Seems the doomsayers were right

“The Phil and Sharon Show,” locals called it, and, almost from the start, the marriage of the movie star and the newsman was the stuff of stage and screen.

No one in this insular city could take their eyes off them -- she the bombshell, he the city’s most eligible bachelor -- or ignore the arc of their romance: the Valentine’s Day wedding, the adopted baby, the mansion down the street from Robin Williams, the thing at the zoo with the giant lizard. His new life as celebrity spouse/executive editor of San Francisco’s major newspaper. Her new life as a celebrity civic matron so close and yet so very far from Hollywood.

This week the show ended. After 5 1/2 years of wedlock and months of local speculation and rumor, this city’s “it” couple put out a joint announcement via her New York publicist. The publicist said Stone is living in L.A. “at the moment” while Bronstein remains in San Francisco.

“It is with great sadness that Sharon Stone and Phil Bronstein announce that they have filed for divorce,” said the statement, strategically released in time for the July Fourth weekend, when, presumably, inquiring minds would have better things to do than read celebrity gossip. “We are committed to being great parents and having a friendship as parents.... We intend to keep our son’s happiness as our foremost priority,” the statement said. “Thank you for allowing us to keep this a private family matter.”

In fact, San Francisco being San Francisco, the health of their marriage has been anything but private for years. Every Stone sighting -- with and without her husband, who runs the San Francisco Chronicle -- unleashed fresh rounds of speculation. When a tabloid ran photographs two years ago of him sharing cocktails with a young blond, San Franciscans predicted the marriage would soon be over. They did it again when Stone arranged, disastrously, for Bronstein to visit the cage of a 7-foot Komodo dragon at the Los Angeles Zoo as a Father’s Day present and the reptile bit the editor’s left foot.

It happened again after Stone, 45, suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage -- brain bleeding -- and later told NBC’s Katie Couric that she had had a life-altering near-death experience.

But people who knew them said the real pressures came when Stone returned to work in earnest after having slowed down for several years following the adoption of their son, Roan.

“They live really different lives,” said one San Francisco acquaintance. “He works really hard at the paper, and she was off doing films. In the first years of the marriage, she pretty much took a sabbatical from movies. I don’t know if she wasn’t getting offers or wanted to just be a mom or what, but she took some time off and, I think, realized that wasn’t her gig.”

By March, local socialites were taking note of the events to which Bronstein came without her. When she didn’t join him at San Francisco Film Festival parties, it was assumed that something was wrong. This month, San Francisco magazine ran an item indicating the marriage was over but for the custody agreement, fueling even more gossip in this smallest of big towns.

“She’s a movie star. All she cares about is whether she’s working. Phil’s fine without her,” the magazine quoted a friend of Bronstein as saying.

“Oh, please,” countered a local society woman. “Why’d they ever get married in the first place? Are you really surprised?”