Wednesday, January 11
WEDNESDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (ABC, 9-11 p.m.).* The Hollywood version of ancient Greece's--not James Joyce's--Ulysses (1955), with Kirk Douglas, Silvana Mangano and Anthony Quinn.
Thursday, January 12
ABC STAGE 67 (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). "Sex in the Sixties," an inquiry into the changing attitudes toward sex in this decade. Participating in the discussion are Drs. William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson, authors of Human Sexual Response, Dr. John Rock, director of the Rock Reproductive Clinic--and Playboy's Hugh Hefner.
Friday, January 13
RANGO (ABC, 9-9:30 p.m.). The Lone Ranger reborn and played for laughs, with Tim Conway as a square Texas lawman and Guy Marks as his faithful Indian scout, Pink Cloud. In this episode, Rango is mistaken for an outlaw by a gang of cutthroats who promptly elect him their leader and take him on a series of holdups. Premiere.
CBS FRIDAY NIGHT MOVIES (CBS, 9-11:15 p.m.). PT-109 (1963), with Cliff Robertson as Lieut, (j.g.) John F. Kennedy in command of a PT boat fighting a losing battle against a Japanese destroyer in World War II.
THE ISLAND CALLED ELLIS (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). A documentary on what has been called "the most majestic theme in U.S. history": the great and continuing flood of immigration across the Atlantic. Jose Ferrer is the narrator at Ellis Island.
Saturday, January 14
CBS GOLF CLASSIC (CBS, 4-5 p.m.). Don January and Julius Boros team up against Lionel and Jay Hebert at the Firestone Country Club in Akron in the first of a series of exhibitions that were taped last fall, and will be telecast this winter.
ABC'S WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). A basketball exhibition with the Harlem Magicians and Hartford Explorers in Baltimore's Civic Arena, plus the 1967 Women's International Skiing Championship at Oberstaufen, Germany.
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 9-11:15 p.m.). Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn and William Holden in Sabrina (1954), the Cinderella story of a chauffeur's daughter who becomes the toast of Long Island society.
Sunday, January 15
THE CATHOLIC HOUR (NBC, 1:30-2 p.m.). Part 2 of "The Church and War: the Middle Ages" traces the period from the defense of Rome through the Crusades to the invention of gunpowder.
FIRST N.F.L.-A.F.L. CHAMPIONSHIP GAME (NBC and CBS, 4 p.m. to conclusion). The game that ought to settle a lot of arguments among pro football fans as the champions of the National Football League and the young American Football League knock heads at the Los Angeles Coliseum.
Tuesday, January 17
DAKTARI (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Filmed in Gorongoza National Park, Mozambique, this episode about how Dr. Tracy treats his injured pet lion includes some striking scenes of a village actually besieged by a pride of hungry wild lions.
CBS NEWS SPECIAL (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). "The Italians," a reconnaissance of the Italian national character--all the genius, excesses and exaggerations of a people who as Italian Author Luigi Barzini, narrator of the show, puts it, "live in the perpetual baroque."
THEATER
On Broadway
AT THE DROP OF ANOTHER HAT brings an antipodal pair, Michael Flanders and Donald Swann, back to Broadway with a jaunty, sly revue in what they call the "theater of kindness." They scramble their comic omelet with such pixy princeliness that it becomes a royal banquet of mirth.
THE STAR-SPANGLED GIRL, by Neil Simon, makes The Odd Couple a threesome. A pair of post-Ivy League rebels (Anthony Perkins and Richard Benjamin) publish a protest magazine with virtuously impoverished zeal until a girl (Connie Stevens) shows up to curdle their joy. The gags come in two varieties: Simon-pure and simple Simon.
I DO! I DO! Whipped cream and frosting may a wedding cake make--but not a marriage. Only the shimmering talents of two superstars, Mary Martin and Robert Preston, and the agile hand of Director Gower Champion, make this confectionery adaptation of The Fourposter palatable.
WALKING HAPPY is the poverty-to-prosperity saga of a Lancashire bootmaker whose station in life is raised through no fault of his own. Norman Wisdom is the hottest property of this warming musical.
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 re-creation of the vulgarity of the era, this musical is a success of style. But its book is vacuum-packed.
RIGHT YOU ARE, like The School for Scandal, centers on a group of gossipers, but in Luigi Pirandello's philosophical drama, the effect is tragic and destructive. A handsome production by the APA.
THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE. Frank Marcus turns a harsh spotlight on the transformation of a radio heroine (Beryl Reid) who plays a selfless nurse on the air--and then performs in private life as a violent lesbian terrorizing all who cross her path.
Off Broadway
AMERICA HURRAH. Three brilliant playlets by Jean-Claude van Itallie refract and reflect some of the dominant, dissonant hues in mid-20th century American life.
RECORDS
Opera
VERDI: FALSTAFF (3 LPs; Columbia). Verdi's last opera, an ebullient celebration of love and life, was written when he was 79, and Leonard Bernstein has captured all of its beauty and range. The entire cast exploits the comic possibilities in the music, but Regina Resnik as Dame Quickly and Graziella Sciutti as Nanetta stand out--along with the redoubtable Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who, as Falstaff, makes his voice convey everything from arrogance to cravenness to humiliation. At times the mirth seems about to explode in all directions, but Bernstein's firm hand directing the Vienna Philharmonic gathers it in and the voices taper off in the graceful, fluid way that Verdi had of ending sequences.
MOZART: DON GIOVANNI (4 LPs; Angel). Mozart's masterpiece has seldom, if ever, received a handsomer garland of vocally and dramatically exciting performances. Nicolai Ghiaurov may still be a shade behind Pinza and Siepi as the Don, but only a shade. Christa Ludwig's voice is a column of fire as she plays the outraged Elvira; Mirella Freni portrays a warm Zerlina, and Nicolai Gedda is a Don Octavio who can sing the limpid lines and long cadenzas and still project masculinity. The surprise performance is Walter Berry's Leporello--a habitually terrified man, praying and muttering, rather than the usual Italian-style clown. A great Donna Anna still eludes all the recordings, but Claire Watson hits all the notes, if somewhat tentatively at times. Otto Klemperer leads the New Philharmonia Orchestra, and with the exception of a few slow tempos, it is an excellent performance.
DONIZETTI: LUCREZIA BORGIA (3 LPs; RCA Victor). Montserrat Caballe, the young Spanish soprano who burst on the scene two years ago, records her first complete opera, and she dominates the performance with an awesome array of gifts: a voice that responds to every emotional nuance, and scales and arpeggios that occasionally rival Sutherland's. The music is routine Donizetti--neither as outlandish as Lucia nor as lyrical as L'Elisir d'Amore.
MASCAGNI: CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA AND LEONCAVALLO: I PAGLIACCI (3 LPs; Deutsche Grammophon). The Vienna's Herbert von Karajan has always been long on nerve--and that is what it takes to make an album from Cav, which does not have quite enough singing to be an opera and Pag, which has altogether too much vocal noise. Still, these are good performances. Carlo Bergonzi plays both Turiddu and Canio, and it is a pleasure to hear his warm, sensuous, quintessentially Italian tenor. Fiorenza Cossotto as Santuzza is one of the few mezzos around these days with a true top range, while Rolando Panerai is a dashing, almost too libidinous Silvio.
CINEMA
BLOWUP. For his first English-language film, Italian Director Michelangelo Antonioni develops a closeup of a young, successful pop photographer who accidentally records a murder while snapping candids around London. Though all the elements for an ingenious thriller are at hand, Antonioni underplays the whodunit and focuses instead on his characteristic concern: the gap between seeing and feeling.
GAMBIT. Michael Caine and Shirley MacLaine are paired as a burglar and his accomplice in this nonchalant suspense comedy about "the perfect crime." Set in Hong Kong and the Middle East, the plot is a labyrinthine series of twists and turns that culminates in five possible endings, all highly incredible but still rousing good fun.
FUNERAL IN BERLIN picks up the trail of Harry Palmer (Michael Caine), that scruffy, insubordinate British agent whom audiences first met in The Ipcress File, and follows his movements from crisis to crisis in Berlin. Though the script is a bit muddled, the action is engrossing, the dialogue pert, and the suspense enlivened by honest humor.
A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. The collaboration of Director Fred Zinnemann, Screenwriter Robert Bolt and Actor Paul Scofield has produced one of the year's best films. The heart of the drama is a conflict of conscience, as Sir Thomas More, Chancellor of England, tries to find a way to serve both his King and his God.
FAHRENHEIT 451. Ray Bradbury's somber tale about a futuristic society that burns books has been reworked by France's Francois Truffaut into a mild, gay little film starring Oskar Werner and Julie Christie as two 21st century "radicals."
BOOKS
Best Reading
HAROLD NICOLSON: DIARIES AND LETTERS, 1930-1939, edited by Nigel Nicolson. A rare and engaging eyewitness account of the turbulent '30s, culled from the daily diary of a civilized Englishman who seemingly went everywhere and knew everybody.
PAPER LION, by George Plimpton. Though he was a miserable failure as temporary last-string quarterback for the Detroit Lions, Plimpton succeeded in using his adventure to write the most authentic book to date about pro football.
LETTERS OF JAMES JOYCE, edited by Richard Ellmann. The letters show the terrors, suspicions and jealousies that were magically transformed into irony and humor in Joyce's great novels.
SATORI IN PARIS, by Jack Kerouac. The zestful, pie-eyed piper of the beats relates the details of a wacky safari to France in a vain effort to track down some supposedly noble Kerouac ancestors.
VESSEL OF WRATH, by Robert Lewis Taylor. A whimsical tour of the trail that hatchet-swinging Carry Nation blazed through the hogsheads and saloons of her time.
THE BRITISH MUSEUM IS FALLING DOWN, by David Lodge. This young British novelist's antic spirit needs leashing, but readers may enjoy the wild ride past several vulnerable institutions, among them the Roman Catholic Church and the airless world of scholarship.
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. Valley of the Dolls, Susann (3 last week)
2. The Secret of Santa Vittoria, Crichton (1)
3. Capable of Honor, Drury (2)
4. The Birds Fall Down, West (5)
5. The Mask of Apollo, Renault (4)
6. The Fixer, Malamud (7)
7. Tai-Pan, Clavell (9)
8. All in the Family, O'Connor (6)
9. A Dream of Kings, Petrakis (10)
10. The Adventurers, Robbins (8)
NONFICTION
1. Everything But Money, Levenson
2. Rush to Judgment, Lane (3)
3. Games People Play, Berne (5)
4. The Jury Returns, Nizer (8)
5. Paper Lion, Plimpton
6. The Boston Strangler, Frank (2)
7. With Kennedy, Salinger (4)
8. Random House Dictionary of the English Language (6)
9. The Search for Amelia Earhart, Goerner (7)
10. How to Avoid Probate, Dacey (9)
* All times E.S.T.
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