Wednesday, December 13 KRAFT MUSIC HALL (NBC, 9-10 p.m.)* Groucho Marx hosts this week's show, "A Taste of Funny." Guests: Soupy Sales, Dick Cavett and Burns and Schreiber.

WEDNESDAY NIGHT MOVIE (ABC, 9-11 p.m.). George Segal, Arthur Hill, Teresa Wright and Yvette Mimieux in a TV retread of The Desperate Hours.

THE ANDY WILLIAMS CHRISTMAS SHOW (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Andy brings along the whole family for this holiday special.

Thursday, December 14 CHRYSLER PRESENTS THE BOB HOPE SHOW (NBC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Bob Hope portrays a modern-day Saint Nick caught in a traffic jam on a California freeway and thrown into jail. With Bob are Phil Silvers, Ernest Borgnine and Wally Cox.

Friday, December 15

BELL TELEPHONE HOUR (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Donald Voorhees hosts "Zubin Mehta: A Man and His Music," a profile on the life and career of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's brilliant young (30) Indian conductor. In one segment, Mehta will be seen conducting a performance of Verdi's Aida.

Saturday, December 16 N.C.A.A. FOOTBALL (ABC, 1:45 p.m. to conclusion). Georgia v. North Carolina State in the Liberty Bowl, from Memphis, Tenn.

MR. MAGOO'S CHRISTMAS CAROL (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). In this animated version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Mr. Magoo (the voice of Jim Backus) stars as Ebenezer Scrooge. Repeat.

CHRISTMAS WITH LORNE GREENE (NBC, 8:30-9 p.m.). Lome Greene with the UNICEF choir in a special program of yuletide songs and recitations.

Sunday, December 17 DISCOVERY (ABC, 11:30 a.m. to noon).

Continuing its trip through California, Discovery tours "San Francisco: Harbor of Harbors, Bay of Bays," seeing the waterfront, the Golden Gate Bridge, Nob and Telegraph hills, the Barbary Coast and reminiscing a bit about its fires, earth quakes and gold rush.

THE ETERNAL LIGHT (NBC, 1:30-2 p.m.).

"The World of Rembrandt" examines the long and creative relationship between the great master and the Jewish community of Amsterdam.

AMERICAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE (NBC, 4:30 p.m. to conclusion). The New York Jets v. the Oakland Raiders, from Oakland.

HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS (CBS, 7-7:30 p.m.). Boris Karloff does the talking in an animated special based on Dr. Seuss's fable of the wicked Grinch and his attempt to keep Christmas from the residents of Whoville. Repeat.

THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW (CBS, 8-9 p.m.).

Featuring Joel Grey, Spanky and Our Gang, and Patti Page.

AMONG THE PATHS TO EDEN (ABC, 8-9 p.m.). A TV adaptation of Truman Capote's lonely-hearts story about two people who meet in a cemetery -- a widower (Martin Balsam) paying his respects to his late wife and a spinster (Maureen Stapleton) who has heard that a graveyard is a good place to look for a husband.

Monday, December 18 AT THE DROP OF ANOTHER HAT (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). English Satirists Michael Flanders and Donald Swann in a distillation of last year's Broadway show, which deftly poked fun at practically everything.

Tuesday, December 19 A CHRISTMAS MEMORY (ABC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Truman Capote again, this time in person as narrator of his autobiographical tale of an old woman (Geraldine Page) and a small boy (Donnie Melvin) who stand together against the sensible world of grownups. Repeat.

THE RED SKELTON HOUR (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Howard Keel guest-stars in a special Christmas tale written by Skelton with a dream sequence: "The Tiny Ballerina," featuring Jillana, formerly of the New York City Ballet.

Check local listings for dates and times of these NET specials:

NET JOURNAL (Shown on Mondays). "April Is the End of Summer" presents the Australian Broadcasting Commission's report on Thailand, from Communist insurgency in the north to the opium trade.

NET FESTIVAL. "The Chicago Picasso: Greatness in the Making" studies the 163-ton steel sculpture designed for Chicago's Civic Center Plaza, from its conception through four years of consultations, fund raising, fabrication and construction.

NET PLAYHOUSE (Shown on Fridays). "Infancy and Childhood: Two Plays by Thornton Wilder" is the TV premiere of a pair of one-acters about the failure of generations to communicate.

THEATER On Broadway

PANTAGLEIZE. Belgian playwright Michel de Ghelderode was filled with antic despair, a quality which is strikingly transmitted in a bold, resourceful production of his 1929 play by the APA repertory company. His hero (Ellis Rabb) is an innocent, who in the course of a search for his destiny, scratches himself against the world and sets it aflame with revolution. In his "farce to make you sad" Ghelderode satirizes every brand of casuist who ever hoped to remold the world--and manages to reduce all of history to irony.

EVERYTHING IN THE GARDEN. Edward Albee's latest effort, adapted from a British play by Giles Cooper, is not so much a black comedy as a tattletale grey. Starring Barbara Bel Geddes and Barry Nelson, Garden puts forth the notions that hell is possessions, and that in the rush to acquire them, men trample love, decency and honor.

SOMETHING DIFFERENT. In his Broadway debut as a writerdirector, Carl Reiner hits on the static notion of a writer with a block. His playwright hero, mimed with manic-depressive animation by Bob Dishy, thinks his typewriter will tinkle merrily again if he can re-create his old home setting, complete with cockroaches and nagging Yiddish mama. Auditioning for the role of the mother, an Irish biddy, a C-cup teeny-bopper and a formidable Negro housekeeper stir up a little comic lint from a play that is as flat as a rug.

ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD switches the spotlight from Hamlet to his Wittenberg school chums. With dexterous wit and sure stagecraft, British Playwright Tom Stoppard shows how little straws caught in the sweep of history often see great tumults as just so much wind. Superb performances by John Wood, Brian Murray and Paul Hecht add momentum to a driving evening of theater.

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY, by Harold Pinter. A man whose birthday it is not finds himself the guest of honor at its celebration and behaves as if he were a corpse at his own wake. Which well might be the case. The early Pinter puzzler is brought to the Broadway stage with American actors who often pay more attention to their accents than to their performances.

Off Broadway

IPHIGENIA IN AULIS. After 2,400 years, the human truths in this drama by Euripides are still as fresh as open wounds. Directed with musical cadence and poetic tension by Michael Cacoyannis, the story of Agamemnon's sacrifice of his daughter for the Greek cause is a moving lament for all who die young in war. As Clytemnestra, Irene Papas brings the adrenal flow of a mother's love and grief to the stage.

THE TRIALS OF BROTHER JERO and THE STRONG BREED, by African Playwright Wole Soyinka, introduce two aspects of Nigerian life to Manhattan audiences. In the first play, Harold Scott is a devil of a "prophet" as he gathers his "flock" on the beaches. In the second, Scott gives a taut interpretation of a voluntary victim of tribal sacrifices.

IN CIRCLES is a circular play: in other words, a play that is written in circles: in other words, round. The words are by Gertrude Stein, which means that Gertrude Stein made up the words. Al Carmines is the musical composer, that is, the music was composed by a man called Carmines. A delight is a delight is a delight.

CINEMA

HOW I WON THE WAR. Richard Lester mixes explosively funny moments with comedy of a blacker sort in a surrealistic vision of war, as a platoon of World War II tommies (including Michael Crawford, Jack MacGowran, John Lennon) attempts to build an officers' cricket field behind enemy lines.

CHAPPAQUA. Instead of writing his autobiography, Conrad Rooks has made an 82-minute apologia pro sua dolce vita on film, playing himself as the mixed-up son of a rich man who spirals downward into the junkie's world of hallucination and finally emerges to self-realization.

COOL HAND LUKE. Sadistic guards are unable to shake the sang-froid of a cocky chain-gang prisoner (Paul Newman), who wins the respect of hostile fellow prisoners, until he is finally beaten into groveling for mercy.

MORE THAN A MIRACLE. An utterly mindless but endearing fairy tale starring Sophia Loren as a peasant girl who wins the hand of the prince (Omar Sharif), who hadn't liked the seven princesses his mother had lined up for him anyway.

THE COMEDIANS. Graham Greeneland lies somewhere between Purgatory and Hell, and in this particular film, it is in Haiti, where a skilled cast (including Richard Burton, Peter Ustinov, Alec Guinness,

Paul Ford and Elizabeth Taylor) finds some transcendently dramatic moments.

CAMELOT Vanessa Redgrave's performmance as Guinevere is the only reason to see Josh Logan's disappointing screen version of the Broadway hit musical.

BOOKS

Best Reading

WILLIAM MORRIS, HIS LIFE, WORK AND FRIENDS, by Philip Henderson. A biography of the 19th century English artist who excelled as a poet, philosopher, painter, architect, furniture designer and interior decorator.

THE FUTURE OF GERMANY, by Karl Jaspers. In a lucid and persuasive essay, the 85-year-old German philosopher urges his countrymen to build a nation based on individual responsibility rather than on an atavistic dream of a perfect system.

JOURNEY INTO THE WHIRLWIND, by Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg. An intensely personal account of the author's experiences in one of Stalin's slave-labor camps.

THE COLLECTED STORIES OF ANDRE MAUROIS. In 38 tales framed as conversations, recollections and letters, the late distinguished partisan in the battle of the sexes tours the terrain of women who are either wise or foolish, vital or declining, in love or remembering what it was like.

THE YEAR 2000, by Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Wiener. Members of New York's Hudson Institute, one of the nation's leading think tanks, offer educated speculations on the quality of life at the beginning of the 21st century.

MEMOIRS: 1925-1950, by George F. Kennan. During a crucial quarter-century of American-Russian relations, Diplomat Kennan was in official disfavor first for being too harsh toward the Soviets, then for being too soft; by hindsight, he was right more often than wrong.

THE SLOW NATIVES, by Thea Astley. A mod family in Brisbane meets its moral fate in this lively social satire by an Australian craftsman of the novel.

THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER, by William Styron. The passion and horror of the 1831 Negro slave revolt in Virginia are conveyed with eloquence in the Southern-born writer's fourth novel.

Best Sellers

FICTION 1. The Confessions of Nat Turner, Styron (1 last week) 2. The Gabriel Hounds, Stewart (3) 3. The Exhibitionist, Sutton (5) 4. Topaz, Uris (2) 5. The Chosen, Potok (4) 6. Rosemary's Baby, Levin (7) 7. Christy, Marshall (6) 8. The Arrangement, Kazan (9) 9. The Manor, Singer 10. A Night of Watching, Arnold (8)

NONFICTION 1. Our Crowd, Birmingham (1) 2. Nicholas and Alexandra, Massie (2) 3. Twenty Letters to a Friend, Alliluyeva (5) 4. The New Industrial State, Galbraith (3) 5. Incredible Victory, Lord (7) 6. Rickenbacker, Rickenbacker (4) 7. Memoirs: 1925-1950, Kennan (8) 8. Too Strong for Fantasy, Davenport 9. A Modern Priest Looks at His Outdated Church, Kavanaugh (6) 10. Between Parent and Child, Ginott

*All times E.S.T.

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