Names make news. Last week these names made this news: Her parents announced that Sara Delano Roosevelt, 21, socialite millionheiress and granddaughter of F.D.R., will become the June bride of a Manhattan barber's son. A Bryn Mawr junior, the bride-to-be is the daughter of Jimmie Roosevelt and the former Betsey Gushing, who divorced Roosevelt in 1940 and is now the wife of Financier John Hay ("Jock&") Whitney. The engagement announcement broke the news that Whitney, with the consent of Jimmie Roosevelt, had legally adopted Sara in 1949 to put her in line for the family fortune (reportedly around $50 million). The groom-to-be is Concert Pianist Anthony di Bonaventura, 23, whom Sara met in Philadelphia two years ago while he was a music student at Curtis Institute."Her millions don't impress me," he told reporters. Papa and Mama di Bonaventura, who had already entertained the Whitneys at a lasagna dinner in their East 17th Street flat, reported back from a chauffeur-driven visit to the 900-acre Whitney estate in Manhasset, Long Island: "We just had a good time talking and looking around. All very nice people." Mamie Eisenhower, during Spring Week festivities at Brother-in-Law Milton Eisenhower's Pennsylvania State College, obligingly crowned Madeline Sharp of Herndon, Va. "Miss Penn State" then added a fillip by giving the winner a vigorous bear hug.

Major General William F. Dean, former 24th Infantry Division commander, who got the Medal of Honor in absentia after his capture outside Taejon in 1950, will get some news from Washington to brighten his grey life in prison camp: President Eisenhower nominated Dean (a Regular Army brigadier general with a temporary two-star rank) for permanent major general.

Durable Cinemactress Joan Crawford, doing her first song & dance role in 13 years in MGM's Technicolored Torch Song, struck a barstool pose with her French poodle to give shapely proof that the famed Crawford legs are still worth the price of admission.

The riot squad was called out in Naples to quiet down a mutinous theater audience and remind Crooner Frank Sinatra that the show must go on. Billed to appear with his cinemactress wife Ava Gardner, Frankie had already left a matinee crowd grumbling by showing up without Ava (supposedly ailing in Milan). The excitable evening customers, who had paid $5 to $7.50 for their seats, hooted and hollered when Sinatra -- still solo -- walked off after singing one song. Police restored or der, persuaded him to finish the act.

Baseball's center-fielding DiMaggio dynasty ended when Dominic ("The Little Professor") DiMaggio, 35, fleet, spectacled Boston Red Sox fly hawk (lifetime batting average: .298) announced his voluntary retirement, 13 years after his major-league debut, to join in pasture big brothers Joe (now a television performer) and Vince (now a liquor salesman).

Thrill-Killer Nathan Leopold, 48, serving a life term in Joliet, Ill. prison for teaming with Richard Loeb (knifed to death by a fellow inmate in 1936) in the 1924 Chicago murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks, learned that the parole board had turned down his bid for freedom after 28 years in stir because he "is not the right type of man to go back to society." Told not to apply for parole again until 1965, Leopold, a Phi Beta Kappa who has studied 26 languages in prison, said he was "somewhat disappointed," but could "only accept the decision as gracefully as possible." Five & Dime Heiress Barbara Mutton and German Tennis Ace Baron Gottfried von Cramm, her "dearest friend for years" (notably since her 1951 divorce from her fourth husband, Prince Igor Troubetzkoy), were together again on the Riviera, giving weight to stories that their oft-rumored marriage was finally about to come off. Von Cramm's mother, in fact, had reportedly bustled off to Paris to make the arrangements.

Cinemactress Gene Tierney and Aly Khan (who was divorced last January by Rita Hay worth) were winding up a three-week holiday at his Irish "hiding place"--a 700-acre stud farm outside the tiny village of Kilcullen. Newsmen, dutifully noting the first morning that a maid was pulling the curtains in Gene's room while an electric razor buzzed four windows away, kept close watch but could report nothing more than a circumspect round of sightseeing through the countryside, hand-holding beside a lake, a visit to Dublin's Royal Theater and the prince's victory (his 102nd win as a jockey) in the last race at the Kilbeggan Meeting. While the cheering track crowd shouted, "Good old Alec McCann" (Aly's local nickname), Gene burbled, "Cheri, you were wonderful." The Kilcullen villagers watched the holidaying couple good-humoredly, especially after the prince donated -L-100 to help build a new school. Said one: "He didn't give a cent when he had Rita up here. It's a sign--you would know to look at him that he is happier with this one."

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