Names make news. Last week these names made this news:

In Manhattan, reporters for the tabloid Daily News worked in relays to cover the dark-to-dawn activities of Actress Diana Barrymore, which reminded oldtimers of the antics of her late father John Barrymore. Because "my husband bores me," Diana began her evening by pub-crawling with an off-duty policeman ("He has a wife, two children and a Buick and must be nameless"). Returning home after midnight, she found her husband, Robert Wilcox, arguing with another rival named John McNeill ("It went on and on and I kept saying 'Shut up, boys, shut up, don't be so Hemingway-feudal' "). After two fights ("I said, 'Boys, don't kill anyone in the apartment; it would be awfully messy' "), McNeill was carted off to the hospital for scalp repairs. Diana conceded that possibly her husband was in the right (". . . the defiled nest and all that sort of thing, you know") but, even so, ordered him to pack his things and move out. To the reporters she explained that her own black eye had resulted from a domestic tiff four days earlier ("I don't mind being punched. Noel Coward said that women should be struck regularly like a gong and he's right"). In conclusion, she observed thoughtfully,"Women are no damn good."

In Haverford, Pa., Sir Gladwyn Jebb, Britain's U.N. delegate, threw out the first ball in a cricket match between Haverford College and a British embassy team. Sir Gladwyn also revealed that 1) cricket is not as popular as it once was in England, 2) it is abominated in Ireland and Scotland, and 3) he, himself, dislikes cricket intensely. Score of the game: Embassy 81, Haverford 28.

After a bile duct operation at Boston's New England Baptist Hospital, Britain's Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden was reported "reasonably comfortable and in satisfactory condition."

Japanese coal miners tunneling 2,700 feet in the earth looked up in astonishment to see Eleanor Roosevelt on a tour of inspection. She was "surprised to see women working underground."

Dr. James B. Conant, retiring president of Harvard, and his successor, Dr. Nathan M. Pusey, were both in evidence at Cambridge as degrees were awarded to 2,823 seniors and graduating students. Dr. Conant delivered his farewell commencement address: speaking as U.S. High Commissioner for Germany, he expressed the conviction that the European Defense Community would become a reality within a few months. Dr. Pusey, president of Lawrence College, sat with his class of '28, wore the crimson weskit that was the class uniform, but soberly eschewed the blue-and-white class cap. Pusey's class earmarked $10,000 of its $270,000 contributions for a James Bryant Conant-Class of 1928 Scholarship to be awarded "from time to time" either to a foreign student to be brought to Harvard or to a Harvard student to be sent abroad.

In Kansas City, Mo., eight policemen charged up to the fourth floor of the Jackson County Courthouse when a burglar alarm was set off in the locked room housing top-secret documents of the Truman Administration. They closed in on the culprit: Harry S. Truman, who was still fumbling with his keys. Said the ex-President: "I thought I knew how these things worked, but I guess I don't."

In Manhattan, Glamour magazine honored Frances Perkins, onetime (1933-45) Secretary of Labor, for "50 years of service to the working girl."

Gene Tierney, looking unusually tweedy, and impeccably top-hatted Aly Khan were still following the horses. After a three-week vacation at Aly's stud farm in Ireland, they turned up at England's Epsom Downs race course. Object: to root home one of Aly's thoroughbreds.

In Stockholm, Ingrid Bergman received a gold plaque for having made Swedish femininity "beloved around the world."

Party-giving Perle Mesta arrived in Moscow for a visit to the Soviet Union. Asked her profession by a Russian customs inspector, the ex-Minister to Luxembourg replied: "I have none."

Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Benson told Nebraska cattlemen how to eliminate the nation's farm surplus: "One thing we can do ... is to eat our way out of this problem."

In South Africa, Lady Astor indignantly denied rumors that she had married a U.S. Army officer. "A ghastly lie," spluttered Nancy. "Completely unthinkable. Horrible. I'm shocked. I'm insulted. Surely nobody in his right senses believes it. This is going too far."

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