On Broadway
CINEMA
Butterfield 8. The crude but affecting tart's tragedy of the O'Hara novel has become a sleek and libidinous lingerie meller --featuring Elizabeth Taylor as an enthusiastic amateur.
General della Rovere (in Italian). Roberto Rossellini's first topflight film since Paisan (1946) tells the almost unbearably moving story of a petty larcenist, skillfully played by Vittorio De Sica, who through wartime suffering becomes the hero he was forced to impersonate.
Weddings and Babies. A brilliant technical tour de force by Shoestring Independent Morris (The Little Fugitive) Engel, whose candidly filmed story of a smalltime photographer and his "model" becomes a mordant Manhattan Orpheus.
It Happened in Broad Daylight. An expertly performed story by Swiss Author Friedrich Duerrenmatt about a cool cop's obsessive pursuit of a killer stirs up an uncommon amount of suspense.
Never on Sunday. A seeming reroast of an old chestnut--the tale of reformer being reformed himself by a warmhearted prostitute--ends up a savory satire full of animal spirits and earthy humor. Director Jules (He Who Must Die) Dassin also plays the overgrown American boy scout, opposite mercurial Melina Mercouri's invincible Greek strumpet.
TELEVISION
Tues., Nov. 22
The Red Skelton Show (CBS, 9:30-10 p.m.).* A reprise of the pantomime classic in which Freddie the Freeloader tries to cadge a Thanksgiving dinner.
Project 20 (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Hoagy Carmichael narrates Those Ragtime Years.
Wed., Nov. 23
Armstrong Circle Theater (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). The Hidden World demonstrates advanced techniques in the treatment of emotionally disturbed children.
Thurs., Nov. 24 Thanksgiving Parade Jubilee (CBS, 10-11:30 a.m.). Pickups from the Manhattan, Philadelphia and Detroit extravaganzas.
Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (NBC, 11-12 noon). The 34th Street operators at work for the 34th straight year. Color.
West Berlin Concert (CBS, 5-6 p.m.). A tape of the New York Philharmonic during the recent German visit, with Conductor Leonard Bernstein lecturing on "The Universality of Beethoven's Music" and doubling as soloist in Beethoven's Concerto "No. I" in C Major.
No Place Like Home (NBC, 5:30-6:30 p.m.). A revue with music and lyrics by Mary Rodgers and Marshall Barer, the Once Upon a Mattress team, with Jose Ferrer and his wife Rosemary Clooney, Dick Van Dyke and Carol Burnett. Color.
Fri., Nov. 25
Close-Up (ABC, 8-8:30 p.m.). A documentary on money raising for charity, covering the feud between the independents and the United Funds, also touching on the illegitimate campaigns. Arthur Flemming, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, heads an impressive guest list.
The Bell Telephone Hour (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). The Music of Romance, dramatized episodes from Tchaikovsky's life, with Helen Hayes as his patroness, Mme. Von Meek, playing opposite Farley Granger as the composer. Color.
CBS Reports (CBS, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). In Harvest of Shame the plight of the migratory worker is pondered by Ed Murrow and Secretary of Labor James P. Mitchell among others.
Sat. Nov. 26
The Nation's Future (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). One of the season's most notable new programs this week squares off the Rev. Martin Luther King and Richmond (Va.) News-Leader Editor James J. Kilpatrick on the question,"Are sit-in strikes justifiable?"
Sun. Nov. 27
Winston Churchill: The Valiant Years (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). The premiere of 26 promising episodes taken from Sir Winston's World War II memoirs, with Richard Burton rendering the Churchillian prose. The opener recalls his prewar period--"lonely as a tough old sea gull: crying out, warning, pleading."
THEATER
On Broadway
Period of Adjustment. Unexpectedly off the Streetcar track and concluding with togetherness instead of cannibalism, Broadway's longtime laureate of sex, Tennessee Williams, has written a deft domestic comedy about two couples' marital adjustment; the result is lively but superficial, and as often forced as forceful.
An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May. With ther eyes deadly keen and their tongues brilliantly sharp, these freewheeling improvisationists devastate the fatuous, vulgar, neurotic and just plain human, lacing into everything from the old Tennessee Williams to the P.T.A.
The Unsinkable Molly Brown. A merely pleasant score by Meredith Willson and a funny-paper treatment of the tale of an illiterate, Missouri-born status seeker are kept afloat only through the magic of the unquenchable Tammy Grimes.
A Taste of Honey. An unblinking look at some of the world's misfits and misfortunes, set down in leaping language by Britain's Shelagh Delaney and further enhanced by the stunning performance of Joan Plowright.
Irma La Douce. Elizabeth Seal, playing Broadway's most charming chippy, keeps this small-scale musical kicking its heels with Parisian verve and pertness.
The Hostage. Less a play than a dramatization of the playwright, this sprawling, incoherent account by Brendan Behan of an English soldier held as hostage in a Dublin brothel is howlingly off key as well as marvelously in tune.
BOOKS
Best Reading
The Light in the Piazza, by Elizabeth Spencer. A succinct, unusually fine novel about Americans abroad confronts a Southern woman and her mentally deficient daughter with an Italian family's ruthlessness and odd humaneness.
The Life and Opinions of T.E. Hulme, by Alun R. Jones. A scholarly, well-wrought biography of the eccentric English intellectual who took all knowledge for his hobby and who, despite his death at age 34 on the Western Front in 1917, was to become a neo-orthodox shaper of the 20th century consciousness.
Laughter in the Dark, by Vladimir Nabokov. This revival of a prehumous (1938) novel, although a mere Pninprick compared to the author's subsequent slash, foreshadows the maturer talent in describing a middle-aged Berlin art dealer of The Blue Angel epoch, whose life and dignity are degraded by a woman.
The Metamorphosis of the Gods, by Andre Malraux. A handsomely illustrated, portable Uffizi-cum-Louvre and a flight of speculation that soars from the Sphinx to Botticelli's Venus.
The Go-Away Bird, by Muriel Spark. In the title novella and in ten accompanying short stories--mostly semi-supernatural suspense tales--the talented Scottish novelist (The Ballad of Peckham Rye) displays her deft, deceiving style and consummate con-woman skill in unmasking the hoaxing face of the world.
Rabbit, Run, by John Updike. A powerful and relentlessly depressing story about the crackup of an unspeakable Hollow Man whom the author perhaps mistakes for Everyman.
Incense to Idols, by Sylvia Ashton-Warner. Proving that the power and insight of her first novel, Spinster, sprang from an exceptional talent rather than from mere autobiographical circumstances, the New Zealand schoolteacher dazzlingly describes an amoral and shatteringly beautiful pianist.
Prospero's Cell and Reflections on a Marine Venus, by Lawrence Durrell. A publishing duet, about the islands of Corfu and Rhodes, by the author of The Alexandria Quartet, confirms his superlative gift as a travel writer who uses scenery to intensify personal feeling.
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. Advise and Consent, Drury (1)* 2. Hawaii, Michener (2) 3. The Leopard, Di Lampedusa (3) 4. The Lovely Ambition, Chase (5) 5. Mistress of Mellyn, Holt (7) 6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (4) 7. The Dean's Watch, Goudge (8) 8. The Child Buyer, Hersey 9. The Last of the Just, Schwarz-Bart (9) 10. Rabbit, Run, Updike
NONFICTION
1 . The Waste Makers, Packard ( 1 ) 2. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer (2) 3. Born Free, Adamson (4) 4. Baruch: The Public Years (5) 5. The Politics of Upheaval, Schlesinger (6) 6. Folk Medicine, Jarvis (7) 7. Taken at the Flood, Gunther 8. The Liberal Hour, Galbraith (8) 9. How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market, Darvas (9) 10. Kennedy or Nixon: Does It Make Any Difference?, Schlesinger (3)
* All times E.S.T.
*Position on last week's list.
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