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

It looked by week's end as though Scarlett O'Hara had saved Tara from the carpetbaggers. When strongminded Cinemactress Vivien Leigh violated the slumberous sanctity of Britain's House of Lords (TIME, July 22) to campaign against the projected demolition of London's time-hallowed St. James's Theater, she got a well-bred bounce, but lordly mustaches fluttered in admiration. From a great commoner came stronger support; doughty Sir Winston Churchill grumped, "As a parliamentarian, I cannot approve your disorderly method," nevertheless pledged $1,400 to save the theater, which was to be replaced by an office building. Later, cooing, "Oh, how I do love millionaires; they are full of charm as well as dough," Actress Leigh announced happily that art-oriented A & P Moneybags Huntington Hartford and another tycoon had promised to chip in. Last week the embattled actress got the news that the House of Lords gallantly had voted a stay of demolition to the cramped, outmoded, bomb-battered and much-loved theater (where Charles Dickens first saw his plays produced). Then, with the broadminded blessing of her husband Sir Laurence Olivier ("Leigh often comes to visit us in the country"), she withdrew from the battle for a three-week furlough in Europe's rest areas with her ex-husband Leigh Holman and their 23-year-old daughter.

In Rome, square-jawed Dr. Mirko Skofic, husband, pressagent, business manager and no-nonsense chaperon of Cinemactress Gina Lollobrigida, looked on with satisfaction as Gina held a one-way conversation with their blue-eyed week-old son Mirko Jr. Said Gina wonderingly: "His appetite, it is very big."

While Cinemactress Elizabeth Taylor, who expects a baby in October, convalesced from a near miscarriage (said Hubby Mike Todd: "I know she's getting better; she's starting to scream at me"), Cinemactress Marilyn Monroe, only a few weeks pregnant, was rushed 106 miles from Long Island to a Manhattan hospital. There, while Husband Arthur Miller waited, doctors performed an hour-long operation to end a tubal pregnancy (in which the tiny ovum grows in the Fallopian tube instead of in the uterus). Said Miller afterward: Marilyn felt "as well as could be expected," still planned to have children.

Nattily rigged in a Panama hat, General Douglas MacArthur led his wife and 19-year-old son Arthur (who will be a sophomore at Columbia) 30 blocks from their Manhattan apartment to a hotel ballroom rented by Sperry Rand, the firm he heads as board chairman. There, for an hour and a quarter, Five-Star Taxpayer MacArthur lectured stockholders on the evils of confiscatory taxes: "The present tax structure is probably adequate to socialize the United States. The budget is but the guesswork of a small group of individuals, temporarily gathered in Washington, whose previous training and experience has little to do with the nation's need." As the old soldier thundered on, a small stockholder, Mrs. David Davis, miffed because Sperry Rand had not passed out refreshments ("Other companies give you sandwiches and cold drinks''), stopped him in mid-charge, earned herself some solid-gold applause: "I love my country. I love to pay taxes. And I've waited an hour and 15 minutes to hear about Sperry Rand and dividends." Chairman MacArthur's report: both fat.

Too young at 46 to be urgently in need of one, Composer-Librettist Gian Carlo Menotti (The Consul, The Saint of Bleecker Street) was asked how he would phrase his own obituary. Much moved at the thought of his passing, Menotti ad-libbed a lyric that might be sung to one of his own scores: "Last night while he was having dinner, he suddenly vanished without a whimper, into thin air. A few drops of perfume fell on the table, and a heavenly choir was heard in the distance. As nothing has been heard from him since, we presume that he is dead ... He was a nice man, untidy but gentle, loved by all in spite of his insane desire to be loved by all. He believed in magic. He did not work as hard as he should have. But in spite of the severity of the critics--who generally understand music 50 years after the public--Mr. Menotti's music should be commended for its honesty, simplicity and clarity. Ah, let's see, what else? Oh yes, he died without a penny. No one was especially overjoyed by his death. Pray for him. Amen."

Eager to confer the global franchise upon benighted nationalists in Berlin, leather-jacketed World Citizen Garry Davis fluttered from Canada to Le Havre, drifted into West Germany, got netted at Oebisfelde by East German border guards after he flashed his credentials (his do-it-yourself World Passport 000.001). Bounced back to West German cops, Davis responded with lectures on world citizenship when asked for proper papers, pettishly tore up his passport and mewled, "I don't want to go back to those evil men" when ear-bent cops threatened to toss him back to the border guards Numbed by the nonsense, the lawmen in advertently let Davis flit free long enough to hold a press conference ("German ground is sympathetic to my ideas") bagged him again a few hours later, then nailed him for good after he took off once more. Said an exasperated judge, after a preliminary hearing at Hannover produced another seminar on world citizenship, no passport: "I don't care if you are the Kaiser of China; just show me your papers." Davis offered to write himself out another passport. Muttered the judge, "This man is meschugga [addled]." At week's end Davis moodily read science-fiction while awaiting trial.

Charging that she hollered "This is a clip joint," soused patrons with champagne and walloped one of the owners below the belt when presented with a $137 nightclub bill, a Manhattan hotspot filed suit against sinuous Songbird Eartha Kitt. Revised check: $200,367.

Under the hot-breathed headline MY MAN BENITO, 67-year-old Rachele Mussolini scribbled a smoldering account of life and love with il Duce for Italy's weekly Oggi. They met in Dovia when she was a peasant schoolchild, he a substitute teacher. When she was 19, he stormed into her house with a cocked revolver and a disdain for small talk: "I want you to be the mother of my children. I have six shots ready, one for you and five for me, unless you come." She came, lived out of wedlock with him (they were married some six years later) while he edited a Socialist paper, hawked tips as a waiter ("He was a first-class waiter, fast and always impeccable"). Sighed Rachele: "Those were the best years. He had never learned to shave himself, and I used to shave him every morning."

Trolling tirelessly for support, White House-bent Senator Estes Kefauver switched from coonskins to Tennessee catfish, invited the Senate and the entire Capitol press corps to a fried catfish and hushpuppy lunch. Gimmick: two days later the statesmen and newsbeagles will chomp mountain trout as guests of Colorado's Democratic Senator John A. Carroll, vote to decide which fish is tastier. Not invited to the fish fries "due to the doctrine of separation of power": Trout Fisherman Dwight Eisenhower.

In Illinois' Stateville Penitentiary, 52-year-old Nathan Leopold, convicted 33 years ago with Richard Loeb for the thrill murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks, waited impassively for the decision that could commute his 85-year sentence to 64 years, free him by the year's end with time off for good behavior. When the news came that Illinois' Governor William G. Stratton had refused clemency, the pudgy, ailing onetime child prodigy told reporters, "I stand at the open graveside of my hopes." Later he said he would make a third appeal for parole.

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