkite once said, `Every once in a while I feel like a fireman. I hear the bells ringing and I put on my slicker and I put on my hat and I race down the fire pole and I open up the front door and I suddenly realize I no longer have a fire engine.'" She shrugs. "And that's pretty much the way I feel."

Jones writers Movie Scoop for E! Online. Find a link at www.advocate.com.