April 18, 1985

Investors who have committed to help finance T. Boone Pickens's bid for control of of the Unocal Corporation said yesterday that they doubted they would have to live up to their obligations in light of Unocal's latest defensive maneuver. Mr. Pickens, however, insisted that the commitments for $3 billion he had received from 139 investors were ''still binding.'' As the most active stock on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday, Unocal declined $1.375, to $46.625, amid growing investor belief that, for now at least, the California oil giant has thrown an effective roadblock in Mr. Pickens's path. But many Wall Street observers believe that the battle is only in the first round, with a counteroffer likely from the Mesa Partners II, the investor group headed by Mr. Pickens that already owns 13.6 percent of Unocal. Mr. Pickens said he would visit New York to meet with lawyers and investment bankers on a possible next move. Meanwhile, a source close to Unocal said that perhaps by the end of the week Unocal might make another move to block Mr. Pickens's tender offer or, at least, force him to bid higher for control.

National Intergroup Inc., the parent of the National Steel Corporation that has sought avidly to diversify away from heavy manufacturing, said yesterday that its merger agreement with the Bergen Brunswig Corporation had been terminated. The Pittburgh-based company said deteriorating earnings in the first quarter of 1985 and the restatement of its 1984 net income had contributed to Bergen Brunswig's decision to back away from the acquisition, which had already been approved by both companies' shareholders and was within a month of being completed. Separately, the company said it expects to show a loss of about $1 a share for the first quarter. ''From the time we announced the merger in October we were having to recast the profitability of the steel business in the fourth and first quarter,'' Howard M. Love, chairman of National Intergroup, said in a telephone interview.

The disposable, after-tax income of Americans fell by five-tenths of 1 percent in March after a February decline of eight-tenths of 1 percent, the Commerce Department said today. Both months were hurt by computer-caused delays that deprived Americans of $6.7 billion in Federal income tax refunds in the two months. The declines in disposable income sent consumer spending tumbling by five-tenths of 1 percent last month, the biggest decline in more than a year, the department said.

A chart in Business Day on April 9 with an article on the profits of large military contractors incompletely identified the data sources. The United States Census Bureau provided only the figure for average return on equity for manufacturing, mining and trade corporations. The rest of the chart was compiled from 1984 annual reports.

Eleanor Bunce remembers sitting on a love seat in the foyer with a Spanish painter. The visitor was intrigued by the large buttons on her dress. ''He wanted to know if they were edible,'' Mrs. Bunce said recently, remembering her encounter half a century ago with Salvador Dali. Virgil Thomson recalls sitting down with Aaron Copland for an impromptu duet on the living-room piano. The two composers played to a bohemian audience who styled themselves ''Friends and Enemies of Modern Music.'' This salon of the international avant-garde revolved around an unusual setting - a suburban house in a decorous city. There, in 1930, on a quiet street of neo-Colonial homes, A. Everett (Chick) Austin Jr. built a wooden version of a stone and stucco Palladian- style villa. The classical, 16th-century-style exterior masked a first floor in the Baroque style and a second floor in the Bauhaus style.