Come September. A pleasantly wacky new twist to the ancient game of belling the wolf, with Rock Hudson as an American millionaire who once a year visits his Italian mistress (Gina Lollobrigida) at his palatial villa on the Italian Riviera.
A Thunder of Drums. The best western so far in 1961 is three kinds of a durn good show: 1) a flawed but earnest attempt to portray the making of a man and a soldier; 2) a carefully untheatrical, affectionately vernacular attempt to revive the daily life of a frontier fort in the 1870s; 3) a masterly attempt to show what fighting Indians was really like.
Ada. Despite an overly cute central idea and the flim-flamboyance of Star Susan Hayward, competent script and direction make this a pleasant political coimdy about the road from bawdyhouse to Governor's mansion. Britain's Wilfrid Hyde White is superb as a major political snake.
Blood and Roses. Filmed at the Emperor Hadrian's villa outside Rome under the direction of Roger Vadim (And God Created Woman), this eerie tale of a lady vampire is the most subtle, careful and beautiful of the current crop of chillers. With Mel Ferrer.
Homicidal. Made in imitation of Hitchcock's Psycho, it surpasses its model in structure, suspense and sheer nervous drive.
The Honeymoon Machine. It is really the Hollywood machine, in a rare moment of felicitous clank, turning out the slick, quick, funny film for which it was designed--in this case about three young people who use a computer to assault the casino in Venice.
Fate of a Man. Among the best of the Soviet films seen in the U.S. during the current three-year-old cultural exchange, this one tells the agonizing story of a village carpenter whose life is shattered by war. Based on a story by Mikhail (And Quiet Flows the Don) Sholokhov.
The Parent Trap. The delightful story of teen-aged twins who try to kid their divorced parents into remarrying--both twins played by Hayley Mills, biggest child star since Temple and a better actress than Shirley was.
The Sand Castle. In a charming but not cloyingly sweet story, a little boy builds a castle of sand so stunning that it merits inclusion in Sir Bannister Fletcher's History of Architecture, while the camera roams in satiric asides among the flesh castles strewn on the beach.
TELEVISION
Wed., Sept. 20
Project Hope (CBS, 8:30-9 p.m.).* Films made in the islands of Indonesia record the contributions of the U.S. hospital ship Hope to medical progress in that 1 The Joey Bishop Show (NBC, 8:30-9 p.m.). PREMIERE of a new series in which Bishop plays a flack.
Thurs., Sept. 21
The Summer Sports Spectacular (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Milwaukee, Beaver Ridge Farms, Oak Brook, Royal Palm. Solo Cup and Tulsa-Aiken thwack it out in the finals of the national polo tournament.
Sat., Sept. 23
Update (NBC, 12 noon to 12:30 p.m.). PREMIERE of a news show, with NBC Washington Correspondent Robert Abernethy aiming his material at teenagers.
The Assassination Plot at Teheran (ABC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Dramatization of the rumored Nazi attempt on the lives of Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill in 1943.
Sun., Sept. 24
The Bullwinkle Show (NBC, 7-7:30 p.m.). PREMIERE of a comedy-variety show starring a blanket-eared, walleyed, stupid-looking, but amusing moose and other pasteboard beasts. Color.
Mon., Sept. 25
The College of the Air (CBS, 1-1:30 p.m., or at other times throughout the day as chosen by local stations). PREMIERE of network television's first college credit course, "The New Biology," taught daily by University of Chicago Assistant Professor of Biochemistry Ray Koppelman.
Kukla and Ollie (NBC, 5-5:05 p.m.). PREMIERE of new series, with occasional visits by Fran Allison.
Expedition (ABC, 7-7:30 p.m.). A visit to "The Water People of Burma."
87th Precinct (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). PREMIERE of a new bullet series. Wherever the 87th precinct is, it looks familiar. Tonight the precinct's supersleuth finds a female corpse floating in the river with a mysterious tattoo on her hand.
Tues., Sept. 26
The Dick Powell Show (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). PREMIERE of a new adventure series with Powell as host and occasional star. Tonight he is the inevitable gumshoe, trying to figure out who killed a young model, suspecting all ten of his guest stars: Nick Adams, Ralph Bellamy, Edgar Bergen, Lloyd Bridges, Jack Carson, Carolyn Jones, Dean Jones, Ronald Reagan, Mickey Rooney and Kay Thompson.
BOOKS
Best Sellers
Franny and Zooey, by J. D. Salinger. The author's first work in hard covers since Nine Stories (1953), a reprinting of two long New Yorker stories about the seven prodigious Glass siblings, is a joyous, balanced, masterly book, convoluted and mystical enough to fuel dormitory debates for several seasons.
The Age of Reason Begins, by Will and Ariel Durant. In the first volume of a trilogy with which he hopes to complete his formidable Story of Civilization, the author (assisted by his wife) examines the 16th and 17th centuries with admirably balanced but sometimes passionless rationalism. He finds the whole period marked by "the rise of murderous nationalism and the decline of murderous theologies."
Kidnap, by George Waller. This meticulous account adds nothing to what is known about the Lindbergh kidnaping, but it summarizes well the bizarre, tragic events of crime and capture.
Ippolita, by Alberto Denti di Pirajino. Highly reminiscent of The Leopard and written, as was that excellent novel, by an aging Sicilian duke, Ippolita draws an evocative portrait of semifeudal Italian society amid the first revolutionary stirrings in the early 19th century. The author depicts princes, peasants and his skinflint heroine with melodramatic gusto; but his most exact and memorable character is the past itself.
The Children of Sanchez, by Oscar Lewis. A tape-recorded documentary in which each of five members of a slum-dwelling Mexico City family tells of his own struggle for respect, love and individuality. Far from the dusty aridities of social science, the book offers a powerful, touching and intimate view of the long, and far from simple, annals of the poor.
An End to Glory, by Pierre-Henri Simon. Writing an eloquent antiwar tract in the form of a novel, the author tells the agony of a French professional soldier who, in Algeria, comes to believe that his is an ignoble role in a shameful war.
The Road Past Mandalay, by John Masters. Another face of war--the pride and nobility of fighting men at their best --is the concern of the author, who tells, more convincingly than in any of his novels, of his World War II service with the Indian army in the East.
Men and Women, by Erskine Caldwell. A collection of the best short stories of an author whose touch with humor and horror is superb, and who deserves better than his reputation as a drugstore patent-fiction merchant.
Collected Poems, by Robert Graves. The bent-nosed Jove of Majorca is no Yeats or Eliot, but he can outdistance these masters in evoking the moods of love, childhood or the classic past. In his own right, he is an impressive poet, truer to his passions than to the literary fashions of his time.
Best Sellers ( SQRT previously included in TIME'S choice of Best Reading)
FICTION 1. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Stone (1)
SQRT 2. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (2)
3. Mila 18, Uris (3)
4. The Winter of Our Discontent., Steinbeck (4)
5. Tropic of Cancer, Miller (6)
6. The Carpetbaggers, Robbins (5)
7. The Edge of Sadness, O'Connor (7)
8. Rembrandt, Schmitt (8)
SQRT 9. Franny and Zooey, Salinger
10. Master of This Vessel, Griffin
NONFICTION
SQRT 1. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer (2)
SQRT 2. The Making of the President 1960, White (3)
3. Inside Europe Today, Gunther (4)
4. A Nation of Sheep, Lederer (1)
SQRT 5. The New English Bible (5)
SQRT 6. Ring of Bright Water, Maxwell (6)
SQRT 7. Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin, Kennan (8)
8. The Sheppard Murder Case, Holmes
SQRT 9. Kidnap, Waller
SQRT 10. Nobody Knows My Name,
Baldwin
* All times E.D.T. -Position on last week's list.
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