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

The onetime "treasurer" of Al Capone's vice syndicate, aging (68) ex-Public Enemy Jake ("Greasy Thumb")* Guzik, heard that the American Broadcasting Co.'s local TV station in Chicago was cooking up a series on "notorious underworld leaders." Figuring that the description fitted him like a kid glove, Greasy Thumb filed suit to block ABC from giving his life a public airing. Said his petition: "Guzik is not an athlete or actor, not a candidate for public office, has never achieved fame in literature, the arts or sciences, and he has never given his assent to becoming a public figure." Last week, a federal judge smashed Greasy Thumb and his suit. The awful truth: ABC agreed with Guzik that he is no public figure. A network lawyer told the court: "There is no program scheduled that mentions the name of this man. He is tilting at windmills." After that, Greasy Thumb, his vanity deeply wounded, unhappily settled back with his private memories of the syndicate's salad days.

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Like a premature March squall, Tallulah Bankhead blew into Washington, D.C., and set up a noisier commotion than both Houses of Congress combined. Invited by Alabama's Democratic Representative Frank ("Everything's made for love") Boykin to testify on the capital's need for a civic auditorium, Alabamian Bankhead gave her blessing to the project, but begged off from appearing in a Valentine message to "Darling Congressman Boykin." Scrawled she: "Ten a.m. is an unprecedented time for a child of the grease paint to cope with the sandman." Since Tallulah would not go to Capitol Hill, two of the Hill's key prominences went to her. Backstage at the National Theater, after one of her romps through a week's run of the bawdy drawing-room comedy Dear Charles, Tallulah, drowning out the wee, piping yips of her Maltese terrier, thundered "Dahling!" to a couple of "divine people" who had paid her homage after a hellish day in the House (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). Her admirers: Democratic Speaker Sam Rayburn and Republican sometime Speaker Joe Martin, successors to the gavel of Tallulah's daddy, the late Democratic Speaker (1936-40) William B. Bankhead. After pecking each gentleman smudgily on the cheek, she primly explained: "I can't compromise them. They're both bachelors."

Not all of Tallulah's visit in the capital, however, was marked by such sweetness and light wit. Another Washington visitor, Britain's bodkin-tongued Lady Astor, was invited to share a platform with Actress Bankhead as a fellow guest of honor. Nancy Astor replied that she would never appear anywhere with "that perfectly horrible woman . . . I'm repelled by her!" Upon hearing of ex-M.P. Astor's unparliamentary affront, Tallulah snorted: "She probably disapproves of me as much as I do of her, the bitchy old hypocrite!" Urged to tone down her statement, she put on a tragic air and cooed an amendment: "Say that I called her a bitch, dahling."

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In Palm Springs, Calif., Leo ("The Lip") Duroc'her, bellicose manager of the New York Giants, dawdled with a golf club while his neatly fabricated wife, Cinemactress Laraine Day, photographed a sunny scene for their family archives. Durocher's sunny mood and vacation will end next week, when he will be in Phoenix to start spring training, whip the world champion Giants into shape for aiming at their 18th National League pennant.

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Cowboy Cinemactor Gene Autry galloped into Houston recently to whoop up the city's annual livestock show and rodeo. One day between performances, ol' Gene, ever alert to evil deeds on the screen, dozed off in his dressing room. While he snored, two small boys sneaked in, played with his pistols, tramped around in his fancy boots, finally slipped $112 out of Autry's diamond-studded, Texas-Ranger-badge money clip. Collared by cops, the little villains were hustled back to Autry, who awoke to drawl: "Well, I'll be doggone!" How had the lads hornswoggled their hero? Last week the Baptist Pastors Conference of Greater Houston offered a possible explanation in a resolution, proclaiming "their disapproval of the way Gene Autry conducted himself during his stay . . . His drunkenness was a poor example before the boys and girls that admire him greatly." Autry, by then moseying around Kansas, called up one of the preachers to apologize for whooping it up. "I guess you think I'm a reg'lar drunkard," mumbled Autry humbly. "Well, I'm not. I got in with the wrong bunch and before I knew it I got too much."

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Architect Hermann Field, member of the U.S.'s most disappearing family, arrived in London with his wife Kate for a reunion with his sons, Alan, 9, and Hugh, 6. He had not seen them since 1949, when he plunged behind the Iron Curtain to hunt for his missing brother, Noel Field, onetime U.S. State Department official. Soon Noel's wife Herra also vanished. Then another Field was reported missing: Erika, Noel's adopted daughter. Released last October after five years in a Polish prison, Hermann Field spent a month "convalescing" in Poland, then continued resting in Switzerland. According to him, the Poles had misconstrued his efforts in 1939 to help Czechs fleeing from the Nazis "as part of a British-American plan to subvert the postwar Czech regime." Last month, said Field, the apologetic Polish Communists paid him a $50,000 indemnity, plus $1,500 to cover his convalescence bills.

Asked by London newsmen what he now thought of the Reds, onetime Party-Liner Field moaned: "After what I've been through, there is no doubt of my attitude. Their method is not the Dale Carnegie method of making friends and influencing people." Was Noel Field a Communist, as testified by ex-Communist Courier Whittaker [Witness'] Chambers? Said Hermann: "I have never known whether Noel was . . ." Could Hermann explain why Noel and Herta, after doing a five-year stretch in a Hungarian prison, elected last November to stay in "asylum" in Hungary? And what about Erika, last reported to be languishing in a slave-labor camp in arctic Russia? Tearful Hermann Field was "afraid I'm not much help in an explanation of the whole Field case." Suggested he: "People who have not spent the last five years in a cellar are more likely to know the truth than I."

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While washing down Southern fried chicken with orange juice in Charlotte, N.C., torrid Trumpeter Louis ("Satchmo") Armstrong, a blower of wild-valved cadenzas that could never be confused with the strains of Bandleader Guy ("the sweetest music this side of Heaven") Lombardo, double-crossed his own feverish admirers. Between gulps, Satchmo satchmoed: "Lombardo's the greatest. He is relaxin'. He got a good style, and he ain't tryin' to fool nobody. The new cats around now, they ain't provin' nothin'."

* Formerly called "Little Jack," sawed-off (5 ft. 4 in.) Jake was retagged by Hearst newsmen shortly after the death of his brother, Harry ("Greasy Thumb") Guzik, a pimp; originally nicknamed for his habit of wetting his thumb while peeling bills off a horse-choking bankroll.

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