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

Mystery Spinner Erie Stanley (The Case of the Glamorous Ghost) Gardner, 68, customarily dictates his thrillers at a rate of up to 10,000 words a day, often working on as many as seven at the same time. Last December the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, reviewing two of them, hinted that such mass production could come only from a factory, implied that A. A. Fair, Gardner's best-known pseudonym, was a real, live ghost. After Gardner's indignant publishers, William Morrow & Co., all but put Lawyer Perry Mason on the case, the newspaper this week politely allowed that it had erred. Just to make sure that its author will not be thus dematerialized again, Morrow has posted a $100,000 reward to anyone proving that Gardner's output is not all his own. Said Morrow's President Thayer Hobson: "It would be worth $100,000 and a lot more just to find someone who can write like Gardner."

Pakistan raised diplomatic eyebrows by putting its money on horsy Playboy Aly Khan as its permanent delegate to the United Nations. Aly's appointment struck some as a consolation prize for his failure to succeed his father as the top (Aga) Khan. A citizen of Iran, he promised to take an "active interest" in his new job.

One of the prettiest campaigners in British politics, twinkle-toed Cinemorsel Moira (The Red Shoes) Shearer, made her maiden speech in Rochdale, England, was rewarded with such hearty applause that she predicted: "I'll be Prime Minister yet!" But Ballerina Shearer plugged for votes "as the candidate's wife and not as a political speaker." Her candidate: Writer and onetime TV Newscaster Ludovic Kennedy, standing for Parliament on the Liberal ticket.

In Philadelphia, not far from the scene of their first battle for the heavyweight boxing crown in 1926, Manassa Mauler Jack Dempsey, 62, and Gentleman Gene Tunney, 60, met again, looking remarkably well-preserved--and strikingly alike. They received plaques from the Brith Sholom lodge for "their notable achievements and outstanding contributions in the sports world and for devoted service to American youth." Pingponging compliments with the man who beat him twice in the ring, well-heeled Manhattan Restaurateur Dempsey turned to Millionaire

Connecticut Businessman Tunney and said: "I'm happy to share this award with Gene--and I'd be just as happy, if need be, to share my last dollar with him."

New York Daily News Capital Columnist Gwen Gibson reconnoitered the Washington front, reported a withdrawal in many quarters. The foremost reducers: Vice President Richard M. Nixon, 164 Ibs. (down 20 Ibs. in a year); Attorney General William P. Rogers, 170 Ibs. (lost ten); New York's Republican Representative Kenneth B. Keating, 155 Ibs. (down ten). Champion slenderizer: Oregon's Democratic Senator Richard L. Neuberger, now a skinny (for his six feet) 163 Ibs.--30 Ibs. less than he weighed about four months ago. --

In keeping with old-line Hollywood etiquette, Gossipist Louella O. Parsons announced formally that the mayor of Palm Desert, Calif, (pop. 3,000), Old Groaner Bing Crosby, 53, and his bride of almost four months, Cinemactress Kathy (Operation Mad Ball) Grant Crosby, 24, are expecting a little wailer in August. Flashed Lolly: "Kathy said that either a girl or a boy would be welcome." The rest of the press caught up with Kathy herself as she filled out an enrollment card at Los Angeles City College, where she will bone up on psychology and sociology while waiting for motherhood.

In San Francisco, Baritone Paul Robeson, 59, the best voice in the U.S. Communist chorus, was about to give his first full-scale U.S. auditorium concert in five years when the Chronicle quoted him as lamenting: "I am sorry now that I quit the concert stage because of politics. I see now that I should have gone on with my work." To some, these words sounded like a contrite solo, but Robeson himself soon drowned them out with the bizarre protest that the capitalist press was maligning him as a nonCommunist. Rumbled Robeson: "These nice people are trying to make me as they want me--to save me from my better self. I have not changed my views in the slightest about anything!" His afterthought: "I must make a speech after I sing."

From Lincoln Isham, a Vermont-based great-grandson of Abraham Lincoln, the Library of Congress got an old family Bible and three Lincoln manuscripts. Among them: a draft of a letter from Lincoln to an Illinois friend concerning the merits of re-electing a Congressman, Richard Yates, later governor of Illinois. The malicious word had spread that Yates had the same weakness that was to create complaints about General Ulysses S. Grant. Wrote Honest Abe, in endorsing Yates: "Other things being equal, I would much prefer a temperate man to an intemperate one. Still, I do not make my vote depend absolutely upon the question of whether a candidate does or does not taste liquor."

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