TELEVISION

Wednesday, April 3

THE ABC WEDNESDAY NIGHT MOVIE (ABC, 9-11 pm)* Shirley MacLaine, John Forsythe and Edmund Gwenn have trouble disposing of a corpse in Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry (1955)

Thursday, April 4

CALIFORNIA GIRL (ABC, 9-10 p.m.). Now it's the girls who are going West, and this documentary studies all the many attractions that make California not so much a state as a state of mind for Hollywood hopefuls and others.

CBS THURSDAY NIGHT MOVIES (CBS, 9-11 p.m.). Don Murray demonstrates the power of positive thinking in One Man's Way (1964), the story of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale.

Friday, April 5

AMERICAN PROFILE: HOME COUNTRY, USA (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Chet Huntley discusses the belief that the strength of the U.S. rests in its grass roots. Camera crews roam the countryside recording the lives of Americans from East Boothbay Harbor, Me., to Bozeman, Mont.

Saturday, April 6

ABC'S WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). National Tourist Trophy Motorcycle Championship from Gardena, Calif ; N.C.A.A. Wrestling Championships from State College, Pa.; N.C.A.A. Skiing Championships from Steamboat Springs, Colo.

Sunday, April 7

PALM SUNDAY SPECIAL (NBC, 11 a.m.-noon). Roman Catholic Mass telecast live from St. John the Evangelist Church m Deer Park, Ohio.

GRAND PRIX OF SKIING (NBC, 5-6 p.m.). Highlights of the Governor's Cup competition from Lake Tahoe, Calif.

THE 215T CENTURY (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). "The Human Heart." Walter Cronkite questions South African heart surgeon Dr. Christiaan N. Barnard and other heart specialists on the moral and legal implications of transplanting human organs. Surviving heart patients, including Dr. Philip Blaiberg, will appear.

ABC SUNDAY NIGHT MOVIE (ABC, 9-11 p.m.). Hud (1963) starring Paul Newman, Patricia Neal, Melvyn Douglas and Brandon de Wilde.

Monday, April 8

40TH ANNUAL AWARDS PRESENTATION OF THE ACADEMY OF MOTION PICTURE ARTS AND SCIENCES (ABC, 10 p.m. to conclusion). Angie Dickinson, Macdonald Carey, Barbra Streisand, Audrey Hepburn, Warren Beatty, Kirk Douglas and Carol Channing join Bob (still-waiting-for-an-Oscar) Hope in this year's presentations. of Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt (1922) and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Pat Hingle and Richard Boone read selections from the two works.

THE CBS NEWS HOUR (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). "The Great American Novel." Eric Sevareid discusses the contemporary relevance of Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt (1922) and John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (1939). Pat Hingle and Richard Boone read selections from the two works.

NET PLAYHOUSE (Shown on Fridays). Sir Michael Redgrave, Rosemary Harris and Max Adrian star with Sir Laurence and Lady Olivier in his celebrated 1962 production of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya.

THEATER

On Broadway

LOOT. Black comedy has spawned black farce, and this is a saucy, irreverent, unremittingly amusing play that spews its lightly poisoned darts at freshly dead mothers, dutiful fathers, marriage, the Roman Catholic Church and police brutality. As a birdseed-brained flatfoot from Scotland Yard, George Rose pilfers the show.

THE CHERRY ORCHARD. Uta Hagen leads the APA in a gentle and balanced production of Chekhov's commentary on the sad absurdity of human beings who, unable to adapt themselves to the changes of history, grope about in a half-light that may be twilight and may be dawn. Pantagleize, The Show Off and Exit the King round out the repertory.

PORTRAIT OF A QUEEN is really a series of dramatied snapshots of a woman. As sensitively played by Dorothy Tutm, Victoria Regina seems only incidentally the ruler of an empire, and chiefly the ruled wife of her beloved consort Albert.

PLAZA SUITE is a ride through a tunnel of fun, flecked with a recognition of life's unfunny truths. In three playlets, Neil Simon hawks almost uninterrupted laughter, particularly in a sly satire of the Sunset Strip set, and a flailing farce about the father of a most reluctant bride.

Off Broadway

Some of the more satisfying of this season's offerings in Manhattan's smaller theaters: Ergo, a wacky expressionist exercise by Austrian Writer Jakov Lind; In Circles, an aptly named circular play by Gertrude Stein set to circular music by Al Carmines; Iphigenia in Aulis, a Euripedean antiwar drama that has lost little of its force through the centuries; The Indian Wants The Bronx, Israel Horovitz's study of the savagery that can lurk on any street; Your Own Thing, a marvelously modern, inventive and sophisticated rock version of Twelfth Night.

RECORDS

Instrumental

The familiar concerto in sonata form, with balanced themes and brilliant solos, seems to be dead, but composers still wirte concertos in the original sense of the word: simple two tonial forces opposed to each other. Some recent releases showing the directions the concerto has taken in this century:

CARTER: PIANO CONCERTO (RCA Victor). Unlike many of his contemporaries, Elliott Carter writes music for standard instruments, eschewing electronic effects and aleatory experiments. What's more, he even provides a dramatic script for this concerto. An individual (the piano) is influenced by society (the orchestra), learns that it is being misled, and ends up alienated and alone. Piano and orchestra converse in different chords like different dialects and at different tempos; swatches of sound appear in what seem desultory then frantic patterns; and at times the script calls for practically the whole Boston Symphony to damp down the valiant lone pianist, Jacob Lateiner--which seems particularly unfair since he (with a grant from the Ford Foundation) commissioned the work in the first place.

SCHOENBERG: PIANO CONCERTO AND VIOLIN CONCERTO (Columbia). A new release bringing together two earlier performances of these ripe, satisfying examples of twelve-tone composition. With Robert Craft conducting the nadian Broadcasting Corporation Symphony Glenn Gould plays the rich, almost Brahms-like piano part in the first concerto, and Israel Baker tackles the difficult violin work in the second concerto. Both pieces demonstrate that the intricacies of the dodecaphonic scale in no way limit emotional expression. "If a composer does not write from the heart, said Schoenberg, "he simply cannot produce good music." Schoenberg did both.

COPLAND: SYMPHONY FOR ORGAN AND ORCHESTRA (Columbia). Brooklyn-born Aaron Copland was finishing his composition studies in Paris in 1924 when he wrote this big, loose-jointed work, first cousin to a concerto. The organ does not contrast with the orchestra but stirs it up and then masses forces with it. Considered shocking at the time ("If a young man at the age of 23 can write a symphony like that, in five years he will be ready to commit murder!" declared Con ductor Walter Damroseh), the work has never been recorded until now. The New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein conducting, provides a gentle-to-jazzy buildup for Organist E. Power Biggs.

BUSONI: CONCERTO FOR PIANO, ORCHESTRA AND MALE CHORUS (Angel; 2 LPs). A first recording of a huge, seldom heard work that dates in time to 1904 and in style to a still earlier romantic era. Ferruccio Busoni was a pianist in the tradition of Liszt. He was a teacher who boasted disciples rather than pupils (among them, Kurt Weill) and he was also a composer of grandiose notions and mixed talents, which are illuminated by English Pianist John Ogdon and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in this 70-minute work The introductory movement seems to be all stately facade, but once inside the musical structure, the listener has a merry whirl, particularly in the carnival atmosphere of the Tarantella.

CINEMA

NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY. Playing murder and mental illness strictly for laughs, Actor Rod Steiger (as a homicidal schizo with a closetful of disguises) and George Segal (as a callow New York cop) turn this bizarre suspense story into a telling black comedy.

THE QUEENS. Italy seems to make a cinematic specialty out of confecting De-cameron-]ike clusters of shorts from spun-out risque jokes. This is one of the better examples of the genre--with feral Monica Vitti, delectable Claudia Cardinale and regal Capucine.

UP THE JUNCTION. Another London slum saga, based on a novel by Nell Dunn (Poor Cow), is saved from its pulpy sociology by Director Peter Collinson's feeling for the locale, and Actress Suzy Kendall's widening range of talent.

THE TWO OF US. Writer-Director Claude Berri tells a simple tale of the love of a small Jewish boy and an old anti-Semitic Frenchman without jerking a tear, hoking a climax, or ringing in the alarums that a World War II setting has ready at hand.

THE PRODUCERS. Two shyster impresarios (Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder) set out to make a killing on Broadway in this first film by Comedian-Writer Mel Brooks, which offers, albeit fitfully, some of the best cinema comedy in years.

BOOKS

CAESAR AT THE RUBICON: A PLAY ABOUT POLITICS, by Theodore H. White. A fine political journalist turns to ancient history for an engaging study of "the way men use other men to reach their goals."

HISTOIRE, by Claude Simon. Thought patterns of a man recalling his family history are woven with imagination by one of France's leading New Novelists.

THE SELECTED WORKS OF CESARE PAVESE. Four short novels by the life-shy but acutely observant Piedmontese who, since his suicide jn 1950 at 42, has become postwar Italy's most honored writer.

RICHARD WRIGHT, by Constance Webb. Using previously unpublished material. Miss Webb, a close friend of the late Negro novelist, tracks Wright's career from poverty in Mississippi to fame and prestige in Paris.

THE RETURN OF THE VANISHING AMERICAN, by Leslie A. Fiedler. Today's hippie, argues the free-swinging critic, is a cultural descendant of the American Indian and buckskinned frontiersman; the new West is a painted desert seen from a psychedelic cloud.

COCKSURE, by Mordecai Richler. Few sacred cows are left contented in this savage farce about mass culture and intellectual pretense, which turns on the proposition that the minority victimizes the majority.

THE NAKED APE, by Desmond Morris. Anthropologically questionable but unquestionably entertaining speculations on man and his primate descendants.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. Myro Breckinridge, Vidal (2 last week)

2. Vanished, Knebel (1)

3. Topaz, Uris (3)

4. The Confessions of Nat Turner, Styron (4)

5. Airport, Hailey (8)

6. The Tower of Babel, West (5)

7. Christy, Marshall (6)

8. The Exhibitionist, Sutton (7)

9. The President's Plane Is Missing, Serling (9)

10. The Gabriel Hounds, Stewart

NON FICTION

1. The Naked Ape, Morris (2)

2. Between Parent and Child, Ginott (1)

3. Our Crowd, Birmingham (3)

4. Nicholas and Alexandra, Massie (4)

5. The Way Things Work: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Technology (6)

6. Tolstoy, Troyat (7)

7. Gipsy Moth Circles the World, Chichester (5)

8. The Economics of Crisis, Janeway (10)

9. Rickenbacker, Rickenbacker (9) 10. The Double Helix, Watson (8)

* All times E.S.T.

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