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

Radio Chitchatter Sloan Simpson, estranged wife of Expatriate William O'Dwyer, onetime mayor of New York City and later U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, was back on her old Manhattan stamping grounds, showed up for a midnight movie premiere looking as if she were the town's First Lady all over again.

In Egypt, where brides are supposed to get dowries from their grooms, former Queen Narriman's mother charged that deposed King Farouk welched on his traditional Moslem obligation. Narriman's mother, suing as the ex-Queen's guardian, claimed that Farouk never anted up a piaster of the $28,700 he owed. Meanwhile, Farouk was having mouthpiece trouble: a Cairo court, with Narriman's divorce suit on its docket, refused to hear Farouk's Syrian lawyer, who finally dug up an Egyptian attorney who was willing to plead the porcine playboy's case.

Decked out in a decorous black tailored suit with lace cuffs, Christine (ne George) Jorgensen, a year after the news broke of the "sex conversion" in Copenhagen, let the world in on two secrets hitherto kept under wraps. The Jorgensen measurements (made by Christine's own tape): height, 5 ft. 6 1/2 in.; weight, 115 Ibs.; bust, 34 in.; waist, 25 in.; hips, 36 in. Christine's favorite man: Sexpert Dr. Alfred C. (Sexual Behavior in the Human Female) Kinsey. Said Christine: "He proved that a lot of things that we think abnormal are really very normal. Dr. Kinsey can't help me or hurt me, but he's a marvelous man."

Cinemactress Terry (Beneath the 12-Mile Reef) Moore, whose widely publicized ermine bathing suit was vetoed by U.S.O. officials as a menace to the cease fire agreement in Korea, showed up wearing standard G.I. winter clothing instead. For her performance, she switched to an ermine cape, then suddenly, while some 1,000 troops shouted approval, she undraped herself to reveal the brief, two-piece fur suit. Next day, orders came by way of Tokyo for Terry to leave Korea on the first plane out of Seoul. Later Terry got permission to stay, provided she stuck to the script and skipped the goose pimples. Sighed the U.S.O. unit manager: "Everything is all right now, since she is not doing a strip."

Hedgehopping and jeeping around Korea on his third straight Christmas tour there, tireless Francis Cardinal Spellman, 64, went from outfit to outfit, held services, shook hands with troops of many faiths. Speaking to some 800 men of one regiment, the cardinal said: "American soldiers have taught me better than I could have learned in any other way what America means to me."

In London, Princess Margaret, who usually plays the field in picking her escorts, excited Mayfair society by dating Mark Bonham-Carter, British army hero of World War II, three evenings in a row. What intrigued the self-appointed matchmakers even more was the tune which, by request, a cabaret singer kept repeating: Let's Do It ("Let's fall in love"). On a later evening, Margaret deserted Mark to attend a benefit ice show at London's Empress Hall, was snapped by a photographer as she entered, smiling but without escort.

From Moscow came news that Mrs. Charles E. Bohlen, wife of the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, had taken two other ladies of the American embassy in tow and dropped in for tea with Mrs. Vyacheslav M. Molotov, wife of the Soviet Union's teetering (see INTERNATIONAL) Foreign Minister.

In Hollywood, preparing for a Las Vegas nightclub act with her sisters Eva and Zsa Zsa, Magda Gabor let down her red hair a trifle and debunked the glamour life: "We are hard-working career girls--an American success story. We're really hausfraus, and we can cook and press our own dresses and keep house . . . Do you think we like everybody making fun of us, all about rich husbands and diamonds? They don't know it's all been hard work."

William Clark, the State Department's sit-down judge (TIME, Dec. 14) and Chief Justice of U.S. courts in West Germany, was struck a mortal diplomatic blow, sure to budge him from the bench. Vacationing in the Canary Islands, Clark, who had vowed he would sit tight even though his commission expires this month, was suddenly telephoned by Robert D. Hale, U.S. Consul General in Madrid. The threat, on Washington's orders: Clark had to hand in his diplomatic passport or face arrest for his obstinacy. He capitulated, gave Hale the credentials, got in return a new passport, which will expire Jan. 28. In an outraged huff, Clark announced that he would soon sail to the U.S. from France, pay his own way home. He said he would hold his explosion "until I put my feet on free American soil."

U.S. Communist Author Howard (Citizen Tom Paine, Freedom Road) Fast, seven of whose books were taken off U.S. overseas-library shelves last year, was awarded a Stalin Peace Prize (value: about $25,000, taxfree) for "helping to strengthen the cause of peace between the peoples." "Surprised and bewildered," Author Fast observed that it was "the highest honor that can be conferred on any person in these times," and that he hoped "this award will contribute further to the struggle for peace."

At a Hollywood premiere, Lana Turner, whose fourth husband, Cinemactor Lex ("Tarzan") Barker, likes her as a brunette, looked happy as a turtledove, although their marriage, which took place in Italy, was all of 3 1/2 months old. Just to prove that this match is forever, Lana and Lex were married again on Christmas Eve for the benefit of her mother, her attorney and her daughter Cheryl, 10, who had all missed the earlier ceremony.

Former Vice President Alben Berkley admitted to reporters that he is "toying with the idea" of adding his political reminiscences to the growing library of New Deal memoirs. Pressed for details, Barkley, a hale & hearty 74, confessed that he had never kept a diary, but he had "a good memory," and besides, "some people write down a lot of things they later wish they hadn't."

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