Ben-Hur. Director William Wyler's $15 million film version of Major General Lew Wallace's Biblical bestseller (1880) is not only the most expensive screen spectacle ever produced but also the best.

Third Man on the Mountain. Walt Disney's cliff hanger for the kids, who will probably believe that rock climbing is the spectacular cinch it seems to be in this film, and will certainly enjoy the entirely fictional story about a boy who showed the grownups how to climb the Matterhorn.

They Came to Cordura. A sort of western Pilgrim's Progress through the Mexican badlands with moral depth, wartime violence and Gary Cooper.

The FBI Story. Half soap opera and half documentary, often absorbing, about a G-man (Jimmy Stewart), his job, his wife and kids.

Pillow Talk. Hollywood's top box-office attractions, Doris Day and Rock Hudson, are brought together like a pair of 1960 Cadillacs in a one-car garage.

The Magician (Swedish). A Kafkan swirl of flesh and symbols by Sweden's Writer-Director Ingmar Bergman.

North by Northwest. A wild, completely entertaining Hitchcock yarn in which enemy spies have the gall to think they can rub out Gary Grant.

TELEVISION

Wed., Dec. 9 Once Upon a Christmas Tree (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.).* A fantasy by Paul Gallico about 13 orphans who spend Christ mas in a New England town. With Claude Rains, Charles Ruggles, Patty (Miracle Worker) Duke. Color.

Armstrong Circle Theater (CBS, 10-1 1 p.m. ) . A semidocumentary, Operation Moonshine takes a hoochraking look at still waters.

Thurs., Dec. 10 Christmas at the Circus (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). James (Gunsmoke) Arness and Sidekick Dennis Weaver act as hosts during a live hour in Miami with Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey Circus.

Tonight with Belafonte (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). One hour of songs by Harry Belafonte and Fellow Folk Singer Odetta.

Journey to Understanding (NBC, 10:30-11 p.m.). NBC continues its coverage of Ike's tour, the filmed segments to be flown in from Turkey, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Fri., Dec. 11 The Bob Hope Buick Show (NBC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). With Ernie Kovacs, Janis Paige. Color.

Sat., Dec. 12 Journey to Understanding (NBC, 9:30-10 p.m.). Ike in India.

Presidential Mission (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). First of three ABC programs on Ike's tour.

Sun., Dec. 13 Johns Hopkins File (ABC, 12-12:30 p.m.). A half-hour bull session about the late bull-tempered H. L. Mencken.

The Hallmark Hall of Fame (NBC, 5:30-6:30 p.m.). A seasonal variety program stars Walter Slezak in Ludwig Bemelmans' The Borrowed Christmas; Judith Anderson narrates the Nativity passages from St. Matthew and St. Luke; Dick Button skates; Germany's Obernkirchen Children's Choir sings Christmas carols.Color.

The Wizard of Oz (CBS, 6-8 p.m.). A rerun of the great Judy Garland film (vintage 1939). With Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Billie Burke, Margaret Hamilton. Color.

Journey to Understanding (NBC, 6:30-7 p.m.). Ike in India.

Sunday Showcase (NBC, 8-9 p.m.). Novelist-Playwright Gore Vidal's TV play about his grandfather, Thomas Gore of Oklahoma, who, though blind, served in the U.S. Senate (1907-21, 1931-37). Color.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents (CBS, 9:30-10 p.m.). Robert Morley and Kenneth Haigh as a pair of gourmets who seek the secret and possibly lethal ingredients of the house specialty at an exclusive London dining club.

Tues., Dec. 15

Lincoln-Mercury Startime (NBC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). Jimmy Stewart and George Gobel in Cindy's Fella, the Cinderella story adapted to the wide-open West. Color.

THEATER On Broadway

Fiorello! An uneven but lively and enjoyable musical that brings back an engagingly dynamic La Guardia and his gaudy, high-kicking era with a bang.

The Miracle Worker. Closed to sound and sight, the mind of the child Helen Keller (Patty Duke) is painstakingly opened by Teacher-Nurse Annie Sullivan (Anne Bancroft) in a memorable, if far from flawless, theater piece.

The Tenth Man. In a drab Mineola, L.I. synagogue full of picturesque Jews, Playwright Paddy Chayefsky mixes surrealism and Freud, demonology and farce, to create a play that succeeds as theater but fails as anything deeper.

Heartbreak House. Despite Shaw's sprawling treatment, this frankly symbolic picture of England's affluent society on the eve . of the first World War is marvelous in bits and pieces. Maurice Evans, Pamela Brown, Diana Wynyard.

Take Me Along. Trusting to mood rather than momentum, this musical version of Eugene O'Neill's only sunny play (Ah, Wilderness!) provides a pleasantly nostalgic evening. With Jackie Gleason.

At the Drop of a Hat. One of Broadway's gayest evenings provided by two witty Englishmen.

Holdovers from last season still going strong: My Fair Lady and The Music Man (musicals), La Plume de Ma Tante (French revue), A Raisin in the Sun (a moving play set in Chicago's Harlem).

Best Reading

The World of James McNeill Whistler,

by Horace Gregory. A sober but well-done biography of the greatly gifted American painter, exotic showman and rebel against Victorian conventions.

A Touch of Innocence, by Katherine Dunham. In an eloquent and reflective autobiography, the noted dancer's troubled childhood seems a long night's journey into day.

The Wisdom of the West, by Bertrand Russell. With spirit and skill, the 87-year-old author accomplishes the feat of compressing the history of Western philosophy into 320 pages.

The Liberation of the Philippines, by Samuel Eliot Morison. The 13th volume in the author's massive U.S. naval history of World War II describes the fighting through the summer of 1945.

The Longest Day, by Cornelius Ryan. An expert, exciting and microscopic examination of Dday.

The West-Going Heart, by Eleanor Ruggles. Boomlay-booming Poet Vachel Lindsay is portrayed by a sympathetic biographer.

In the Days of McKinley, by Margaret Leech. A first-rate biography which, if it leaves Mark Hanna's tame President as colorless as ever, also leaves him better understood.

The Anger of Achilles: Homer's Iliad, translated by Robert Graves. A charming prose-and-verse Iliad, in which the customary flavor of chalk dust is replaced by sharp-tasting satire.

James Joyce, by Richard Ellmann. A massive biography that details Joyce's quirks without losing his greatness.

The Mansion, by William Faulkner. The end of a dark, tangled trilogy (the other novels: The Hamlet, The Town).

Edison, by Matthew Josephson. An effective portrait of the tobacco-chewing Ohioan who became the U.S.'s most flamboyant inventor, partly by being one of its best promoters.

The Armada, by Garrett Mattingly. An exciting history of the great sea battle, and of the climate of political and religious strife that brought the English and Spanish fleets into collision.

The Stones of Florence, by Mary McCarthy. With taste and judgment, the author provides an eloquent appreciation of a magnificent city.

Best Sellers

FICTION 1. Advise and Consent, Drury (1) 2. Hawaii, Michener (5) 3. The War Lover, Hersey (6) 4. Poor No More, Ruark (2) 5. Exodus, Uris (4) 6. The Darkness and the Dawn, Costain (7) 7. Dear and Glorious Physician, Caldwell (8) 8. The Devil's Advocate, West (9) 9. The Ugly American, Lederer and Burdick (3) 10. Return to Peyton Place, Metalious

NONFICTION 1. Act One, Hart (1) 2. This Is My God, Wouk (3) 3. The Status Seekers, Packard (2) 4. Folk Medicine, Jarvis (4) 5. For 2¢ Plain, Golden (5) 6. The Elements of Style, Strunk and White (7) 7. The Armada, Mattingly (6) 8. Groucho and Me, Marx (8) 9. Candidates 1960, Sevareid 10. The Longest Day, Ryan

* All times E.S.T. last list.

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