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

In a tremulous letter to the New York Times, Playwright Tennessee Williams at last explained the flap surrounding the debut of uptrodden Tallulah Bankhead as downtrodden Blanche Dubois in his A Streetcar Named Desire (TIME, Feb. 13). It was the morning after opening night in Miami, with three weeks to go before Streetcar careened into Manhattan's City Center. Recalled Williams: "She asked me meekly if she had played Blanche better than anyone else had played her. I hope you will forgive me for having answered, 'No, your performance was the worst I have seen.' . . . I never stated publicly, to my sober recollection, that she had ruined my play. What I said was phrased in barroom lingo. I was talking to myself, not to all who would listen, though certainly into my cups." According to Critic Williams, Grand Trouper Bankhead magnificently steered Streetcar back on the track after that. "To me she brought to mind the return of some great matador to the bull ring in Madrid, for the first time after having been almost fatally gored, and facing his most dangerous bull with his finest valor . . . When the play was finished [on its Manhattan opening night] I rushed up to her and fell to my knees at her feet . . . Such an experience in the life of a playwright demands some tribute from him, and this late, awkward confession is my effort to give it."

India's bustling Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru twirled by helicopter to Bombay on a sea hop from the British aircraft carrier Albion, maneuvering with Indian naval units. Before taking off from the Albion, Visitor Nehru looked a trifle apprehensive as a long-legged British admiral fussed with Nehru's "Mae West" lifejacket.

Shortly before twelve one night in Beverly Hills, earthy playwright Clifford (Clash by Night) Odets, 49, foggily piloted his new Lincoln into a parked car. The target vehicle ricocheted a full 45 feet. Odets flew on. Nabbed soon, he was jailed for nine hours, rapped for drunken driving and for evasive action after a collision, sprung next morning on $263 bail.

The oft-kilted chief of Scotland's far-flung Clan Campbell, Ian Douglas Campbell, eleventh Duke of Argyll, came in line for a windfall of at least $140,000 from the estate of a stranger, a London-born lady named Mrs. Eliza Sale, who died last December at 88. The big clue behind Eliza's bequest: her maiden name was Campbell. Glowed the duke, a well-heeled man: "I can only assume that the bequest was made to me as head of the Clan Campbell . . . It was a most admirable attitude for the lady to adopt."

Asked to speak on "The Meaning of Geneva" at Swarthmore College, Alger Hiss, preparing for his first public address since his release from federal prison (TIME, Dec. 6, 1954), had the welcome mat pulled out from under him. His invitation, issued by the Swarthmore chapter of the Students for Democratic Action, was vetoed by S.D.A.'s parent Americans for Democratic Action. Explained an A.D.A. official: ". . . We wouldn't invite convicted gangsters and dope peddlers to address us. We don't see why we should invite a convicted traitor."

As spring skidded around North Carolina, snow-topped Elder Statesman Bernard Baruch breezed down in his private plane for a visit with two old friends, General of the Army George Catlett Marshall and his wife Katherine in Pinehurst, Marshall's haven of retirement.

At the International Topical Stamp Exhibition in Bombay, judges pored over the entries, declared New York's Francis Cardinal Spellman the winner. Title of Philatelist Spellman's picturesque display: "America the Beautiful."

Passing through Los Angeles on his way to Latin America, doughty General Robert E. Wood, 76, "retired" board chairman of Sears, Roebuck & Co., and a right-wing Republican, predicted a business slump if Ike does not stay in the White House. Then he gave a shoving backslap to a Chicago friend: "The Democratic Party today is controlled by its radical wing in the big cities. I know Mr. Stevenson very well. He is a neighbor of mine in Lake Forest. We're all very fond of him. But we do not vote for him."

With the Soviet leaders now openly pledged to retwist Stalin's twisted chronicles of the Bolsheviks (TIME, March 5), Natalia Sedova Trotsky, widow of assassinated (in 1940) Old Bolshevik Leon Trotsky, crept out of limbo in a Mexico City suburb to announce that she has sent two messages to the Kremlin. Her goading requests: 1) Whatever happened to her engineer son Sergei, last heard from in Moscow some 20 years ago? 2) When will the Soviets honestly rewrite the history of denounced "Traitor" Leon Trotsky and of his "deviationist" son Leon Jr., who died mysteriously after an operation in Paris in 1938? It seemed, however, that Mme. Trotsky felt she was challenging Moscow chiefly for the sake of the record. Said she of Khrushchev & Co.: "What can you expect from people who refused to protest either Stalin's theories or his horrible acts so long as he was supreme?"

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