Cinema
From Hollywood
Damn Yankees. A devilishly good Hollywood remake of the Broadway musical about baseball and Beelzebub, with Dancer Gwen Verdon and Ray Walston.
Me and the Colonel. Danny Kaye's warmest and very nearly funniest movie, about a gentle, ingenious refugee escaping one jump ahead (and occasionally one jump behind) the Nazi invasion of France.
The Defiant Ones. Two escaped convicts (Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier) loathe each other, but since they are bound together at the wrist by a chain, they eventually learn a brutal, moving lesson about brotherhood.
The Reluctant Debutante. Rex Harrison and Wife Kay Kendall romping through Mayfair, as pixy a pair as ever made pix.
From Abroad
Father Panchali (Indian). A radiantly beautiful and entirely natural tragedy of a Brahman family hard put to make ends meet, leavened by an energy for life and some marvelously funny side glances.
The Case of Dr. Laurent (French). A baby is born on-camera in the final scene, but far earlier than that, Jean Gabin, as a kindly rural doctor, and Nicole Courcel, as his first natural-childbirth convert, have given the film warm, memorable appeal.
TELEVISION
Wed., Oct. 22
Pursuit (CBS, 8-9 p.m.).*A new dramatic show founded on the premise that, given enough time, everyone will come to hate everyone. In the premiere, Macdonald Carey is a vengeance-bent detective trying to gum up Sal Mineo, who crippled Carey's son in a sidewalk set-to.
Thurs., Oct. 23
Bell Telephone Science Series (NBC, 8-9 p.m.). The University of Southern California's Professor Frank Baxter, whose TV fame rests largely on a pleasantly wind-blown approach to Shakespeare, turns popular scientist in Gateways to the Mind, which attempts to make sense of the human senses.
Playhouse 90 (CBS, 9:30-11 p.m.). One of TV's best dramatic programs dispatches Edward G. Robinson, cast as a retired toy tycoon, to a small Vermont town, where the neighbors are right persnickety; with Ray (Damn Yankees) Walston and Beatrice Straight.
Sun., Oct. 26
United Nations Day Concert (CBS, 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.). In a taped recording of a U.N. Day ceremony held two days earlier, Charles Munch conducts the Boston Symphony in Honegger's Fifth Symphony; legendary Cellist Pablo Casals joins Mieczyslaw Horszowski in Bach's Sonata No. 2 in D Major for Cello and Piano.
File 7 (ABC, 11:30 a.m.-noon). A double-gaited educational hoss that runs like a'critter out of the Encyclopaedia Britannica by Confidential. The subject is Edgar Allan Poe--not his poetry and prose, but his alcoholism and drug addiction. Professor-Author (The Histrionic Mr. Poe) N. Bryllion Fagin conducts the inquest.
Bishop Pike (ABC, 12-12:30 p.m.).
Dean James Pike, Episcopal Bishop of California, in the first of an informal series of chats; the opening show's guest is Pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, a bible writer in his own right.
Omnibus (NBC, 5-6 p.m.). The program that symbolizes TV's search for dignity opens its sixth season with Boston Lawyer Joseph N. Welch probing capital punishment; Alistair Cooke still provides the accompaniment.
The Steve Allen Show (NBC, 8-9 p.m.).
Host Allen is as Steverino as ever, especially side by side with the well-tempered clavichord of Daverino (Brubeck) and the clever chords of Peterino (Ustinov).
Mon., Oct. 27
Shirley Temple's Storybook (NBC, 8-9 p.m.). Carol Lynley has the dickens pulled out of her long golden braids when her Prince Charming uses them as a rope ladder to her tower prison. Agnes Moorehead is the devil's advocate in this stab at Rapunzel by the Grimms.
Tues., Oct. 28
Du Pont Show of the Month (CBS, 7:30-9 p.m.). A hot new property, The Count of Monte Cristo, bursts upon an unsuspecting world with Hurd Hatfield as Edmond and Douglas Campbell as Danglars; Director Sidney Lumet (Twelve Angry Men) gives his all.
George Burns Show (NBC, 9-9:30 p.m.). TV Actor Burns takes the safe way out and plays a TV producer in a situation comedy with son Ronnie but--for the first time in years--without Gracie.
THEATER
On Broadway
A Touch of the Poet. Eugene O'Neill's giant strength and giant sprawl, in a long-ago tale of a boozing innkeeper--well-played by Eric Portman--and his shattered pose of being a fine gentleman. With Helen Hayes, Kim Stanley.
The Music Man. Robert Preston brilliant in Meredith Willson's one-man musicomedy job that has all the jubilant old-time energy of a small-town jamboree.
My Fair Lady. Still worth fighting to get into, whether for the first or second time.
The Visit. The Lunts in a fascinatingly acrid continental theater piece concerned with a rich woman's vengeful hate and a community that succumbs to greed.
The Dark at the Top of the Stairs. William Inge's family chronicle, alternating parlor comedy with dark tensions; sometimes vivid, sometimes merely facile.
Two for the Seesaw. Uneven but amusing and touching two-character tale of a split-level, ghost-ridden love affair.
On Tour
Auntie Mame, who uproariously escaped from Author Patrick Dennis' booby hatch of a book, has descended on TEXAS (Sylvia Sydney), CHICAGO (Constance Bennett), SAN FRANCISCO (Eve Arden).
My Fair Lady once again proves triumphantly that Shaw can be transplanted to musicomedy land, and Ascot to CHICAGO.
Look Back in Anger. That notorious Angry Young Man, John Osborne, this week growls in DAYTON and COLUMBUS.
The Music Man." Seventy-six trombones and four times as many laughs in SAN FRANCISCO.
BOOKS
Best Reading
Child of Our Time, by Michel del Castillo. An epic account of a heart-rending childhood endured and ultimately ennobled in the concentration camps of Europe.
The Klondike Fever, by Pierre Berton.
Glittering nuggets from the gold rush.
95 Poems, by e.e. cummings. The typographical playboy of U.S. poetry uncorks some champagne music that is lyrical, effervescent, and young in heart.
In Flanders Fields, by Leon Wolff. An absorbing, grim reappraisal of one of history's bloodiest campaigns.
The Housebreaker of Shady Hill, by John Cheever. A master of the short story looks at some cracked-picture-window lives in upper suburbia.
The Secret, by Alba de Cespedes. A sensitive glimpse into the soul of a middle-aged Italian woman, whose problems and dreams do not appear so very different from those of her American sisters.
Women and Thomas Harrow, by John P. Marquand. Once again beyond the Point of No Return, this time on a lifelong journey between Broadway and New England.
A World of Strangers, by Nadine Gordimer. South Africa's best novelist probes the fate of a middle-of-the-roader trapped in the pitiless struggle of white v. black.
Dr. Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak. Russia's greatest living poet affirms in Russia's greatest novel since the Revolution that not even Communism can destroy his people's hopes and humanity.
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov. A brilliantly written novel, lyrical, hilarious and horrifying, about a middle-aging emigre's love for a "nymphet," with highly ironic variations on the theme of American innocence and European corruption.
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. Lolita, Nabokov (1)
2. Around the World with Auntie Mame, Dennis (2)
3. Doctor Zhivago, Pasternak (3)
4. Anatomy of a Murder, Traver (4)
5. Women and Thomas Harrow, Marquand (5)
6. The Enemy Camp, Weidman (7)
7. The Best of Everything, Jaffe (6)
8. The Ugly American, Lederer and Burdick
9. The King Must Die, Renault (10)
10. The Bramble Bush, Mergendahl (9)
NON-FICTION
1. Only in America, Golden (2)
2. Aku-Aku, Heyerdahl (1)
3. Baa Baa Black Sheep, Boyington (3)
4. The Affluent Society, Galbraith (6)
5. Inside Russia Today, Gunther (4)
6. On My Own, Roosevelt (7)
7. Kids Say the Darndest Things!, Linkletter (5)
8. The Insolent Chariots, Keats (9)
9. The New Testament in Modern English, translated by Phillips
10. More in Sorrow, Gibbs
(Numbers in parentheses indicate last week's position.)
-All times E.D.T. through Oct. 25; E.S.T.
thereafter.
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.