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

In the New York Journal-American, name-dropping Elsa Maxwell threw together a last-minute obituary of that "fabulous countess," the late, madcap Countess Dorothy (Taylor) di Frasso, just to "keep her alive in a funny little way." Although Elsa claims that the countess "never confided in her women friends." friend Maxwell recalled a heap of confidential items on Dorothy's "life and loves." Wrote Elsa: "The two great loves of her life were Gary Cooper and . . . Benjamin ("Bugsy") Siegel of Murder, Inc. . . . who was liquidated in 1947 by ... his organization." When Gary first drawled howdy over a phone to the countess in Rome, he sounded "awfully nice." and she told him: "Go straight to the Villa Madama, my house [where Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Mary Pickford later broke up]. You will be more comfortable there." Gary never had it so good: the countess "ordered him dozens of suits." Once, relates Elsa, the countess went to Mexico, "not to meet King Carol, whom she knew well, or Madame Lupescu, who were living there, but in search of a gold mine." Dorothy never found it. but she was always hankering to parlay her $12 million inheritance into a greater fortune. She and Bugsy once tried to peddle an explosive, which "had almost the same power that the atom bomb had," to tbe Italian government. Like most of the countess' get-richer-quick schemes, Bugsy's bomb, "when the test came . . . merely went off 'pouf.' " At one of Dorothy's Hollywood parties, Elsa and Dorothy hung a Dictaphone near Actor John Barrymore when he was upbraiding his protegee, Elaine Barrie. The playback proved "more censorable than any sequence from a Jane Russell or Anna Magnani movie." The only time Elsa and the countess ever fought came when Elsa invited Noel Coward, whom Dorothy disliked, to a party and later "we both flew at each other like wildcats." But the countess will always be remembered by Elsa as the "great broncobuster of the banal, bathos, pathos and hypocrisy--that makes up what we call modern society." From Manhattan. Eleanor Holm Rose, estranged wife of Showman Billy Rose, flew off to Nevada, where by lingering for six weeks prior to April 10 she can divorce Billy, thus qualify for a settlement jackpot of $30,000-a-year alimony, plus a $200,000 bonus.

The Philippines' President Ramon Magsaysay, in office only two weeks, soon regretted his glowing invitation to Filipinos, extended in his inaugural speech, to telegraph complaints directly to the President. From all over the islands, thousands of long wires of woe crackled into Manila. Hastily, Magsaysay trimmed down his generosity: henceforth, though they may still be sent free, telegrams must wail in 50 words or less.

Composer Richard Rodgers, a sight in tights, and Lyricist Oscar Hammerstem II, looking like a surrey with a fringe on the bottom, turned up in a mock audition skit at a party celebrating the closing, after nearly five years and 1,925 performances, of their famed Broad way musical South Pacific. Still the long-run champion of all musicals: Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma! with 2,246 performances.

While washing a glass jar in her kitchen, Nancy Williams, wife of Michigan's wealthy Governor G. Mennen ("Soapy") Williams, let it slip, slashed her right wrist, was laid up in a Lansing hospital after emergency treatment.

Millionairess Barbara Hutton and her fifth groom, Porfirio Rubirosa, emerged from their bridal suite in a Manhattan hotel and limousined to an airport, where Babs, in a wheelchair because of her broken ankle, was hauled up into a chartered (for $4,500) Super-Constellation, flown to Florida amidst 84 vacant seats.

Old (84) Travelecturer Burton Holmes announced that he will take "one last look" at Europe this summer. But he groused: "I know I won't like it, because Americans have ruined travel."

Although his widely hailed speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Red atrocities in the Korean war (TIME. Nov. 2) clearly marked him as something of a statesman, Dr. Charles W. Mayo de cided that he still prefers medicine to politics. He withdrew his name as a G.O.P. candidate to run against Minne sota's Senator Hubert Humphrey, who will try for re-election this fall.

Returning from her native Scotland to the U.S. to lecture on her long operatic career, Mary Garden, 76, a top soprano in opera's Golden Age, squelched a Hollywood proposal for a screen biography of herself. Snorted Mary: "None of those dumb blondes can play me."

Concert Cellist Grego Piatigorsky flew from his Los Angeles home to New York City for a happy reunion. At Idlewild International Airport, he greeted his mother-in-law, Baroness Germaine de Rothschild, who had brought him one of his dearest possessions, long despaired of as lost forever. In the Baroness' luggage: a $90,000 Stradivarius cello, fashioned by the master in 1712, which Piatigorsky left during World War II in the Rothschilds' Paris mansion, later looted by the Nazis.

The old instrument had fallen into the hands of a German violinmaker, who, suspecting that his bargain buy was actually Piatigorsky's famed cello, wrote to the musician about it.

The Emperor of Japan made his annual excursion into poesy, this year on the general subject of "the forest." While his effort lost rhyme and lilt in English translation, his verse was hailed throughout the length and breadth of Nippon as first-rate. Emperor Hirohito's lay:

In a soft, faint glow The day begins to glimmer Over calm, unstirred Groves of trees at Nasuno With the voices of the bird.

President Eisenhower and his wellshod wife Mamie were lauded by the trade journal Leather and Shoes as ranking "among the most shoe-conscious folks ever to occupy the White House." Added L & S: "No one can ever expect to find [Ike] with a hole in his shoe, as happened to Adlai Stevenson."

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