Names make news. Last week these names made this news:
In Manhattan's Hotel St. Regis, Emily Post, an alert 81, received the press for lunch to celebrate the ninth edition and 82nd printing of her long-distance bestseller, Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage. As reporters dawdled over cocktails, the arbiter of proper behavior cried: "I'm hungry. Where's the food?" She stoutly maintained, "Good manners have not declined," nonchalantly pontificated, "The essence of good manners consists in putting people at ease." Like its author, Etiquette has mellowed since it first went to press in 1922. A Post host of today, unlike those in earlier versions, no longer need feel remiss for not providing a hook for a guest's razor strop and a sign announcing, "If there is not enough hot water, please ring three times." As for the ladies, the post-1920's Post concedes that it is no longer incorrect to dine alone with a gentleman in his apartment, but cautions: "You should leave before ten . . . past midnight is too late for a well-behaved young woman to be leaving bachelor flats—or even two young women together."
In Hollywood, Bela Lugosi, who once spooked moviegoers as Dracula and assorted fiends and zombie doctors, was sent to a state hospital as a drug addict. Now 72, and looking as poorly as any makeup man ever painted him. Lugosi asked to be committed, admitting he had been using narcotics for 20 years. "I don't have a dime left," he said. "I am dependent on my friends for food."
Passing through Rome on a business safari to Africa, Democrat Adlai Stevenson taxied up to Premier Mario Scelba's villa to lunch with U.S. Ambassador Clare Boothe Luce and the Italian Premier, then flew for a three-week trip through Kenya, the Sudan, Uganda and Southern Rhodesia.
Spry old (86) Bernarr ("Body Love") Macfadden, down to the butt end of a multimillion-dollar fortune built on bared chests and flexed muscles, was bounced into a Jersey City jail by his estranged third wife for nonpayment of $9,000 in alimony and legal fees. Macfadden protested that being cooped up in jail would make him ill. Scoffed blonde, elegant 49-year-old Mrs. Macfadden No. 3: "Go on, he'll outlive us all." Grumbling that his income has dwindled to only $2,000 a month. Macfadden finally put up $10,000 bail, emerged from jail with a bit of philosophy as old but not nearly as bouncy as he was: "Some women are wonderful, and some are she-devils. What are you going to do? You can't do with them, you can't do without them."
A dispatch from Washington, where the American Society of Newspaper Editors was in annual convention, notified the Kansas City Star and its readers that the Star's 68-year-old president, Roy A. Roberts, whose wife died three years ago, had become engaged to marry Mrs. Charles G. Ross, widow of the presidential press secretary to Harry Truman.