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

Novelist John Steinbeck; whose earlier fondness for battered ground vehicles crept out in some of his books (e.g., The Grapes of Wrath, The Wayward Bus), disclosed that he is about to switch to a more advanced means of transportation. Stopping over on the French Riviera on his way to Italy, Steinbeck, minus his mustache "for a change," announced that he will write a play about flying saucers, because these strange craft "symbolize . . . the disquiet of the world today." Added he soberly: "From this idea, I let my heroes go in their attempt to escape the earth. They don't make it, but I let them discover an equation to escape from infinity . . . rather similar to that of [Albert] Einstein."

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On getting news that he had been picked as one of America's ten best-dressed men by some arbiter or other, Paul G. Hoffman, former ECAdministrator and now board chairman of Studebaker-Packard Corp., sighed and muttered: "When I get home, my house will be a hotbed of hoots and hollers. My family criticizes me for being a sloppy dresser."

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Bandleader Artie Shaw, 44, whose seven marriages (among his ex-wives: Novelist Kathleen Winsor, Cinemactresses Lana Turner and Ava Gardner) all started out well, seemed to be right back where he began. His current bride (No. 7). Actress Doris Dowling, gathered up their 13-month-old son Jonathan and moved in with her sister.

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Elder Statesman Bernard Baruch, 82, continued to prove that age is not a bar to the full life. He struck a Greek-god pose (in a bathing suit) before displaying his diving and swimming skills to news photographers. He also celebrated the publication of his own summing up, A Philosophy for Our Time, a series of four sage lectures on 20th century democracy and capitalism, delivered earlier at his alma mater, the City College of New York. Baruch's central idea: "We in America have sought our goal of equality for all not by pulling everyone down to the same level, as happened elsewhere, but by giving everyone an opportunity to rise."

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In need of names to brighten its roster, Mexico's short-handed (membership: barely 5,000) Communist Party offered a bittersweet welcome to a long-lost comrade, Painter Diego Rivera, 67. In 1929, Comrade Rivera was excommunicated because of his growing list of deviations. He had fallen into the habit of firing off peppery pronunciamentos without first clearing them with the proper Red monitors. Confessed loose-lipped Rivera: "I got kicked out for shooting off my mouth." He later even gave haven in his home for two years to Leon Trotsky. Back in the fold again last week, Rivera was strangely mum. In tragic truth, he was tired, in bad health and grieving over the recent death of his wife.

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Portly John Jacob Astor, whose great-great-great-grandfather started the family fortune by gathering furs, only to have many of his male descendants dissipate parcels of their inheritance by giving furs away, was up to his patrician ears in the sort of misfortune that afflicts only the very rich. It began when Astor, 42, divorced his second wife Gertrude in June, then drew a deep breath and took on No. 3, Miami Divorcee Dolores ("Dolly") Pullman, 26. Off for a European honeymoon billed as a six-month safari, Astor was back in Manhattan only a month later, offered the inexplicable explanation that he was long on capital (estimated at $70 million), short of cash. Actually, Gertrude, taking exception to Astor's Mexican divorce and remarriage in haste, had attached all his assets in 27 banks, 35 stock brokerage firms, his real estate and a garage where one of his cars was laid up. It could all be cleared up, she told a court, if Astor would merely let her forget at the rate of $1,000 a week. To make matters worse, Dolly no sooner walked off the ship than she walked out on Astor and got in touch with her attorneys. The tabloids spread broad hints that she too was more interested in the money than the man. "This was not a happy honeymoon," was the sorrowful conclusion of one of Astor's friends. "There was tension even before it started . . . Dolly was inclined to be morose, though he gave her minks and diamonds. Dolly, it seems, wanted to be alone most of the time. John couldn't understand it, and he went through hell."

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A puffy-faced, balding Baritone Lawrence Tibbett, 57, who at the height of his career turned out an autobiography called Along the Glory Road, traveled a sadder road in North Hollywood, smashed his sports car into a truck, was nabbed by police with a depleted bottle of gin. After slugging a Drunkometer, Tibbett was fined $263 on his guilty plea to charges of drunken driving and hitting the truck.

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In a closed-door session, the board of trustees of Princeton's genius-crammed Institute for Advanced Study unanimously re-elected Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer as the institute's director. Among the trustees: Rear Admiral Lewis Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, which three months ago revoked Oppenheimer's security clearance for access to Government secrets.

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