Cinema: Oct. 6, 1961

The Man Who Wagged His Tail. A mean old Brooklyn slumlord is magically changed into the cur he essentially is. Peter Ustinov plays the dog.

The Devil’s Eye. Don Juan, as resuscitated by Sweden’s Director Ingmar Bergman, comes up from Hell on a mission of seduction and falls calamitously in love with an average 20th century girl.

Come September. A pleasantly wacky new twist to the ancient game of belling the wolf, with Rock Hudson as an American millionaire who once a year visits his Italian mistress (Gina Lollobrigida) at his palatial villa on the Italian Riviera.

A Thunder of Drums, the best western so far in 1961, is a masterly attempt to show what fighting Indians was really like.

Ada. A Louisiana doxy (Susan Hayward) marries a gubernatorial candidate she meets on the job and winds up first lady of the state.

Blood and Roses. Filmed at Hadrian’s villa outside Rome under the direction of Roger Vadim (And God Created Woman), this eerie tale of a lady vampire is the most subtle of the current chillers.

The Honeymoon Machine. It is really the Hollywood machine, in a rare moment of felicitous clank, turning out the slick, quick, funny film for which it was designed—in this case, about three young people who use a computer to assault the casino in Venice.

TELEVISION

Wed., Oct. 4

Continental Classroom (NBC, 6:30-7 a.m.).* The University of California’s Dr. Peter H. Odegard gives a college credit course in American Government. Today’s program: “The Frontier in a Space Culture.”

The Alvin Show (CBS, 7:30-8 p.m.). PREMIÈRE of a cartoon series featuring chipmunks Alvin, Theodore and Simon. In the first episode they encounter Stanley, an oddball eagle who cannot fly.

Mrs. G. Goes to College (CBS, 9:30-10 p.m.). PREMIÈRE. Broadway’s A Majority of One team, Gertrude Berg and Sir Cedric Hardwicke, in a new series about a matronly widow and a Cambridge University exchange professor.

Theater ’62 (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). PREMIÈRE. A series of eight dramatizations of David O. Selznick “screen classics.” The first, “The Spiral Staircase,” starring Lillian Gish, treats of a psychopathic killer. Color.

Thurs., Oct. 5

Frontier Circus (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). PREMIÈRE. An hour-long series starring Chill Wills, John Derek and Richard Jaeckel. Tonight: “The Shaggy Kings,” complete with hostile Indians and a wild-buffalo hunt.

Bob Cummings Show (CBS, 8:30-9 p.m.). PREMIÈRE. Bob Carson, a high-living troubleshooter, becomes involved in a stockholders’ fight when a beautiful heiress hires him to deliver some proxies to San Francisco.

The Investigators (CBS, 9-10 p.m.). PREMIÈRE. A new adventure series starring James Franciscus as an insurance investigator, James Philbrook as his partner, and Mary Murphy as their girl Friday.

Where We Stand: War or Peace? (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). A special assessment of East-West friction around the world by news correspondents headed by Eric Sevareid.

Fri., Oct. 6

International Showtime (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Don Ameche hosts a program of circus entertainments taped in Europe, including tumblers, lions, trained horses and a man who hypnotizes crocodiles.

The Hathaways (ABC, 8-8:30 p.m.). PREMIÈRE. The problems of trying to bring up three young chimpanzees as if they were children. The chimps’ foster mother is played by Jack Paar’s Berlin playmate, Comedienne Peggy Cass.

Sun., Oct. 8 1, 2, 3—Go (NBC, 6:30-7 p.m.). PREMIÈRE. Jack Lescoulie acts as guide to ten-year-old Richard Thomas in adventures around the world. Today’s subject: mountain climbing. Guest: Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.

Du Pont Show of the Week (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). “USO—Wherever They Go!” is a tribute to the United Service Organizations on its 20th anniversary, with President Kennedy and former Presidents Eisenhower and Truman participating. Stars in the wartime and contemporary film clips include Jack Benny, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Lena Home, Danny Kaye, Marilyn Monroe, Debbie Reynolds and Danny Thomas.

Mon., Oct. 9

Sound of the Sixties (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). John Daly narrates a special program on sights and sounds in contemporary and future American life. Stars include Art Carney, Vic Damone, Tony Randall, Mahalia Jackson, Andre Previn and Pat Harrington Jr.

Tues., Oct. 10

Alcoa Premiere (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). PREMIÈRE. Fred Astaire as narrator and weekly guest stars in a new group of dramatic shows. “People Need People” concerns Navy Psychiatrist Harry A. Wilmer, who pioneered group-therapy techniques for mentally disturbed war casualties.

BOOKS

Best Reading

The Adams Papers, edited by L. H. Butterfield. The first four volumes of a projected 100-volume collection of the diaries, memoirs and letters of a remarkable family of statesmen reveal the U.S.’s second President, John Adams, as a pragmatic, hidebound Yankee who could fight for rebellion against England, shape the Declaration of Independence, and tangle with the most sophisticated minds in Europe—yet always find time to investigate local farming methods.

H. L. Mencken on Music, a selection by Louis Cheslock, and Letters of H. L.

Mencken, a selection by Guy J. Forgue. The great American iconoclast of the ’20s plays at two of his favorite roles—music critic and man of letters—in these excellent samplers.

Selected Tales, by Nikolai Leskov. In this well translated collection, U.S. readers can sample the half-world of firebirds, angels and demons of the old Russian skaz—a narrative form which the author made famous in his own country.

Faces in the Water, by Janet Frame. A brilliant, largely autobiographical novel about nine long years in a mental institution, done with toot sympathy and warm love for the sane and insane alike.

When My Girl Comes Home, by V. S. Pritchett. In these short stories, a first-rate writer and critic (Britain’s New Statesman) spots the seeds of madness in the most prosaic minds.

Franny and Zooey, by J. D. Salinger. The author’s first work in hard cover since Nine Stories (1953), a reprinting of two long New Yorker stories about the seven prodigious Glass siblings, is a joyous, balanced, masterly book, convoluted and mystical enough to fuel dormitory debates for several seasons.

The Age of Reason Begins, by Will and Ariel Durant. In the first volume of a trilogy with which he hopes to complete his formidable Story of Civilization, the author (assisted by his wife) examines the 16th and 17th centuries with admirably balanced but sometimes passionless rationalism.

Ippolita, by Alberto Denti di Pirajno. Highly reminiscent of The Leopard and written, as was that excellent novel, by an aging Sicilian duke, Ippolita draws an evocative portrait of semifeudal Italian society amid the first revolutionary stirrings in the early 19th century.

Best Sellers

(√ previously included in TIME’S choice of Best Reading)

FICTION 1. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Stone (1)*

√ 2. Franny and Zooey, Salinger (8)

√ 3. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (2)

4. The Carpetbaggers, Robbins (3)

5. Mila 18, Uris (4)

6. Tropic of Cancer, Miller (5)

7. The Edge of Sadness, O’Connor (7)

8. The Winter of Our Discontent, Steinbeck (6)

9. Clock Without Hands, McCullers (10)

10. Rembrandt, Schmitt (9)

NONFICTION

√ 1. The Making of the President 1960, White (1)

2. A Nation of Sheep, Lederer (2)

√ 3. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer (3)

4. Inside Europe Today, Gunther (4)

√ 5. Ring of Bright Water, Maxwell (6)

√ 6. The New English Bible (7)

√ 7. Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin, Kennan (5)

8. Citizen Hearst, Swanberg

9. A Matter of Life and Death, Peterson

√ 10. Kidnap, Waller

* All times are E.D.T.

* Position on last week’s list.