Wednesday, December 21
ABC STAGE 67 (ABC, 10-11 p.m.).*
Truman Capote narrates his adaptation of A Christmas Memory, an autobiographical tale of a lonely old woman and a small boy who stand together against the sensible world of grownups, which Capote wrote for Mademoiselle in 1956. With Geraldine Page as a distant spinster cousin and Donnie Melvin as "Buddy," age 7.
Saturday, December 24
THE SMITHSONIAN (NBC, 12:30-1 p.m.).
"Our First Ladies" uses some of the memorabilia from the Smithsonian's extensive collections.
THE JACKIE GLEASON SHOW (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.).
On a dreamy jaunt through the fields of fantasy, The Poor Soul meets Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Old King Cole, Beauty and the Beast, Rumpelstiltskin and other fabled characters.
THE HOLLYWOOD PALACE (ABC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.).
Bing plays host for the Crosby clan, Bob Newhart, Cyd Charisse and Kate Smith on a Christmas special.
CHRISTMAS LIGHTS (CBS, 11:15-11:30 p.m.).
In a song-filled talk to his children, Oscar Brown Jr. tells of the Christmas lights that he knew all year round--because his father manufactured them.
THE HEART OF CHRISTMAS (NBC, 11:15 p.m. to midnight).
Skitch Henderson and his orchestra playing the traditional tunes.
CHRISTMAS EVE SPECIAL (CBS, 11:30 p.m. to midnight).
A musical special, "Let the Desert Be Joyful," featuring the Tucson Boys Chorus performing at the 18th century Spanish mission, San Xavier del Bac, known as "the white dove of the desert."
CHRISTMAS EVE SERVICES (midnight to conclusion).
Midnight Mass from the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington (ABC); services from Washington Square Methodist Church, Manhattan (CBS); midnight Mass from St. Patrick's Cathedral, Manhattan (NBC).
Sunday, December 25
L'ENFANCE DU CHRIST (CBS, 10-11 a.m.).
This special presentation of the Hector Berlioz oratorio-trilogy features Giorgio Tozzi, Charles Anthony, Helen Vanni and the John Butler Dancers with Carmen de Lavallade.
CHRISTMAS DAY PROTESTANT CHURCH SERVICE (NBC, 11 a.m. to noon).
Episcopal services from the Washington Cathedral.
DISCOVERY '66 (ABC, 11:30 a.m. to noon).
Kukla, Ollie and Beulah Witch are guides on a tour of "swinging London," including a stop at Carnaby Street, a ride down the Thames and the changing of the Royal Guard.
DIRECTIONS (ABC, 1-2 p.m.).
"Christmas in the Marketplace," a musical drama about a gypsy band that each year on Christmas Eve performs its own version of the Nativity.
CBS NEWS SPECIAL (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.).
Correspondent Charles Kuralt visits New York City's Spanish Harlem to see how the Puerto Rican community celebrates "Christmas in El Barrio."
AMAHL AND THE NIGHT VISITORS (NBC, 6:30-7:30 p.m.).
Gian Carlo Menotti's opera about the poor, crippled boy who generously offers his crutch to the "Child" in Bethlehem.
THE SUNDAY NIGHT MOVIE (ABC, 9-11 p.m.).
The premiere of a full-length movie produced specially for television, The Dangerous Days of Kiowa Jones, starring Robert Horton, Sal Mineo, Nehemiah Persoff, Gary Merrill and Diane Baker.
Monday, December 26
NORTH-SOUTH SHRINE ALL STAR GAME (ABC, 4-7 p.m.). From Miami's Orange Bowl.
Tuesday, December 27 CBS NEWS SPECIAL REPORT (CBS, 10-10:30 p.m.).
"Westmoreland on Viet Nam." Correspondents Charles Collingwood and Morley Safer interview U.S. General William C. Westmoreland at his headquarters in Saigon.
In coming weeks, check your educational TV stations for:
FLORENCE: DAYS OF DESTRUCTION. Richard Burton narrates and Franco Zeffirelli directs this special report on the flood damage to Italy's priceless art treasures.
N.E.T. PLAYHOUSE (shown on Fridays). The Play of Daniel. A re-creation of the musical drama that was a Christmas favorite in 12th century TELEVISION
France. Filmed in the medieval setting of the Cloisters in upper Manhattan.
N.E.T. JOURNAL (shown on Mondays). "Head Start in Mississippi" tells of the war within the war on poverty, focusing on the rise and fall of the pilot Head Start group in Durant, Miss.
THEATER
On Broadway
I DO! I DO!, based on the 1951 play, The Fourposter, is a two-character, two-gun salute to the enduring joys and passing frustrations of 50 years of married life. While the musical is blessed in its stars, Mary Martin and Robert Preston, and in its director, Gower Champion, the book and score are blubber.
WALKING HAPPY is an amiable amble through a Dickensian landscape breezily propelled by moving sets, spirited choreography, and a beguiling zephyr named Norman Wisdom who, as a "my fair laddie," is a bootmaker lifted out of the lower classes by his shoestrings.
THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. Rosemary Harris and Ellis Rabb lead the suavely professional APA Repertory Company through Richard Sheridan's high-humored dissection of a gossipy group in 18th century London whose slashing tongues cut a wider path than their wits.
RIGHT YOU ARE. Is reality an illusion? Aren't a man's illusions most real to him? And doesn't each one appear a different being in the eyes of others? Right you are, Luigi Pirandello answered. If you think you are, he added. The APA again.
CABARET. The prevailing mood winds in the Berlin of 1930 were blowing toward Nazism and war--not exactly the bubbly stuff of which a heady musical is made. In its very success at recreating the decadence and vulgarity of the era, this adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin acts more as a depressant than a stimulant.
THE ROSE TATTOO. In his most verdant drama, Tennessee Williams molded his most earthy and full-blown heroine (Maureen Stapleton), a Sicilian widow in Louisiana, whose glory fades at the death of her husband, but is eventually brought back to bloom by another man (Harry Guardino).
THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE. A radio heroine beloved by millions for her sweetness and generosity makes life a maelstrom for her intimates with her tyrannical temper and oppressive ways. Comedienne Beryl Reid makes British Playwright Frank Marcus' lesbian protagonist a most believable bully.
Off Broadway
AMERICA HURRAH, and bravo for Playwright Jean-Claude van Itallie for the inventive dramatic form and sharp philosophical content of his three-playlet investigation of life in mid-20th century U.S.A.
EH? is Henry Livings' running assault on logic, the glorification of a British "nit," a living non sequitur whose code of life is "Bim bom ban on the brain pan."
CINEMA
A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. Playwright Robert Bolt and Director Fred Zinnemann have transformed this 1960 drama into one of the most intelligent religious movies ever made. Paul Scofield is even more mesmeric as Sir Thomas More than he was in the play, pulling all eyes toward the brilliant Christian who chooses to save his soul and lose his head in the greatest scandal of the 16th century.
GOAL! There are enough kicks for everybody in this film about the world series of soccer held in England last summer. With 16 of the world's top teams competing, it will command the empathy of any spectator still animal enough to admire the aspect of men in intricate, continuous, beautiful and aggressive movement.
TEXAS ACROSS THE RIVER. Cliches fly like arrows in this rambunctious spoof of that hallowed tradition, the Hollywood western. Barely defending Texas against the Comanches are Dean Martin as a bunkhouse bum, Rosemary Forsyth as pioneer womanhood, and Joey Bishop as a faithful Indian scout.
FAHRENHEIT 451. Francois Truffaut's weirdly gay little picture has Hero Oskar Werner as a pyromaniacal punk who sincerely thinks that "books are just rubbish." Werner is unshakably believable, but Julie Christie, in the dual role of his dull wife and spirited woman who arouses his interest in books, strongly supports the suspicion that this actress cannot actually act.
CULDESAC. A comedy of terrors with Donald Pleasence playing a flabby old fool of a husband to Francoise Dorleac's snippy little chippy who lusts for excitement--and finds it when a mobster-on-the-lam (Lionel Stander) staggers into their home.
THE FORTUNE COOKIE. Director Billy Wilder's latest jab at American mores involves a money-grubbing angler (Walter Matthau) who uses his brother-in-law (Jack Lemmon) as bait to hook a large insurance company and cheat it out of a tax-free $250,000.
THE PROFESSIONALS. The liveliest western dust-up since Shane stars Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Woody Strode and Robert Ryan as four nail-hard professional gunmen hired at $10,000 apiece to find an errant wife (Claudia Cardinale) and return her to her husband.
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM. Director Richard Lester's screen version of the Broadway hit is fussy and frenetic, but Comedian Zero Mostel saves the play as Pseudolus, a conniving, overstuffed Roman slave who would sell his own soul to buy his freedom.
BOOKS
Best Reading
LA VIDA, by Oscar Lewis. A nightmarish picture of poverty among Puerto Ricans in San Juan's La Esmeralda and New York City's Spanish Harlem--painted largely by the subjects themselves with the assistance of Anthropologist Lewis' ubiquitous tape recorder.
WINSTON S. CHURCHILL, by Randolph S. Churchill. The first of a five-volume biography of the most dazzling public man of modern times, written by his only son.
THE BEST TIMES, by John Dos Passes. An informal canter through a "narrative panorama" of the U.S. of the recent past. Historian-Journalist Dos Passes, having suffered ideological tumbles on both the left and right, now seems to have come to rest on a distrust of all systems that claim to improve mankind at the cost of freedom.
A HOUSE IN ORDER, by Nigel Dennis. A witty homage to the world's last gardener, a prisoner of war in some ultimate cataclysm who sits out the conflict in a greenhouse. When asked what he did during the war, he can answer with the Abbe Sieyes: "I survived."
VESSEL OF WRATH, by Robert Lewis Taylor. A new and nimble biography of Carry Nation, whose hatchet made a shambles of saloons from Medicine Lodge to Coney Island.
THE HEIRS OF CAIN, by Abraham Rothberg. Violence has become the idiom of the times, and Rothberg proves that he understands all the nuances, using an espionage mission as a framework for a brilliant retelling of the history of the Diaspora in this century.
LA CHAMADE, by Franc,oise Sagan. Another dissection of the anatomy of a love affair, written crisply and economically by the heiress to Colette's throne.
TREMOR OF INTENT, by Anthony Burgess. The versatile Burgess comes up with one of the best espionage novels since The Spy Who Came In from the Cold.
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. The Secret of Santa Vittoria, Crichton (1 last week)
2. Valley of the Dolls, Susann (2)
3. Capable of Honor, Drury (3)
4. The Mask of Apollo, Renault (4)
5. The Birds Fall Down, West (5)
6. Tai-Pan, Clavell (6)
7. The Fixer, Malamud (8)
8. All in the Family, O'Connor (7)
9. A Dream of Kings, Petrakis (10)
10. The Adventurers, Robbins (9)
NONFICTION
1. Rush to Judgment, Lane (1)
2. Everything But Money, Levenson (3)
3. The Boston Strangler, Frank (2)
4. With Kennedy, Salinger (4)
5. The Search for Amelia Earhart, Goerner (10)
6. How to Avoid Probate, Dacey (5)
7. Games People Play, Berne (6)
8. The Jury Returns, Nizer (8)
9. Random House Dictionary of the English Language (7)
10. Human Sexual Response, Masters and Johnson (9)
*All times E.S.T.
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