New Perennial

Television has been digging away at the antic works of Humorist James Thurber ever since the 1949 production of The Catbird Seat. Last week TV served up two hour-long helpings of Thurber. The Robert Montgomery Presents adaptation of The Greatest Man in the World was almost a complete failure, but on the Motorola TV Hour (alt. Tues. 9:30 p.m., ABC), Director Donald Richardson struck pure gold in his version of Thurber's fairy story, The Thirteen Clocks, set to music by Mark Bucci.

Seldom have characters leaped as brilliantly from the printed page to TV life. Basil Rathbone hammed magnificently as the fiendish Duke ("We all have flaws, and mine is being wicked"). Roberta Peters as the imprisoned Princess was so appealing visually and vocally that it was hard to believe she had raced to the TV studio straight from the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, where she had sung the young shepherd role that evening in Tannhaeuser. Baritone John . Raitt confidently managed the always difficult job of making a masculine hero of Prince Charming, and top honors in the superb cast went to Sir Cedric Hardwicke as the wonder-working Golux who came by his magical power because he was the "son of a witch." There was also dimly at hand a satisfying monster called the Todal who is made of lip, looks like a blob of glup, sounds like rabbits screaming, and smells of old, unopened rooms. The Todal's job was to punish evildoers for having done less evil than they should, and he ended the play by making a mouthful of the ineptly villainous Duke.

Donald Richardson's direction of this fragile nonsense was both light and steady. The air of intelligent good humor that pervaded the piece most likely resulted from Richardson's long association with Paul Tripp in the production of Mr. I. Magination, the entertaining children's show that ran for a too short three years on CBS-TV. The Thirteen Clocks is al most certain to be repeated in years to come and should take its place with Amahl and the Night Visitors as a perennial holiday TV favorite. This week Thurber fans may get another treat on Omnibus (Sun. 5 p.m., CBS-TV), which is presenting Elliott Nugent in The Remarkable Case of Mr. Bruhl.

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