"Names make news." Last week the following names made the following news:

George Bruce Cortelyou, 67, progressively Roosevelt's Secretary of Commerce & Labor, Postmaster General and Secretary of the Treasury, since 1909 president of New York's Consolidated Gas Co., is especially alert against gas asphyxiation among his customers and generally interested in overcoming suffocation from any cause. Last week, after a gas company superintendent had successfully resuscitated a man unconscious 383 hours in a local hospital, Mr. Cortelyou donated the city a dozen resuscitators, costing $3,000 each.

The facts of a murder last week were:

Murdered: George Danielson, 67, bank messenger delivering $7,263.63 from Bradley Beach, N. J., to Neptune City, N. J.

Clues: Two witnesses who saw the robbers; the abandoned car containing a panama hat with fingerprints and wrappers from the payroll.

Called in to investigate: Honorary Police Commissioner of Bradley Beach, Willard Huntington Wright (S. S. Van Dine), creator of super-detective "Philo Vance" (The Greene Murder Case, The Bishop Murder Case).

Reported by Police Commissioner Van Dine: 1) it was a hold-up and not a murder plot; 2) Since the shooting occurred in Neptune City it was beyond his jurisdiction.

Mrs. Fred Albert Britten, wife of Illinois' Representative Britten, going abroad on the Leviathan with her husband, was stricken with appendicitis. While the engines were stopped for 52 minutes an operation was performed with five physicians in consultation. Arriving at Southampton, Mrs. Britten's condition was described as ''somewhat improved," but she could not leave the boat.

Mrs. Rosamond Pinchot Gaston was featured in a Hupmobile advertisement. A description of her said: "She adores horses, motor cars, and motor boats. . . . Peel of London makes her riding boots, and Nardi her habits. . . . Her favorite luncheon place is the Voisin where she always has a certain corner table. . . . They know her in Vienna, Prague, Salzburg, New York, and points west as the nun in The Miracle, and all over Europe as a member of Max Reinhardt's Repertoire company. . . . She shuttles between New York and an island off the coast of Maine by train, car, and speed boat. . . . Her personal car is HUPMOBILE. She drives it herself. One admiring Westchester motor cop has said . . . 'and how!";

Gar Wood, power-boater, said he had ordered a $175,000 aerial yacht, to be built by Dornier. It will have a 24-passenger capacity, with staterooms, shower baths, an electric refrigerator.

The high cost of opera in Chicago was cheerfully announced last week, as annually, by Samuel Insull, president of the Chicago Civic Opera's board of trustees. The 1928-29 deficit was $528,356, but with 500 more guarantors than before, the amount each paid was relatively small. Next year will be Chicago's banner opera year, beginning in a great new opera house on Wacker Drive, with an imposing list of singers and conductors engaged and re-engaged for the season.

Thomas Alva Edison said last week: ''Without great improvements people will tire of talkies. Talking is no substitute for good acting we had in the silent pictures."

Lionel Barymore announced he would retire from cinemacting, devote his time to directing.

James John Walker passed through the lobby of Manhattan's Ritz-Carlton, holding a handkerchief to his cheek. An observer said, "There goes the Mayor, looking half shot." An excitable woman heard, saw the handkerchief, started a report that the Mayor had been shot. Two hours later the Mayor arrived at the City Hall, explained to a frantic horde of reporters that the reason for the handkerchief had been three bad teeth, to be extracted the next day.

Jiddu Krishnamurti, "World Teacher," announced the dissolution of the Order of the Star in the East, theosophical brotherhood founded in India in 1910. He explained: "The Truth needs no disciples. It wants nothing from any man. Only a few will understand, and they need no organization. . . ."

Aimee Semple McPherson, marcelled evangelist, asked the members of a Denver audience who were willing to give $1 to combat Satan to stand up. Only a few rose. "Play The Star-Spangled Banner," she told her bandsmen. All rose.