The Noisemakers

A brilliant intellectual (Mortimer Adler) appears just ahead of a retired madam (Polly Adler); the Dalai Lama flanks Dagmar. Henry Ford II shares a page with Tennessee Ernie Ford; Dr. Albert Schweitzer mingles on page 675 with Cleveland Indian Pitcher Herb Score. What brings these unlikely companions together is the new International Celebrity Register ($26), by Society Scribe Cleveland Amory (The Proper Bostonians, The Last Resorts).

Born with a silver-plated spoon in his mouth, Amory (Harvard '39) has spent most of his postgraduate years doggedly following society's international trail. Somewhere between Boston and Bar Harbor he lost the scent, concluded gloomily that society was dead. "I realized," said Amory, "that the celebrity world overcame the society world--nobody looks at Mrs. Vanderbilt's pearls any more; they just want to see what Marlene Dietrich is wearing."

With that realization, he took the idea of the celebrity register to Earl Blackwell, proprietor of Celebrity Service, a New York-Hollywood enterprise that keeps charts on the famous. Over four years, the two put together 2,240 biographies.

The result falls somewhere between Who's Who and Confidential. In a foreword Amory boasts that no one listed in the register "paid to get in--or, for that matter, to get out." The listing on Novelist Truman Capote says that he has "a foliage of blond and somehow defensive bangs." Marie ("The Body") McDonald is described as "one of the most remarkable wives in the country--she has had seven marriages but only three actual husbands." The entry on Charles Van Doren was hastily updated to include a reference to his October shame: "Suspended by NBC . . . pending the outcome of the congressional investigation of rigged quiz programs."

In selecting the 2,240, a panel of five judges* relied mainly on a single gauge: "the decibel ring of the name." Noisy enough for mention: Christine Jorgensen (irresolutely described by the Register as both "he" and "she") and Zackerly (pitchman on a TV horror show). Left out as presumably not noisy enough: Robert Kintner, Allen Drury, Fabian. Notable inclusion: Cleveland Amory. Says Amory: "Frankly, I don't know whether it's more embarrassing to be in the book or out of it."

* Fleur Cowles and Paul Garrett, retired General Motors publicity chief, both listed in the book, and three others whose anonymity Amory chooses to preserve.

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