Cinema

The Dark at the Top of the Stairs. Robert Preston runs away with this light drama about an Oklahoma harness salesman's troubles in a direction that gloomier Playwright William Inge may not have intended, but the film is good comedy just the same.

Day of the Painter. A waggish, 15-minute tale about the wondrous work habits of a dribble-and-splotch painter.

Under Ten Flags. The German Navy's Van Heflin v. British Admiral Charles Laughton is a better than 'fair sea-fight thriller based on one of the more curious naval footnotes to World War II.

The End of Innocence. Director Leopoldo Torre Nilsson, a Swedish-descended Argentine, shows his debt to Sweden's Ingmar Bergman in a shadowed study of purity, sin and degeneracy.

Ocean's 11. This laughing-gasser about an attempt by Frank Sinatra and his lout troup (Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, etc.) to rob five Las Vegas casinos is slapdash slapstick, but that's the way the kookies rumble.

Jungle Cat. Another of Walt Disney's magnificently photographed, though sometimes badly edited and narrated, True-Life Adventures, this time about jaguars in the Amazon jungles.

Sons and Lovers. D. H. Lawrence's searing novel is brilliantly translated to film by Director Jack Cardiff and a fine cast headed by Wendy Hiller and Trevor Howard, whose performances are, respectively, good and great.

Elmer Gantry. Burt Lancaster turns in one of the best performances of his career as Sinclair Lewis' Bible-banging, skirt-chasing evangelist.

Bells Are Ringing. Judy Holliday singing some Comden-Green lyrics is all that this comedy about an answering-service Nightingale offers, but Judy is enough.

TELEVISION

Tues., Sept. 13

Thriller (NBC, 9-10 p.m.).* First of a new mystery and suspense series narrated by onetime Movie Menace Boris Karloff.

Wed., Sept. 14

The Aquanauts (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). New, full-hour entry in the underwater swim. Keith Larsen and Jeremy Slate are the actors who get wet, for divers' reasons.

Thurs., Sept. 15 Read a book.

Fri., Sept. 16

Moment of Fear (NBC, 10-11 p.m., color). An alcoholic reporter (Donald Harron) tries to warn his wife (Kathleen Maguire) that a gangster is on her trail.

Sat., Sept. 17

Football (ABC, 3:45 p.m.). Georgia plays Alabama.

Campaign Roundup (ABC, 7:30-8 p.m.). The week's political developments discussed in the first pre-election series by such analysts as Quincy Howe and Edward P. Morgan.

Checkmate (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Eric Ambler, the noted on-the-run-in-a-raincoat author, has plotted a new suspense series, and this is its first creak. With Tony George, Doug McClure and Sebastian Cabot.

Sun., Sept. 18

U.N. in Action (CBS, 11-11:30 a.m.). The only regularly scheduled network coverage of the United Nations begins its twelfth year, with Stuart Novins.

College News Conference (ABC, 1:30-2 p.m.). Under Secretary of State C. Douglas Dillon is served to the youth.

The Twentieth Century (CBS, 6:30-7 p.m.). Rebroadcast of documentary on the battle of Stalingrad, filmed by German and Russian photographers in 1942-43.

The Shirley Temple Show (NBC, 7-8 p.m.). The first in a series of children's shows in which Shirley will be hostess and sometime performer. Music and variety, kiddie science fiction and comic-strip adaptations are promised; the opener, set in the Land of Oz, stars Comic Jonathan Winters as a wicked lord. Color.

Mon., Sept. 19 Jackpot Bowling Starring Milton Berle

(NBC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Can Miltie make bowling interesting? Can bowling make Miltie funny?

THEATER

On Broadway

A handful of favorites, having survived the theater strike and summer heat, remain to do battle with the new season's shows: Toys in the Attic, the latest play by Lillian Hellman, deftly explores the character of a weak ne'er-do-well (Jason Robards Jr.); Paddy Chayefsky's The Tenth Man, set in a Mineola, L.I. synagogue, brilliantly and with high humor admixes ancient rite with modern psychology; The Miracle Worker owes its excellence to the superb performances of Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke, as they re-create the early childhood of blind, deaf-mute Helen Keller; The Best Man sketches characters who are a mile wide and an inch deep, but nonetheless offers swift, glib and enjoyable theatrical journalism about campaigning politicians in action. Three musicals stand out: the-good-as-ever revival of West Side Story, with many of the original cast; the light, reminiscent story of New York's greatest mayor, Fiorello!; and a winsome Broadway analysis of Elvis Presley called Bye Bye Birdie.

Off Broadway

Among the little theaters, too, the summer has winnowed out what was merely espresso-bungle and has left little more than the lait of the crop: The Balcony, French Playwright Jean Genet's dramatic thesis that the world is a brothel and vice versa; The Connection, an awesomely naturalistic study of junkies in their pad; Krapp's Last Tape, a single-actor tour de force about youth and age, on a double bill with The Zoo Story, wherein Playwright Edward Albee creates a critical mass by clanging together a beat with a square; A Country Scandal, an early play of Anton Chekhov, produced professionally in the U.S. for the first time, providing ample and comic proof that minor

Chekhov is equal to the major efforts of most others; and Little Mary Sunshine,

off-Broadway's phenomenal, sellout musical that spoofs the candy-coated operettas of the '20s.

BOOKS

Best Reading

A Peak in Darien, by Roswell G. Ham Jr. The author provides one of the wittier examples of the concupiscence-in-Connecticut genre, but his novel's title, nevertheless, should read "peek."

The Human Season, by Edward Lewis Wallant. The grief of a 59-year-old plumber over the sudden death of his wife is the unlikely subject of this remarkably skillful first novel. With telling economy, Author Wallant suggests the texture of sorrow without sentimentality, and the twisting agony of an agnostic Job who cannot tame his rage with resignation.

The Sot-Weed Factor, by John Earth. This comedy of picaresque errors and escapades, set in colonial Maryland, is as deadly serious as it is often wildly funny.

Taken at the Flood, by John Gunther. The father of soap operas, schoolgirl complexions and singing commercials is given his due in this anecdote-laden biography of the late Adman Albert Lasker.

Decision at Trafalgar, by Dudley Pope. Memorably above the call of routine historical duty, this is a definitive chronicle of the greatest battle of the age of sail and its ageless hero, Lord Nelson.

The Last Temptation of Christ, by Nikos Kazantzakis. The late great Greek writer saw God as the search for God. Temptation is his soaring, shocking final vision of that search.

The Stormy Life of Lasik Roitschwantz, by Ilya Ehrenburg. In 1927 the slithiest tove in the Soviet literary propaganda corps aimed this sizzling satirical poker at the Russian Revolution. Ehrenburg recently denounced its publication in the West, an act the non-hero of this kosher Candide would have relished.

Best Sellers

FICTION 1. Advise and Consent, Drury (1)*

2. Hawaii, Michener (2)

3. The Leopard, Di Lampedusa (3)

4. The Chapman Report, Wallace (4)

5. The Lovely Ambition, Chase (5)

6. Before You Go, Weidman (6)

7. The View from the Fortieth Floor, White (7)

8. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (10)

9. Water of Life, Robinson (8) 10. The Last Temptation of Christ

Kazantzakis

NONFICTION 1. Born Free, Adamson (1)

2. How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market, Darvas (2)

3. May This House Be Safe from Tigers, King (5)

4. Felix Frankfurter Reminisces Frankfurter with Phillips (6) 5. The Conscience of a Conservative, Goldwater (3) 6. Enjoy, Enjoy! Golden (4) 7. The Good Years, Lord (9) 8. Folk Medicine, Jarvis (7) 9. The Liberal Hour, Galbraith (10) 10. I Kid You Not, Paar (8)

*All times E.D.T. *Position on last week's list

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