Wednesday, May 27

TOWN MEETING OF THE WORLD (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.).* Former Vice President Richard M. Nixon, Senator J. William Fulbright, British Labor Party Leader Harold Wilson, and Maurice Schumann, chairman of France's Foreign Affairs Committee, will be linked via Telstar II for a live discussion of U.S. foreign policy, based on Senator Fulbright's recent denunciation of the assumptions behind U.S. policy.

Thursday, May 28

GENTLEMEN: START YOUR ENGINES (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). History of the Indianapolis 500-mile Speedway Race. Color.

KRAFT SUSPENSE THEATER (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Julie Harris stars as a homely schoolteacher wooed by a handsome fisherman who is determined to get hold of a ring she purchased in a curio shop. Color.

Friday, May 29

BOB HOPE PRESENTS THE CHRYSLER THEATER (NBC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Efrem Zimbalist Jr. stars in an adaptation of Carson McCullers' The Sojourner, the story of a restless wanderer.

Saturday, May 30

ABC'S WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). National A.A.U. Gymnastics championships from Kings Point, L.I.

SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 9 p.m.-conclusion). Sidney Poitier, Rock Hudson and Dana Wynter in Something of Value.

Sunday, May 31

THE CAMPAIGN AND THE CANDIDATES (NBC, 7-7:30 p.m.). Preview of the California primary elections.

Monday, June 1

MONDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 7:30-9:30 p.m.). Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Connor and Cyd Charisse in MGM's 1952 spoof of Hollywood moviemaking, Singin' in the Rain.

EAST SIDE, WEST SIDE (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Theodore Bikel guest-stars as the father of a 20-year-old mentally retarded boy accused of having molested a young girl. Repeat.

Tuesday, June 2

ONCE UPON A MATTRESS (CBS, 9:30-11 p.m.). Carol Burnett re-creates the role of Princess Winifred, which first brought her to fame.

THEATER On Broadway

HAMLET. Although Richard Burton as Hamlet and Hume Cronyn as Polonius burnish all the richness of language, wit and humor of the play, this revival, and specifically Burton's Hamlet, lacks the burning passion, the mind-tossed anguish, the self-divided will that Hamlet must have to be a true prince of tragedy.

FUNNY GIRL shines in the refracted light of the most brilliant new star to rise over Broadway in years, Barbra Streisand.

HIGH SPIRITS. As a spirit brought back to haunt her husband by means of a slapstick seance conducted by mad Bea Lillie, impish Tammy Grimes is about as ghostly grey as a rainbow.

ANY WEDNESDAY. Without even the help of her closetful of balloons, Sandy Dennis ascends from playmate to helpmate in two acts.

DYLAN. Alec Guinness probes the special hell in which Dylan Thomas found himself. His performance is moody, taut with rage and sometimes bright with humor.

HELLO, DOLLY! Part of this musical's nostalgic appeal lies in its evocative Oliver Smith backdrops of little old New York, part lies in its hissable boss-villain (David Burns), whom Dolly finds kissable. Most of it lies in the skirt-swishing charm of Carol Channing as Dolly.

BAREFOOT IN THE PARK. Playwright Neil Simon's deft quips punctuate this early-marital farce with humor to spare for a zany subplot involving a mother-in-law and a Continental charmer (he thinks).

Off Broadway

DUTCHMAN, by LeRoi Jones. In a New York subway car, a white girl who is a twitchy, neurotic bundle of well-informed cliches and sterile sexual aggressions, lures, taunts, degrades and destroys a Negro in a Brooks Brothers shirt, but not before he tells her, with profane and explicit brutality, how much Negroes hate whites.

THE BLOOD KNOT. Two half brothers, one light and one dark, act out in miniature the torment of being a racial outcast in present-day South Africa. Playwright Atholl Fugard writes with a tenderness, poignance and understanding that crosses all color lines.

THE TROJAN WOMEN, winner of a special citation from the New York Drama Critics' Circle, is a powerful, tormenting image of humans bearing the unbearable.

RECORDS

Opera

I PURITANI (3 LPs; London) is the last and loveliest of Bellini's operas, a story about the Roundheads and the Stuarts in the days of Cromwell incongruously drenched in Italian melody and sunlit harmony. Only singers skilled in bel canto, such as Joan Sutherland and Maria Callas, dare try it. In the new recording, Sutherland is the demented Elvira, and when she sings Vien, diletto in a deluge of perfectly matched and sparkling runs and trills, she embellishes even the embellishments. Maria Callas (on Angel's earlier version of I Puritani) has no such quicksilver in her voice, but in many poetic passages, exquisitely shaded and phrased, she is the better proof of Bellini's proposition: "The object of opera should be to weep in song."

GREAT SOPRANOS OF OUR TIME (Angel). Sutherland and Callas again, and out to draw blood. Callas plays Verdi's Lady Macbeth, chilling in the sleepwalking scene, and Sutherland is Donna Anna, crying vengeance on Don Giovanni at the top of her voice. The other reigning sopranos in this international exposition are Sweden's Birgit Nilsson singing Beethoven, France's Regine Crespin singing Wagner, Germany's Elisabeth Schwarzkopf singing Mozart, and Spain's Victoria de los Angeles singing Verdi and Gounod.

JUSSI BJOERLING sings operatic duets with Robert Merrill and scenes (from II Trovatore, Rigoletto) with Zinka Milanov and others (RCA Victor). Like Caruso, whose popularity he nearly attained, the Swedish tenor died before 50, but unlike Caruso he was able to leave a treasury of well-engineered recordings of Italian opera. These excerpts date from 1950 to 1956, and show his voice getting slightly heavier and darker while retaining its refinement and radiance.

THE CRUCIBLE. (2 LPs; Composers Recordings Inc.). Based on Arthur Miller's play exposing some of the all too human motives behind the Puritan witch hunts, this 1962 Pulitzer prizewinner is the most successful to date of the operas subsidized by the Ford Foundation. Robert Ward's music is conservative by Schoenbergian standards, but dramatic, with syncopated, dissonant hymns and minor-keyed, folklike tunes suggesting the poisoned New England atmosphere. Most of the New York City Opera singers who premiered the work record it here with fine esprit de corps, led by Conductor Emerson Buckley.

BORIS GODUNOV (Angel). Highlights from Moussorgsky's masterpiece sung by the black-voiced Bulgarian basso, Boris Christoff. His characterization of Godunov is justly renowned. "Always I die new deaths. Always I change," says Christoff. Here he dies a brooding, pitiful sinner, and in the Clock Scene, the terror of his guilt creeps into his voice as quietly as a spreading stain.

CINEMA

THE ORGANIZER. Director Mario (Big Deal on Madonna Street) Monicelli's vivid, moving, timelessly beautiful portrait of 19th century Italy comes into sharp focus on Marcello Mastroianni, demonstrating his remarkable versatility as a socialist Savonarola who leads Turin textile workers in a strike that fails.

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE. Istanbul provides an exotic backdrop for the harem-scare-'em adventures of James Bond, alias 007, alias Sean Connery. A sly spoof of Ian Fleming's fiction.

THE GRAND OLYMPICS. Made in Italy, this color sportstacular dazzlingly synthesizes the glory that was Rome's during the summer Olympiad of 1960.

THE NIGHT WATCH. This perceptive French thriller follows five jailbirds along an underground escape route and unearths a bitter tale of dishonor among men.

BECKET. Richard Burton is England's 12th century Archbishop of Canterbury, Peter O'Toole is King Henry II--both bring grandeur to a stunning, cerebral spectacle based on the drama by Jean Anouilh.

THE SERVANT. As a conniving "gentleman's gentleman" who masters his master, Dirk Bogarde puts a fine polish on Director Joseph Losey's study of class distinction in Britain.

THE WORLD OF HENRY ORIENT spins hilariously when Concert Pianist Peter Sellers finds his private life ruined by rambunctious Teen-Agers Tippy Walker and Merrie Spaeth.

DR. STRANGELOVE, OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB. Stanley Kubrick's black comedy about nuclear war features fine performances by Sterling Hayden, George C. Scott and the ubiquitous Peter Sellers.

YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW. Disporting themselves con brio, Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni make memorable fun of three zesty folk tales directed by Vittorio De Sica.

THE SILENCE. A litany on selfishness, loneliness and death, starkly told and austerely photographed, with a cast of non-normal characters directed with brooding penetration by Ingmar Bergman.

TOM JONES. Lusty lads pursue busty maids through "Best" Director Tony Richardson's wonderfully wicked assault on Fielding's 18th century classic. Winner of four 1963 Oscars.

BOOKS

Best Reading

CRISIS IN BLACK AND WHITE, by Charles E. Silberman. The author believes that the best, in fact the only, way to achieve equality and integration is by massive, militant drives in housing, schools and jobs. A thoughtful study of the Negro revolution at a crucial stage.

KING EDWARD THE SEVENTH, by Philip Magnus. It was "Prince Bertie's" misfortune that he had to wait 40 years of his adult life before he could take over from his mother, Queen Victoria, but he filled the years by becoming monarch of his own kingdom of society's scandal and fashion.

A MOVEABLE FEAST, by Ernest Hemingway. Toward the end of his life, the novelist wrote these memoirs of the '20's in Paris when he was young and poor. The result is a poetic word picture of Paris, a loving one of his first wife, and waspish anecdotes of Joyce, Ford Madox Ford, and especially the Fitzgeralds, who are treated unkindly.

PEDRO MARTINEZ, by Oscar Lewis. With his tape recorder spinning, the author of The Children of Sanchez gets down the biography of another Mexican: a peasant farmer who engaged in one ill-fated political reform after another.

THE SPIRE, by William Golding. In this medieval parable, an obsessed canon orders a huge stone spire to be built atop his fragile cathedral, only to realize at last that his monument was not to God's glory but his own.

EPISODE-REPORT ON THE ACCIDENT INSIDE MY SKULL, by Eric Hodgins. The author of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House recounts his partial recovery from a "cerebrovascular accident" (in layman's terms, a stroke). His wit and skill with words are totally unimpaired.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Le Carre (1 last week)

2. Convention, Knebel and Bailey (3)

3. The Group, McCarthy (2)

4. The Night in Lisbon, Remarque (6)

5. The Wapshot Scandal, Cheever (5)

6. Von Ryan's Express, Westheimer (4)

7. The Spire, Golding (10)

8. The Deputy, Hochhuth (7)

9. The Martyred, Kim (9)

10. The Venetian Affair, Maclnnes (8)

NONFICTION

1. Four Days, U.P.I, and American Heritage (1)

2. A Day in the Life of President Kennedy, Bishop (2)

3. Diplomat Among Warriors, Murphy (3)

4. A Moveable Feast, Hemingway (6)

5. The Naked Society, Packard (4)

6. The Green Felt Jungle, Reid and Demaris (5)

7. Profiles in Courage, Kennedy (7)

8. My Years with General Motors, Sloan (8)

9. In His Own Write, Lennon

10. Beat the Dealer, Thorp

* All times E.D.T.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.