Anyone with bets down on both the Clay-Cooper fight and the Preakness is going to need two TV sets to keep track of the action this Saturday. For once, it isn't due to the networks' penchant for counterprogramming. Both events are being held simultaneously: the heavyweight championship bout, live from London via Early Bird satellite (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.);* the 91st running of the Triple Crown classic, live from Pimlico, Md. (CBS, 5:30-6 p.m.).

Thursday, May 19

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE WHITE HOUSE (NBC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). A satirical and musical special on American politics starring Elliott Reid, Tom Lehrer, the Plaza9 troupe and the Buster Davis Singers. A funny thing also seems to have happened on the way to Maine. Old Jack Paar, supposedly rusticating there, is host-narrator.

Friday, May 20

THE ANATOMY OF DEFENSE (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). A look at the hierarchy of command within the U.S. armed forces.

Saturday, May 21

MISS U.S.A. BEAUTY PAGEANT (CBS, 10-11:30 p.m.). June Lockhart, Pat Boone and Art Linkletter purvey the prime--and well pasteurized--pulchritude of this perennial, live from Miami Beach.

SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 9-11:30 p.m.). For those who can't stand the Miami Vestals, a touch of Vertigo may make them feel better. Alfred Hitchcock jumps Jimmy Stewart, Kim Novak and Barbara Bel Geddes through the usual nightmarish hoops.

Sunday, May 22

PERRY MASON (CBS, 9-10 p.m.). "The Case of the Final Fade-Out," the last new episode of this nine-year-old series, which is now being turned out to the pasture where the reruns grow. Three producers of the series will appear as extras in the episode, and Author Erie Stanley Gardner will play the judge. The plot is appropriate: a TV producer is found strangled with one of his own films.

EMMY AWARDS PROGRAM (CBS, 10-11:30 p.m.). TV crows over its own. Presenting the statuettes will be Mary Tyler Moore, Dick Van Dyke, Adam West, Barbara Stanwyck, and the Carols Channing and Burnett.

Tuesday, May 24

ALL-NEW 1966 NATIONAL DRIVERS TEST (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). For those who flunked the 1965 National Drivers Test and have been boning up ever since--a chance to try again, with different questions.

THEATER

On Broadway

IVANOV. Chekhov's first full-length play takes the pulse of a life-sick anti-hero consumed by boredom and narcotized by talk, the opiate of the Russian gentry. John Gielgud's acting and direction somewhat jangle the playwright's night music of the soul, but not enough to drive away a lover of Chekhov's genius.

MARK TWAIN TONIGHT! invites the literate mind to a banquet with a consistently ironic, sometimes macabre American wit. So thoroughly does Hal Holbrook immerse himself in the psyche of Clemens that his performance seems like an uncanny transmigration of souls.

PHILADELPHIA, HERE I COME! Before a man can fully embrace the future, he must be willing to endure a somewhat painful relinquishing of the past. In an honestly affecting portrait of an Irish emigre, Playwright Brian Friel depicts a young man caught between the pull of memories and the beckoning of hopes.

SWEET CHARITY. Dancer Gwen Verdon is dazzling as the doxy with a heart of gold, and Bob Fosse's brilliant choreography is as refreshing as a spring shower. But Neil Simon's book is a discouraging reminder that every silver lining must have its cloud.

CACTUS FLOWER. While the French venerate Venus, they pay delicate court to Cupid as well, and delight in mixing a modicum of mischief in their amour. This sex farce imported from Paris is amusing proof that they do indeed preach well what they practice.

YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU, but you can enjoy it while you have it, is the moral of this madness. The hilarious Sycamore family was first introduced to Broadway 30 years ago by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, and it's nice to have them back in the neighborhood.

RECORDS

Hot Singles

SLOOP JOHN B (Capitol). The Beach Boys hoist sail to the tune of a seaworthy old chanty with a trim new arrangement by Brian Wilson that starts off rolling softly but soon has everyone swinging. The lads play it safe on the flip side with a Beatle-sounding You're So Good to Me about a doll who is kind and small. The music satisfies, but the words ("You take my hand, and you understand . . .") don't quite have the grip of I Want to Hold Your Hand.

DIONNE WARWICK: MESSAGE TO MICHAEL (Scepter). "I wish someone would tell me where I fit in," this pop-gospel-rhythm-and-blues singer often asks. Dionne needn't fret; Hal David's lyrics, Bert Bacharach's music, and her own choir-loft wail fit together like Hallelujah and revival meetings.

LEANING ON THE LAMP POST (MGM) finds Peter Noone, the Lancashire-toned singer of Herman's Hermits, waiting "in case a certain little lady comes by." Clearly the quintet is also waiting for another gold platter to add to their collection of five, with some help expectable from their just released movie Hold On (theme song on flip side).

THE GREENWOODS: PLEASE DON'T SELL MY DADDY NO MORE WINE (Kapp). These five lads and two lasses do folk music with a pop sound. The present item is the bluesy lament of a sweet young chick whose daddy used to buy her pretty dresses and who now wears only threadbare hand-me-downs 'cause Poppa spends all his dough in Old Joe's Friendly Barroom.

NANCY SINATRA: HOW DOES THAT GRAB YOU, DARLIN'? (Reprise). Nancy gets tired of waiting around for her wandering tom, and scats. Fans who bought 1,000,000 copies of her first hit record, These Boots Are Made for Walkin', are sure to go for this livelier-stepping tune. Her boots may not be seven-league, but Frankie's little girl is making it in her own time.

THE MAMA'S AND THE PAPA'S: MONDAY, MONDAY (Dunhill). The popular quartet is going strong all week, any week, with this understated soul crusher by John Phillips, the group's lead guitarist. The baritone and tenor make a good backdrop for the female voices, and the sawing strings add the right touch of heartache.

THE McCOYS: COME ON LET'S GO (Bang). Record No. 4 by this male quartet from Indiana. Although the rock beat nearly drowns out the words, you get the message loud and clear--a call to spooning, not traveling.

THE YOUNG RASCALS: GOOD LOVIN' (Atlantic). Still another rock group, adding to the glut. This one bloomed in the Garden State--which makes the Deep South Negro drawl puzzling, if pleasing. Rudy Clark and Arthur Resnick turn out a corny but effective song, which the rascals deliver with gospel fervor: "I was feelin' so bad, I asked my family doctor just what I had." And the M.D., with a wise "Yeah, yeah," prescribes: "Good lovin'."

CINEMA

JUDEX. A subtle, sophisticated French tribute to period pop art, based on the serialized adventures of a half-forgotten superhero who liked to vanquish villains and save maidens back in the silent-screen era.

BORN FREE. Kenya's scenery is spectacular, but the big cats snatch the lion's share of attention in a delightful film version of Joy Adamson's book about Elsa the lioness, whose loyalty and intelligence would do credit to any species.

MORGAN! An improper bohemian misfit (David Warner) goes ape and declares gorilla war on his former wife (Vanessa Redgrave) in a wayward British comedy that only occasionally gets out of hand.

HARPER. As a private eye focused on a kidnaping case, Paul Newman revives the Bogart tradition in lively style, with seedy-to-sumptuous local color supplied by Julie Harris, Arthur Hill and Lauren Bacall.

THE GIRL-GETTERS. Bird hunters fill their quota at a sleazy English seaside resort, where one young beachnik (Oliver Reed) shows a particular flair for wasting his youth.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW. The life of Christ, taken word for word from Scripture by Director Pier Paolo Pasolini, an Italian Communist with a refreshingly earthy idea of how to do Bible movies.

SHAKESPEARE WALLAH. A brilliant and graceful comedy about a young actress (Felicity Kendal) who encounters romantic complications while touring India with a tatty Shakespearean company left over from the British colonial era.

DEAR JOHN. This tender, lusty lesson in love by Swedish Director Lars Magnus Lindgren studies the urgent biochemistry between a sailor (Jarl Kulle) and a girl (Christina Schollin) having a weekend fling.

THE GROUP. As in Mary McCarthy's gossipy bestseller about Vassar's class of '33, eight little grads make an entertaining soap-operatic mess of their lives while seeking sexual fulfillment and social betterment in the turbulent years before World War II.

THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET. Terrorized by the Nazis, a bumbling Aryan carpenter (Josef Kroner) turns his back on an old Jewish shopkeeper (Ida Kaminska) whose fate is the crux of this Oscar-winning tragicomedy from Czechoslovakia.

BOOKS

Best Reading

OMENSETTER'S LUCK, by William H. Gass. A portrait of the Puritan as a dirty old man. Philosophy Professor Gass pits a preacher crazed by suppressed sex and overt malice against a man who is simply good. Comic fireworks result.

THE BONAPARTES, by David Stacton. Napoleon may have been an ogre to his enemies, but his Corsican kin, disposed about the vacant thrones of Europe, merely made up a menagerie of bizarre misfits. Historical muckraking at its light-hearted best.

THE DOCTOR IS SICK, by Anthony Burgess. Burgess' late-blooming agility as a humorist is evident in this 1960 novel, just now reaching the U.S. in the wake of his growing reputation.

THE LAST BATTLE, by Cornelius Ryan. As he proved in his D-day marathon, The Longest Day, the author is a thorough reporter, and his account of the fall of Berlin is an encyclopedic and frequently exciting narrative.

A GENEROUS MAN, by Reynolds Price. The novel romps with rare grace and good humor through the tangled woods of adolescence, first love and new manhood as a North Carolina farm boy hunts for his lost brother and a wandering python.

GAUGUIN IN THE SOUTH SEAS, by Bengt Danielsson. In a levelheaded account of Gauguin's exile years in Tahiti and the neighboring Marquesas, Anthropologist Danielsson perceives the man without debasing the artist.

PAPA HEMINGWAY, by A. E. Hotchner. Writing with candor, an old acquaintance gives a lively account of the most famous literary man of his generation.

A PASSIONATE PRODIGALITY, by Guy Chapman. This reissue of an authentic classic of World War I is more than an unforgettable memoir of life and death in the trenches; it stands as an elegy for an entire generation.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. Valley of the Dolls, Susann (1 last week)

2. The Adventurers, Robbins (2)

3. The Embezzler, Auchincloss (4)

4. The Source, Michener (5)

5. The Double Image, Maclnnes (3)

6. Tell No Man, St. Johns (6)

7. The Comedians, Greene (8)

8. Those Who Love, Stone (7)

9. Menfreya in the Morning, Holt (10)

10. Columbella, Whitney (9)

NONFICTION

1. The Last Battle, Ryan (2)

2. In Cold Blood, Capote (1)

3. Papa Hemingway, Hotchner (6)

4. The Last 100 Days, Toland (3)

5. The Proud Tower, Tuchman (4)

6. Games People Play, Berne (5)

7. Unsafe at Any Speed, Nader (9)

8. A Thousand Days, Schlesinger (8)

9. How to Avoid Probate, Dacey (10)

10. A Gift of Prophecy, Montgomery (7)

*All times E.D.T.

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