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

Douglas Fairbanks paid $66.25 fare for himself, wife, and three friends to fly from Washington to New York, then paid an additional $66.25 for the remaining five seats so his party would not have to share the cabin with strangers.

Chain-publisher Paul Block sold the Newark Bears baseball club to Col. Jacob Ruppert, Manhattan brewer, owner of the New York Yankees.

Theodore Dreiser (An American Tragedy) and a committee of writers belonging to the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners went to bloody Harlan County, Ky. to investigate coal miners' woes. At Pineville rustic detectives said they saw Investigator Dreiser and one Marie Pergain, blonde secretary attached to the party, go into Dreiser's room. The sleuths propped toothpicks against Investigator Dreiser's door. When they came back next morning, they said, the toothpicks were still in place. Investigator Dreiser, 60, and his friend were indicted for adultery. Mr. Dreiser left Kentucky, protested his innocence, backed it with this public announcement: "I am completely and finally impotent." Last week he was also indicted in Kentucky, along with Author John Dos Passes, for criminal syndicalism because of his outspoken sympathy for the miners' cause.

Teams captained by Author Ellis Parker Butler and Sociologist Henry Pratt Fairchild fought to a tie in a spelling bee held in Manhattan's Town Hall Club. Lawyer Henry Waters Taft (brother) was referee. Both captains were eliminated early in the game, Author Butler by "idiosyncrasy," Professor Fairchild by "millennium."

"What is his reputation for truth, honesty & character?" was a question asked of Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd about his friend Charles Victor Bob.

"Very good indeed," replied the Admiral who once named a range of South Polar mountains for generous Promoter Bob.

This testimony was heard by Federal Judge Knox before whom Bob was being tried for alleged fraud in connection with his Metal & Mining Shares, Inc. Promoter Bob contributed $100,000 to the Byrd South Polar Expedition in 1929 when Metal & Mining common stock was selling for $23. Last week the stock was worth 50-c-.

Martha Fall, granddaughter of imprisoned onetime Secretary of Interior Albert Bacon Fall, rejected a cinema contract (proffered because schoolmates had voted her "most beautiful"), got a job as reporter on the El Paso Herald-Post.

In the hall of the Pennsylvania Historical Society in Philadelphia some 200 Biddies assembled to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the arrival in America of William Biddle, who bought a land grant on the shores of the Delaware before William Penn and his colonists arrived. Among the descendants at the celebration was debonair Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle Jr., free on a stay of execution from a jail sentence in Manhattan for refusing to answer questions in the bankruptcy case of Sonora Products Co. In the Philadelphia city directory are 132 Biddies, of whom 70 are in the local social register. Most famed living Biddies: retired Banker Alexander, onetime Boxer Anthony Joseph Drexel Sr., Major Charles J., War ace, Broker Craig Sr., Artist George, Explorer Nicholas.

In Brooklyn, Sidney Franklin (Frumkin), bullfighter, was injured by a child's bicycle. In Mexico City, Col. Carlos Castillo Breton, director of Mexico's aviation school, was gored in an amateur bullfight.

Ill lay: Louise Shoup, 24, daughter of President Paul Shoup of Southern Pacific Railway, in Geneva, Switzerland with injuries suffered when her automobile collided with a street car; Philip Snowden, 67, Britain's Lord Privy Seal, onetime Chancellor of the Exchequer, in London, of a chill; Millicent Hammond, 21, daughter of onetime Ambassador (to Spain) Ogden Haggerty Hammond, at Bernardsville, N. J.. with injuries suffered in a fox-hunting fall; Harrison Walker, 9, grandson of the late President Benjamin Harrison; in Glen Cove, L. I., of infantile paralysis.

Manuel Llano, captain of Mexico's Davis Cup tennis team and runner-up for the Mexican championship, shot himself in an attempt at suicide because he feared he had an incurable disease. He was to have been married this month.

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