People, Jan. 12, 1931

“Names make news.” Last week the following names made the following news:

Said Blues-Crooner Libby Holman, 24, to a Manhattan newsgatherer: “While a girl’s young and voluptuous she can’t help but be adored. . . . Old age is the problem. Here’s my program. Five more years of the theatre — no more — I’ll play big-time dramatic rôles. Right now I’m coaching for L’Aiglon, and I’m flirting with Camille. In five years I hope to have enough money saved up to give me a sure income of $15,000 a year. I’ll go to France and get a villa. Then I’ll concentrate on the development of my mind. I want to be rich inside. I want at least one great love. Maybe more. But no millionaires. A man who has achieved something in the arts. He must be more than my match in physical vitality and artistic achievements. You can say I haven’t met a soul who qualifies. I’ll have a child — that’s a necessary part of experience. I’ll write stories, novels, poetry. There’ll be a salon like Mme Sévigné’s. … I want the sensitivity and understanding of Katherine Mansfield and the penetration of George Sand. … I want to live to be a smart old witch who rules with an iron sceptre. . . . But one thing is sure, anyhow. I’ll never be crying my heart out over a guy that loves and leaves me. After this ‘blues’ business, I’m positively immune to such silliness.”

Roger Ward Babson applied to the town of Wellesley Hills, Mass, for permission to establish a private cemetery for himself & kin within the grounds of his Babson’s Statistical Organization.

Douglas Fairbanks motored to San Francisco with a large number of guns and cameras great & small. There he planned to embark for the Protectorate of Cambodia in French Indo-China. His purpose: big-game hunting. He said he would call upon the Emperor of Japan, the King of Siam, the native rulers of Rajputana and Baroda.

The family chauffeur bundled Adolphus Busch Orthwein, 13, grandson of President August A. Busch of Anheuser-Busch, Inc., into a limousine and started for a family party at the grandfather’s house. As the car neared the highway entrance to the Percy J. Orthwein estate at Huntleigh Village, St. Louis suburb, a Negro jumped out of the shrubbery, brandished a revolver, ousted the chauffeur. Negro, child and limousine disappeared in the distance. The chauffeur hurried back afoot to spread the alarm.

Next day Father Orthwein received a call from one Pearl Abernathy, Negro realtor, who said: “I know where your son is, and I will trade you your boy for mine.” Pearl was the father of the kidnapper, Charles Abernathy, 28, himself father of seven children.

Cried Mr. Orthwein: “For God’s sake, is he alive?”

“I don’t know,” said the Negro, “but if your boy is dead, I vow to kill mine in your presence.”

Mr. Orthwein having agreed not to prosecute Charles Abernathy, both sons returned from a distant house. But local police, no party to the agreement, arrested Pearl Abernathy, sought Charles Abernathy, who fled.

Famed comedian James (“Jimmy”)

Durante was lately seen on the stage (in The New Yorkers) by his father, Bar-thelomo Durante, 81, for the first time. Last week Critic Bide Dudley reported this after-the-show conversation between father & son:

Jimmy: Well, Pop, how did you like my work?

Barthelomo (shifting his cud of tobacco) : Listen son. Les’ not get in an argument.

Said Capt. Thomas Jefferson Jackson

See, U. S. N. retired, of San Francisco, onetime senior officer of the Mathematics Corps: “[Dr. Albert] Einstein is neither astronomer, mathematician, nor physicist.”

William Ashley (“Billy”) Sunday

told a group of newshawks: “If I were God I would have come down and cuffed that man [Sinclair] Lewis — he’d never have gone to Stockholm to collect that Nobel award!” Observers suspected that if Evangelist Sunday were God he would have cuffed Author Lewis much more severely on the occasion of his defying the Deity from the pulpit of a church (TIME, May 3, 1926).