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

After fiddling his way through the first movement of a Brahms concerto in Miami Beach, famed Violinist Isaac Stern, deeply annoyed by an unwanted metronome, insistent and offbeat, stalked off the stage, announcing: "That noise disturbs me. I cannot play with that competition!" His offending accompanist: a cricket that had taken up lodging in a nearby potted palm. After a five-minute search, workmen located the chirper, removed it so that Musician Stern, who had been mopping his brow backstage, could again return as solo soloist.

The University of Notre Dame's Laetare Medal, awarded annually for the past 74 years to outstanding U.S. Roman Catholic laymen, will go this year to ex-Ambassador to Italy Clare Boothe Luce for "her brilliant and singularly versatile career ... in the worlds of diplomacy, politics [Republican Congresswoman from Connecticut], the theater [The Women'], and letters [Europe in the Spring']." In Manhattan Clare Luce got word of the honor while plotting a new play (tentative title: The Little Dipper), all about a kleptomaniac, with Silent Cinemactresses Lillian and Dorothy Gish waiting in the wings for co-starring roles.

Looking bearishly cherubic in his fur-collared greatcoat, Sir Winston Churchill, 82, slowly debarked from a plane at London Airport after a two-month holiday on the French Riviera. His mind decades younger than his body, Sir Winston had busied himself at his easel and a writing desk, where he was completing his History of the English-Speaking Peoples.

Interviewed by a New York World-Telegram and Sunman, plain-spoken Actor Paul (A Hole in the Head) Douglas was quoted as having said: "Now there will always be an audience of slobs for Arthur Godfrey and Ed Sullivan--the slobs who like to be patronized by the kindly big shot." Douglas' corrected version: "What I said was, there will always be an audience for slobs like Arthur Godfrey." On a quick visit to Rome, TV Impresario Sullivan, according to a CBSpokesman, heard the original version and got "very, very mad." Just blown in from an African safari, Impresario Godfrey commented through a frozen smile: "My dear friend Paul better come to a little. He owes a great deal to people, just as I do." Meanwhile, Manhattan's Huckster Row was frothing at the mouth even more than usual over another Douglasism, same interview: "It's now the problem of the eleven-year-old mind on Madison Avenue trying to catch up with its own 13-year-old adult [audience]."

In the Ladies' Home Journal, Newshen Margaret Parton, after a studious survey of some mountains of gold, announced a list of the U.S.'s ten richest men and her estimates of their fortunes: No. 1: Texas' bachelor Wheeler-Dealer Sid W. Richardson, 65, $700 million. No. 2: Aluminum Co. of America's Board Chairman Arthur Vining Davis, 89 and now a bustling Florida realty tycoon, $450 million. No. 3: Ford Motor Co.'s President Henry Ford II, 39, $400 million. Tied for No. 4: Sun Oil Co.'s publicity-shy Board Chairman Joseph Newton Pew Jr., 70, and Avia-tionabob Howard Hughes, 51, $350 million each. No. 5: Texas Oilman Clint ("After the first hundred million, what the heck?") Murchison, 62, $300 million. Tied for No. 6: Pittsburgh's far-visioned Banking Heir Paul Mellon, 49, St. Louis's fun-loving Brewer (Budweiser) August A. ("Gussie") Busch. Jr., 58, and money-pouring Philanthropist John Davison Rockefeller III, 51. In the No. 7 spot and tenth richest: the Coca-Cola Co.'s Director Robert Winthrop Woodruff, 67. What have they in common besides wherewithal? As Writer Parton sees them, few have ever been seriously ill, most have indefatigable "millionaire vitality," most are "loners" and tend to "carry their real-business in their hats." All are said to have "vision" and "an ability to size up men." All but one were "personally trained or taught by their fathers, when they first entered the world of real money." Most of them freely spread their wealth; none is a robber baron.

The bobby-soxers' sideburned golden calf, Dreamboat Groaner Elvis (All Shook Up) Presley, rolled rockily into Chicago for his first visitation there, succeeded in slaughtering some 13,000 of his worshipers in the Stockyards' packed International Amphitheater. Appropriately, The Pelvis was got up in an outfit that could embarrass Liberace--a suit of gold lame and the skin of an unborn calf, plus golden shoes (24-carat coating, claimed his handlers) to match. In an earlier session with dazzled newshounds, Elvis disclosed one of his great personal sorrows: "Ah always wanted sideburns, but Ah cain't grow a mustache."

Wisconsin's Senator Joseph McCarthy temporarily stalled Senate confirmation of the promotion of his onetime whipping boy ("unfit to wear the uniform"), Brigadier General Ralph W. Zwicker, to the temporary two-star rank of major general. Nonetheless, word went out -that the Army, supremely indifferent to Joe's spiteful blockade, plans next month to give Zwicker (already approved by the Senate's Armed Services Committee) command of its 24th Infantry Division in Korea--a job associated with two stars.

Pursuing its quarterly inquiry into "The Art of Fiction," the Paris Review tracked down Author Thornton Wilder, deftly skimmed the top cream of his thoughts. Since William Faulkner is convinced that good whisky is an aid to enticing the muse, could Wilder explain how liquor helps? Replied he: "Many writers have told me that they have built up mnemonic devices to start them off ... Hemingway once told me he sharpened 20 pencils, Willa Gather that she read a passage from the Bible, not from piety . . . but to get in touch with fine prose. My own springboard has always been long walks. I drink a great deal, but I do not associate it with writing."

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