Rumored paramours Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie made a golden couple at the North American box office on Sunday as their thriller “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” topped the weekend rankings. Meanwhile, second-weekend ticket sales were disappointing for boxing drama “Cinderella Man,” whose star Russell Crowe was arrested in New York last week after police said he threw a telephone at a hotel clerk.

Overall ticket sales tumbled for a 16th consecutive week. “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” a domestic thriller in which Pitt and Jolie play married assassins ordered to kill each other, earned an estimated $51.1 million in its first three days beginning on Friday, said distributor 20th Century Fox. The News Corp. -owned studio had hoped to do better than $40 million, and the actual number represented career bests for Pitt, Jolie and its director, Doug Liman. The film cost about $110 million to make, Fox said.

A Fox official declined to speculate whether tabloid tales about an off-screen romance between the two actors helped drive sales. of the old TV sitcom, came in at No. 7 with a lowly $5.8 million.

<B>Dean GOODMAN</B>