People, Jul. 11, 1938

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

To Manhattan for the first time in her nine years went Shirley Temple.

Because she “did not fit into the picture of an educational institution,” Fan & Bubble Dancer Sally Rand, who two months ago told Harvard students How to Be Intelligent Though Educated (TIME, May 16), was forbidden by University of Colorado’s President George Norlin to deliver a scheduled lecture on “Art and the Workers” at the University’s summer school. Snapped Lecturer Rand: “I think it is, in poor taste for President Norlin to use me for publicity purposes for himself. He should hire his own press agent as I do.”

In San Francisco, Roy Gardner, imaginative convict just released from Alcatraz, told how two Alcatraz lifers planned to have Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes kidnapped and held until President Roosevelt ordered their release from prison. The plan failed, said Convict Gardner, because Prisoner Al Capone had refused to put up $10,000 pay for the kidnapper. Snorted Capone: “President Roosevelt wouldn’t free anybody if his whole family was snatched.”

In London Countess Barbara Hutton Haugwitz-Reventlow swore out a warrant for her estranged husband’s arrest, when & if he should set foot in England. Her charge: The Count, whom she is trying to divorce in Denmark, had threatened her with bodily harm. The Count, in Paris, ordered his luggage packed, took train and boat to London. Scotland Yard officials politely whisked him to famed old Dickensian Bow Street Police Court, where his lawyer, Norman Birkett, who got the Duchess of Windsor her divorce from Mr. Simpson, asked to have the case postponed. Agreeing, the Chief Magistrate stipulated that: The Count must: 1) not try to see his wife; 2) refrain from toting a gun; 3) post $10,000 bail. Meanwhile, Countess Babs had made their two-year-old Son Lance a ward in Chancery, which will keep him under control of the Lord Chancellor until he is 21.

Two years after Francis Ormond French of Newport, R. I., lost his fortune ($500,000) in a stockmarket crash, he earned publicity and $17 by driving a Manhattan taxicab for three days. In 1934, his elder daughter Ellen married John Jacob Astor III. Two years later Mr. French wrote for Town & Country a so-called expose of top-flight society. Last year he let it be known that DaughterEllen had offered him $25,000 if he would stop writing such things as a proposed book called On the Cuff. He refused the offer, has yet to publish the book. Last August he went into bankruptcy listing among liabilities of $4,907.39 a $1.48 laundry bill. Last January he went out of bankruptcy when creditors failed to press their claims. Last week, while his son-in-law was sporting himselfin Bermuda and his daughter celebrated her fourth wedding anniversary without her husband at the Astors’ big chateau in Newport, Francis Ormond French made formal application for a pick & shovel job with WPA. He explained that he was down to $15. The application was held up. Reason : he had solvent relatives. Result: he received and turned down an invitation to become a Manhattan professional escort, announced he would start work this week as a handyman at a golf driving range.

Ignoring the resignation of G-Man Leon G. Turrou, who quit the Federal Bureau of Investigation to publish his yarn of a German spy ring. Assistant to the Attorney General Joseph B. Keenan dismissed him “with prejudice.” Irked because the dismissal cost him $1,200 vacation pay, Private Citizen Turrou cracked back at his former boss, F. B. I. Director John Edgar Hoover. “He is just sore because he didn’t get to write this stuff. . . . Unlike Mr. Hoover, I decided to step completely out of the service before attempting to write a word for publication. . . . I shall take steps at once to see that these rules about writing are applied equally to all members of the F. B. I., from the lowliest agent to the Director himself.”