Cinema: May 4, 1962

Five Finger Exercise. A competent film version of Peter Shaffer’s prizewinning play about a family that has everything money can buy—including unhappiness.

State Fair. Hollywood’s third cinemadaptation of the 1932 novel by Phil Stong just about corners the market in spring corn. Credits: Pat Boone, Bobby Darin, Tom Ewell, Alice Faye, Pamela Tiffin, Ann-Margret, Wally Cox and an 800-lb. Hampshire hog named George.

Moon Pilot. Walt Disney has produced a funny farce of errors about a moonstruck astronut who almost wrecks the U.S. missile program.

The Horizontal Lieutenant. A brass-button burlesque starring Jim Hutton and Paula Prentiss.

Bell’ Antonio. A thoughtful but not profound discussion of impotence by Italy’s Mauro Bolognini.

All Fall Down. Angela Lansbury is painful and fascinating as a mother hen who clucks inanely over a bad egg (Warren Beatty), but the picture is just painful.

Only Two Can Play. Peter Sellers plays a Welsh librarian who finds all sorts of interesting things between covers.

Viridiana. Made in Spain on Franco’s money but banned in Spain by Franco’s decree, this peculiar and powerful film by Luis Buñuel predicts in parable the next Spanish revolution.

Sweet Bird of Youth. Tennessee Williams’ Bird was an artistic turkey on Broadway, but as directed by Richard Brooks, it makes a noisy and sometimes brilliant peacock of a picture.

Through a Glass Darkly. Perhaps the best, certainly the ripest, film ever made by Sweden’s Ingmar Bergman.

Last Year at Marienbad. A Gordian knot of cinema tied by two ingenious Frenchmen, Scenarist Alain Robbe-Grillet and Director Alain Resnais (Hiroshima, Mon Amour), which seems to make the pint-pot intellectuals feel like Alexanders.

The Night. The fashionable ailment of anxiety is skillfully anatomized by Italy’s Michelangelo (L’Avventura) Antonioni.

Lover Come Back. Animadversions on advertising, wittily written by Stanley Shapiro and blandly recited by Doris Day and Rock Hudson.

TELEVISION

Wed., May 2 Howard K. Smith—News & Comment (ABC, 7:30-8 p.m.)* Notes and opinions on the week’s events.

The United States Steel Hour (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Tallulah Bankhead in A Man for Oona, the story of a mother’s droll search for a husband for her daughter.

David Brinkley’s Journal (NBC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Dour Dave discusses Army reservists who complain about the Army, also people who have made millions on a simple gimmick.

Thurs., May 3 At the Source (CBS, 10-10:30 p.m.). Orville Freeman, Secretary of Agriculture, is interviewed about his farm bill, currently before Congress.

Fri., May 4

The Twilight Zone (CBS, 10-10:30 p.m.). In an episode called The Dummy, viewers have a chance to size up Cliff Robertson, the man who has been chosen to play John F. Kennedy in Warner Bros.’ PT109.

Chet Huntley Reporting (NBC, 10:30-11 p.m.). News analysis.

Eyewitness (CBS, 10:30-11 p.m.). The week’s top news event.

Sat., May 5

The Kentucky Derby (CBS, 5-5:45 p.m.).

Saturday Night at the Movies (NBC, 9-11 p.m.). Gregory Peck, Susan Hayward and Ava Gardner in Ernest Hemingway’s The Snows of Kilimanjaro. Color.

Sun., May 6

Washington Conversation (CBS, 12:30-12:45 p.m.). Guest: Kansas’ onetime Presidential Candidate Alf Landon, interviewed by Paul Niven.

Accent (CBS, 1-1:30 p.m.). Yale Classicist Frank Brown discusses Ostia, the defunct city that was once the thriving seaport of ancient Rome.

Meet the Professor (ABC, 2:30-3 p.m.). Emory University History Professor Bell Wiley sketches the common soldier during the Civil War.

Issues and Answers (ABC, 4-4:30 p.m.). Guest: West Germany’s Heinrich von Brentano.

Hollywood Special (ABC, 8:30-10:30 p.m.). Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich and Charles Laughton in Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution.

The General Electric Theater (CBS, 9-9:30 p.m.). The Unstoppable Grey Fox, an original TV play by William Saroyan, in which Lee J. Cobb plays an ousted State Department official.

Show of the Week (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Second of two segments about Boston’s Brink’s job, robbery’s richest moment.

THEATER

On Broadway

A Thousand Clowns, by Herb Gardner, rescues nonconformity from humorless causists and introduces a fresh comic imagination to Broadway. Jason Robards Jr. heads a splendid company of unreconstructed oddballs.

The Night of the Iguana, by Tennessee Williams. Four desperate people at rope’s end find the strength to live beyond despair and accept their torturous lot. Winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle award as best play of the year.

A Man for All Seasons, by Robert Bolt. A lofty, probing, and eloquent examination of the conflict between individual conscience and public duty. Voted best foreign play of the year by the New York Drama Critics Circle.

Gideon, by Paddy Chayefsky, makes the relationship between God and man more humorous than awesome; but the theme is tinged with sublimity.

A Shot in the Dark, adapted from a Paris hit, is a sex-cum-murder mystery in which Julie Harris raises laughs and eyebrows.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying follows Robert Morse’s beguilefully self-appreciative rush to the corporate summit. This accoladen musical was voted best of the year by the New York Drama Critics Circle.

Off Broadway

Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad, by Krthur Kopit. A surrealistic foray into the no-man’s land of Mornism. Barbara Harris is the sexiest sprout since Lolita.

Brecht on Brecht. An oasis for patched minds where teh playgoer may sip the aphorisms, songs,scenes, and poems of a powerful master of 20th century theater.

BOOKS

Best Reading

The Collected Letters of D. H Lawrence, edited by Harry T. Moore. A novelist and poet fabled for frankness and passion confirms his reputation in a fascinating collection of opinions on everything from lambs (“I loathe lambs”) to fellow Englishmen.

Ship of Fools, by Katherine Anne Porter. A German passenger ship bound from vera Cruz to Bremerhaven in 1931 becomes a moving and despairing allegory of the human condition.

George by Emlyn Williams. In this autobiography of his first 21 years, the celebrated actor-playwright writes well and warmly of his poverty-stricken Welsh beginnings and his near disasters as a scholarship boy at Oxford.

Scott Fitzgerald, by Andrew Turnbull. A lovingly exhaustive biography of a writer whose talent was a diamond very nearly as big as the Ritz, but whose life was a far from tender nightmare.

Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories, by John Updike. The skillful young author of Poorhouse Fair and Rabbit, Run captures the exact curve of a handful of small but marvelous human moments.

The Rothschilds, by Frederic Morton. A seven-generation chronicle of family ways and financial wizardry in the world’s greatest banking dynasty.

A Long and Happy Life, by Reynolds Price. The story of a Carolina country love for a young man who often seems to love motorcycles more makes a wise and tender first novel.

Best Sellers

FICTION 1. Franny and Zooey, Salinger (1, last week) 2. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Stone (5) 3. The Bull from the Sea, Renault (2) 4. The Fox in the Attic Huges (3) 5. Devil Water Seton (4) 6. A Prologue to Love, Caldwell (7) 7. Ship of Fools, Porter (6) 8. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee 9. Captain Newman, M.D., Rosten (9) 10. Chairman of the Bored, Streeter (8)

NONFICTION 1. Calories Don’t Count, Taller (2) 2. My Life in Court, Nizer (1) 3. The Rothschilds, Morton (3) 4. The Guns of August, Tuchman (4) 5. Six Crises, Nixon (5) 6 The Making of the President 1960, White (6) 7. CIA: The Inside Story, Tully (8) 8. The Last Plantagenets, Costain (10) 9. Scott Jitzgerald, Turnbull (7) 10. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer

* All times E.D.T.