TIME LISTINGS
Come Back, Africa. Filmed in secret and crude in craftsmanship, Lionel (On the Bowery) Rogosin's candid-camera movie manages a fairminded, matter-of-fact look at a modern nightmare: the black depths of South African society.
The Fugitive Kind. The screen version of Playwright Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending has a kind of nauseating beauty, luridly reworking the myth of Orpheus in a dirty little town in Mississippi. With Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Joanne Woodward, Victor Jory.
Conspiracy of Hearts. In a tear-and-terror flick that generates ulcer-perforating tension, Jewish children escaped from a Nazi concentration camp are sheltered in an Italian convent. With Lilli Palmer.
A Lesson in Love (Swedish). In a comedy of morals as well as manners, brilliant Writer-Director Ingmar Bergman presents a riskily sophisticated satire about marital fidelity.
The Magician (Swedish). Bergman in another mood: the magic of the 19th century Mesmer in the story and of the writer-director on the other side of the camera combine to make a film that is just about as hypnotic as it was meant to be.
The Poacher's Daughter. With the magic of language, Julie Harris and the players of the Abbey Theatre lift a banal comedy plot high off the green sod.
The Cranes Are Flying (Russian). An engaging love story is lifted high by the wild, fast-moving techniques of Director Mikhail Kalatozov, who seems blissfully released from "socialist realism."
Ikiru (Japanese). The story of an obscure, undistinguished man who is dying of cancer and whose search for goodness at the end of life makes a distinguished, brutally ironic film.
TELEVISION
Wed., April 27
Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall (NBC, 9-10 p.m.).* This one was taped in London. Guest stars include: Sir Ralph Richardson, Dame Margot Fonteyn, Michael Somes.
Armstrong Circle Theater (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). A freelance writer turns stool pigeon and the D.A. moves in on the "Carlton Literary Service." Fresh from the headlines, Dishonor System deals with ghostwriting on a Midwest campus.
Invitation to Paris (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). The City of Light in the spring, shown off in a tour that spotlights some of France's finest entertainers: Maurice Chevalier, Jean Sablon, Jacqueline Francois, Patachou, Line Renaud, Fernandel.
Thurs., April 28
Accent on Comedy (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). That rare TV hour -- a live comedy show. Working for the laughs: Herb Shriner, Dorothy Loudon, Smith & Dale.
Fri., April 29
Bell Telephone Hour (NBC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado with some startling un-type casting: Groucho Marx as Ko-Ko, Helen Traubel as Katisha, Stirling Holloway as Poo-Bah and Dennis King as the Mikado. Color.
Eyewitness to History (CBS, 10:30-11 p.m.). Highlights of President Charles de Gaulle's first visit to the U.S. since he became French head of state.
Sun., May 1
The Chevy Show (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). The King and Queen of cow country, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, work out in a waterlogged rodeo. The Aquarodeo at Marineland, Calif. includes shark busting and shark roping, a bat ray roundup and bareback whale riding.
Mon., May 2
Hallmark Hall of Fame (NBC, 9:30-11 p.m.). G. B. Shaw's report on the attempted taming of a typically Shavian rogue. Captain Brassbound's Conversion stars Christopher Plummer and Greer Garson.
THEATER
On Broadway
Bye Bye Birdie. A rock-'n'-roll call of teen-agers surrounding an Elvis Presleyish crooner named Conrad Birdie (Dick Gautier). As staged by Gower Champion, the fresh and sometimes frantic musical crashes through the evening with all the zip of a bowling ball on the loose.
Toys in the Attic. Playwright Lillian Hellman's taut, powerful drama about a weak ne'er-do-well's sudden wealth and the anguish this brings to the women who depend on his dependence on them. Jason Robards Jr. heads a fine cast.
A Thurber Carnival. The men, women and dogs that chase one another through Humorist James Thurber's mind come yakking and yipping to the stage in a grand, slightly bland evening.
The Tenth Man. Playwright Paddy Chayefsky, in his best work to date, cures two young Jewish people's mental illness with ancient rites, setting off an explosion of faith in a synagogue full of unbelievers.
The Miracle Worker. With more feeling than art, Playwright William Gibson draws an outline of the early childhood of Deaf-Mute Helen Keller, leaves it to be filled by the uncompromisingly excellent acting of Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke.
Five Finger Exercise. A quite ordinary British family implodes with suppressed hate, nearly killing an innocent bystander.
The Andersonville Trial. A sharply theatrical treatment of a war-crimes trial after the U. S.' Civil War that evokes (but never quite faces) the moral issues also raised by Nuremberg.
Off Broadway
The Prodigal. The season's best new playwright is a 24-year-old Columbia University graduate who unflinchingly appropriates the material of Greek tragedy, keeps his characters in Argos and in Argive dress, but turns Orestes into a mocking young man of the present.
The Balcony. To French ex-Convict Jean Genet the world is a brothel, and his play--more interesting for its conception and staging than for the playwright's wild language--is set in a bawdyhouse where customers are dressed as bishops, judges and generals to salve their egos.
The Death of Satan. Poet Ronald Duncan tells a Shavian tale about a nervous Devil who feels that things are going too well in Hell and dispatches Don Juan to earth to find out why. The play's whet-stoned humor makes up for an inadequate production.
BOOKS
Best Reading
The Kremlin, by David Douglas Duncan. History-haunted halls and cathedrals, diamonds and diadems, as seen through a Leica lens: an exclusive and eloquent photographic study.
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, by Alan Sillitoe. Well-done short stories of Britain's slum dwellers and their guerrilla warfare with society's overdogs.
The Dandy, by Ellen Moers. A chart of the dwindling course of dandyism, from Beau Brummell, who issued dictates to 19th century England on the curve of a brim and the blend of a snuff, to the modern male who trembles at the brink of foppishness when he folds a handkerchief into his breast pocket.
D'Annunzio: The Poet As Superman. by Anthony Rhodes. The flamboyant warrior-poet who inflamed Italy with such antics as drinking wine from a virgin's skull and capturing a city almost singlehanded, is portrayed in an entertaining biography.
Clean and Decent, by Lawrence Wright. In a witty and well-illustrated history of the bathroom, the author provides much valuable intelligence, including the fact that Queen Elizabeth I scrubbed herself only once a month.
A Separate Peace, by John Knowles. The end of innocence and the beginnings of adulthood are treated with skill and power in this exceptionally good first novel about two schoolboys.
Clea, by Lawrence Durrell. The concluding novel in the author's exotic, brilliant and often overlush tetralogy about contemporary Alexandria.
The Edge of Day, by Laurie Lee. The British poet states the common truths of boyhood uncommonly well in this pleasant, unsentimental memoir.
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. Hawaii, Michener (1)* 2. Advise and Consent, Drury (2) 3. Ourselves to Know, O'Hara (5) 4. The Constant Image, Davenport (4) 5. The Lincoln Lords, Hawley (3) 6. Clea, Durrell (6) 7. Trustee from the Toolroom, Shute 8. Two Weeks in Another Town, Shaw (8) 9. Kiss Kiss, Dahl (9) 10. All the Day Long, Spring
NONFICTION
1. May This House Be Safe from Tigers, King (1) 2. Folk Medicine, Jarvis (2) 3. Grant Moves South, Catton (6) 4. Act One, Hart (4) 5. The Enemy Within, Kennedy (5) 6. The Law and the Profits, Parkinson (7) 7. Meyer Berger's New York, Berger (10) 8. The Lifetime Reading Plan, Fadiman 9. The Joy of Music, Bernstein (9) 10. In My Fashion, Ballard
* All times E.D.T. * Position on last week's list.
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