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

Once upon a time a multimillionaire banker named H. (for Harmon) Spencer Auguste told his old friend, former Heavyweight Champion Jack Dempsey, that if Auguste were to die, Jack should take care of his handsome widow, Mrs. Estelle Auguste. When Auguste died four years ago at 74, Estelle, who has frequently been picked as one of the world's ten best-dressed women, inherited a reported $35 million. What Spencer Auguste had not foreseen, however, was that lots of men would find Estelle attractive, thus infringing on Jack's assignment. Only last week, for example, Estelle, 42. got from Germany an urgent cable from husky Cinemactor Kirk (Champion) Douglas, 37, who before his screen career had been a wrestler. Kirk, who met Estelle in Europe last summer, begged her not to get engaged to anybody until he returned to the U.S. on Dec. 15. But suddenly Estelle, "too nervous to have a long engagement," crossed up everybody by announcing in Manhattan that some time before Christmas she would marry Dempsey, 54, "a real he-man." Jack allowed that Estelle ("a wonderful girl") would become his fourth wife. Then Estelle let Jack in on a little surprise: she planned to invite Douglas to visit them during their honeymoon in Palm Beach at Christmastime. It was "only a friendly gesture [to] a nice fellow." In the old-fashioned belief that honeymoons are for two, Dempsey, clutching some candles which had been sent for the wedding, walked out of Estelle's life. Philosophically, Estelle decided: "He is he, and I am I." Next morning she took a plane to Florida. She did not tell Jack that she was leaving, because Jack, at his own hotel, had left word that he was very tired and wanted to sleep until 10 o'clock.

After eight years of putting up with aging (72) Painter Pablo Picasso, his peace doves and his two-faced doodlings, Fellow Artist Franc,oise Gillot abandoned the master at his studio on the Riviera, bundled herself and their two children, Claude, 6, and Paloma, 4, back to Paris. Said she: "I was tired of living with a historical monument."

In Cairo, a spry cousin of Egypt's ex-King Farouk, former Nobleman Abbas Halim, digressed slightly while trying to prove to a revolutionary court that he is no traitor. According to Halim, 56 and sexy, Farouk. for all his leering and prancing, is a bush-league lover. "Farouk had an inferiority complex with women," Halim testified. "This is why he ran so much after them. He wanted to show he was tough with the fair sex. Whenever we were competing to gain a lady's favor, I won out without difficulty." With the court hanging on every word, Halim then modestly confided: "I believe I am more successful than [Cinemactor] Robert Taylor."

Dug by a Los Angeles motorcycle cop as he was tooling along Wilshire Boulevard in his Jaguar at 74 m.p.h., Cinemactor Robert (Second Chance) Mitchum, who once did 50 days for smoking a crazy brand of cigarette, pulled over to the curb and started acting gone. First, he slyly suggested that his driver's license might be in the car's trunk. Then he handed over the license and asked: "You got any witnesses?" The cop said no, and Mitchum was quickly all gone in a roar. Later, facing a possible charge of escape and evading arrest, Bob called up the police station and filed his own complaint against the cop: stealing Mitchum's license and forcing his car off the road. The actor sounded "very peculiar" to the desk sergeant who took his call and put the traffic cop on the line. Said Bob: "I didn't know who you were, Dad. I thought you were a bandit without portfolio, or something."

Two old political cronies, Memphis' owlish Boss Ed Crump, 78, and Tennessee's former Senator Kenneth McKellar, 84, were snapped by a photographer as they sat cozily at the "Blind Bowl" prep-school football game, an annual charity contest sponsored by rabid fan Crump.

The great court trial wore on in Teheran, where Iran's scuttled Premier Mohammed Mossadegh, 72, ran through his repertory of emotions, to the alternate delight and sympathy of those who are trying to try him for treason. Tears cascading down his cheeks, Mossy gave a heart-rending description of his last, lingering farewell to his wife. With few dry eyes in the room, three spectators, sobbing noisily, were ushered out. Then Mossadegh, in a sudden change of mood, decided to take offense at an impertinent question. Flexing his scrawny biceps, he bellowed: "I am both morally and physically strong, despite my age. If the prosecutor accepts my challenge, I am prepared to wrestle him right here in court. I'll throw him on his back!" That was too much for the decorum of the military tribunal's chief judge, who clasped his ribs and laughed uncontrollably. On this cue, the others in court all but rolled in the aisles.

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