Among U.S. newspaper columnists, Leonard Lyons, 47, is the No. 1 name-dropper. Columnist Lyons bears his title proudly, and his chatter about celebrities in his column, "The Lyons Den," syndicated to 74 dailies, earns him $65,000 a year. This week Columnist Lyons explained why name-dropping makes a successful column. "Would you [like me to] tell you about a dinner party for my Uncle Max? . . . Nah, you really don't want to hear about that . . . The basic fact of newspaper life is that if any Uncle Max—unless it's Beerbohm, Beaverbrook or Factor—breaks a leg, it never makes the news columns . . . The appetites of newspaper readers are for the Kings and Stars and Villains and Dog-Biters."
Leonard Lyons, who is as sharp-eyed and lively as a sandpiper, flits in and out of restaurants and nightclubs picking up tidbits on kings, stars, villains and dog-biters. His office files bulge with more than 20,000 of their names from A (Fred Allen, Konrad Adenauer, Dean Achesoh) to Z (Darryl Zanuck, Vera Zorina. Babe Didrikson Zaharias). The names are his cast of characters in anecdotes which are interrupted only by items of news and occasionally "the kind of gossip that doesn't hurt anyone." A typical Lyons anecdote: "I owed the Trumans a dinner, for they had been our hosts on that memorable last night in the White House . . . During the cab ride [to a restaurant], I suggested a private screening of ... Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. He shook his head, glanced at Mrs. Truman's new hairdo, and said: 'Real gentlemen prefer grey hair.' "
The Exhilarating Rounds. Celebrities like to be in Lyons' column as much as he likes to put them there (except for Walter Winchell, with whom he has bitterly feuded in the past few years). He reaches for friendship, shows most people he writes about in a favorable light, and often makes them more amusing than they are. At one time, he was helped in this by his quick-witted, attractive wife Sylvia. Those who appeared in "The Lyons Den" didn't mind if Sylvia's quips were sometimes put in their mouths. Lyons occasionally blunts—or loses completely the point of a story. But most people don't seem to mind, since few people whose stories he tells ever get hurt.