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

Ambassador to Britain Winthrop Aldrich, a conservative banker turned progressive diplomat, decided to have a Washington's Birthday party for the housewarming of his official mansion, a cavernous Regency Park residence given to the U.S. Government by Five & Dime Heiress Barbara Mutton in 1946. Although Aldrich wanted everything "informal," invitations to 330 guests called for "evening dress and decorations," a sure tipoff that royalty would be present. With some 50 Scotland Yardmen and bobbies barring gate-crashers (including all newsmen), the regal parade was led by Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip and Queen Mother Elizabeth. After Aldrich whirled the Queen about the ballroom in a lively foxtrot, some of his countrymen started cutting in on the faintly startled Elizabeth. Protocol soon died an informal death. When the Queen's customary departure hour of midnight came, she stayed on, danced with all cutters-in, wound up having ham and eggs at 3 a.m. London's press next day upbraided Aldrich for his news blackout and the ballroom manners of the crude Americans (observed by an Evening Standard spy). But apparently the Queen had seldom had such a ball. Said one guest: "I've never known the royal family to be so happy."

New Jersey's most eligible bachelor, Democratic Governor Robert Meyner, 46, was vacationing in Delray Beach, Fla. as a house guest of retired Major General Edward C. Rose, former head of New Jersey's department of defense. No nightclubber, Meyner preferred fresh air and sunshine, avoided the wiles of scheming husband-huntresses by bypassing their lairs, spent much time on tennis courts with a purposeful eye on the ball.

In Paris, where the Folies-Bergere ladies wear no blouses and streetwalkers are a major traffic menace, the puritanical elders of the famed Comedie-Franc,aise banned a production of Mrs. Warren's Profession, George Bernard Shaw's play about a British prostitute who at least solicited business in private. Rubbing more salt into the wounded realism of France's Shaworshippers, the Comedieans proclaimed that Mrs. Warren was "amoral," and her saga was "very bad and boring."*

Unwarily voted by the Barbers of America as "the best-groomed newscaster" of 1955: the National Broadcasting Co.'s toupee-crowned Commentator John Cameron Swayze.

In his syndicated column, fast-talking (about 215 words a minute) radio-TV Gossipist Walter Winchell gave an unusually candid explanation of his delivery speed: "The reason I talk fast is that if I talk slowly people will be able to hear what I say and find out how dull and unimportant it really is."

At a masked ball sponsored by the Foreign Press Club in Rome's glittering Mattei Palace, Cinemactress Gina Lollobrigida lifted her mask for a better look at a fur-clad stranger, soon recognized her as U.S. Ambassador to Italy Clare Boothe Luce, fresh from business in Bologna (see EDUCATION). As guest of honor, Gina was proclaimed the "Space Girl of 1954." Translation: she filled more column-inches in foreign publications than any other Italian last year.

At a diplomatic soiree at No. 10 Downing Street, Italy's visiting Foreign Minister Gaetano Martino spotted Prime Minister Winston Churchill lighting a big cigar, ambled over to chat with Sir Winston about his smoking habits. Churchill informed Cigarette Puffer Martino that he has smoked an average of seven cigars a day for 60 years. Then the Prime Minister asked Christopher Soames, his son-in-law and parliamentary private secretary, to reckon Churchill's total consumption over the decades. Soames's king-size calculation: 153,405 cigars, a figure sure to bring Sir Winston close to the honor of being one of the world's most prodigious tobacco users.

To a Chicago Sun-Timeswoman, Cinemactress Grace (The Country Girl) Kelly (TIME, Jan. 31), portrayed in national magazine advertisements as having "a movie star complexion" because she "always uses" Lux toilet soap, fearlessly confided the real secret of her fresh-scrubbed beauty: "Soap never touches my face."

To India's Premier Jawaharlal Nehru, when he turned 65 last November, Red China's Premier Chou En-lai sent a peace-loving neighbor's birthday present, a pair of spotted Chinese deer. The buck and doe were symbolic, Chou pointed out in his presentation message, of the prosperity which the Communists so devoutly hope will soon overtake India's poverty-ridden millions. But Nehru got disturbing news from the deer's keepers last week. Logically penned together in a railed enclosure, China's peace-loving deer had conspicuously failed to coexist. With his little six-inch horns, in fact, the buck had gored the doe to death, was himself ailing from the wounds she gave him before dying.

On a visit to Britain's Maidstone Gaol, the chipper Archbishop of Canterbury heard the prisoners' choir and asked how many of the convicts were former choirboys. "Practically the whole lot of them had been," related he later. Perplexed, he added: "I can't point any moral."

In Hollywood, a pretty singer named Diam Friml, 19, busily exercised her voice in preparing for her movie debut in the second screen version of the vintage operetta, The Vagabond King, first performed in 1925. The accompanist helping her rehearse showed great familiarity with the score. His name: Rudolf Friml, Dian's grandfather, composer of the melodic schmalz, a very youthful Bohemian of 70.

Among France's greatest antiquities are many of the elite members (limit: 40) of the musty, fusty French Academy. One reason why the average Academician's age is 77: candidates for membership must immodestly submit their own written requests for admittance, then avoid a blackballing by aged gentlemen who customarily disdain applicants under 65 as immature.* Last week the biggest news about the jocularly revered Academy was that Author Jean Cocteau, a first-time applicant at an adolescent 63, looked like a shoo-in in this month's election.

* Cried Shaw himself: "In Mrs. Warren's Profession, society . . . is the villain . . . but it does not follow that the people who take offense at it are all champions of society . . . Their credentials cannot be too carefully examined."

* Victor Hugo pounded on the Academy's rusty-hinged door at least seven times before he was let in. A record rejectee: Emile Zola, who fired in some 24 entreaties for admittance, never made it. Last year a mellowing (94) Academician, retired Admiral Marie-Jean-Lucien Lacaze, mistaking a son for the son's father, plumped for admitting Dramatist Ludovic Halevy, who, had he not died in 1908, would have been 120.

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