Cinema, Television, Theater, Books: : Apr. 5, 1963

CINEMA

The Balcony. Jean Genet’s shocker, part burlesque, part Black Mass, argues that the world is a vast brothel run by an allegorical madam who panders illusions to her customers in return for the surrender of their masculinity. Shelley Winters is the madam.

Mondo Cane. In this documentary of depravity, the world has gone to the dogs and the cards are stacked against human decency, all leading to the conclusion that people are no damn good.

The Playboy of the Western World. Torrents of gorgeous Irish talk, miles of fine Irish scenery, and some splendid acting almost offset the main flaw in this film version of Synge’s play: Actress Siobhan McKenna should not still be playing colleens.

How the West Was Won. Cinerama turns from picture postcards to epic storytelling as sodbusters, Indians, outlaws, good guys, and a thousand thundering buffaloes go west in a big way.

The Wrong Arm of the Law. Sneaky Pete Sellers as a raffish Raffles heads a gang of candid-camera jewel robbers.

The Quare Fellow. In this movie version of his first successful play, Brendan Behan storms out against capital punishment. And, because Irishmen laugh when others might weep, he also laughs at the way men are made to live in jail, and condemned to die.

To Kill a Mockingbird. The Pulitzer Prize novel by Harper Lee has been made into an engaging movie that exchanges some of the novel’s cuteness for a charm of its own—some of it supplied by the hero (Gregory Peck), most of it by three gumptious young ‘uns (Mary Badham, Phillip Alford, John Megna).

Love and Larceny. Vittorio Gassman is a gasser in a grab bag of disguises, ends up as a con man conned con amore.

A Child Is Waiting. This film takes an impassioned look at the problem of mental defectives (there are 5,700,000 of them in the U.S.), and makes some surprising recommendations. Burt Lancaster, Judy Garland and Bruce Ritchey play the principal parts with distinction.

Days of Wine and Roses. Remick-on-the-rocks with a twist of Lemmon is the recipe for this effective temperance lesson.

Lawrence of Arabia. Will probably run ’til the sands of the desert grow cold.

TELEVISION

Wednesday, April 3

CBS Reports (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.).* U.S. Surgeon General Luther Terry and Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman join Author Rachel Carson et al. to discuss the danger of pesticides to man.

Thursday, April 4

Hall of Fame (NBC, 8:30-10 p.m.). “The Invincible Mr. Disraeli,” starring Trevor Howard and Greer Garson, is the first in-depth portrait of Dizzy since George Arliss’ preposterous hoddydoddy. Color.

Première (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). Keir Dullea and Shirley Knight in an adaptation of Richard P. Brickner’s first novel, The Broken Year.

Friday, April 5

The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (CBS, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). Linda Christian as a scheming woman in “An Out for Oscar.”

Baseball ’63 (NBC, 9:30-10 p.m.). Filmed interviews with stars and managers, big moments in baseball history.

Eyewitness (CBS, 10:30-11 p.m.). The top news story of the week.

Saturday, April 6

Exploring (NBC, 12:30-1:30 p.m.). For children mostly, with Actress Maureen O’Sullivan reading The Three Golden Keys, information on music boxes, the binary system of counting, and genetics.

Wide World of Sports (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). The women’s National A.A.U. Indoor swimming and diving championship from Berea, Ohio, and the Grand National Steeplechase from Aintree, England.

The 27th Masters Golf Tournament (CBS, 5-6 p.m.). The final moments Saturday, Sunday (4-5:30) and, in case of a playoff, Monday (5-6).

Hootenanny (ABC, 8:30-9 p.m.). The first regularly scheduled network show devoted to folk music, with the Limeliters.

Sunday, April 7

Palm Sunday Mass (NBC, 11-12 noon). Albert Cardinal Meyer officiates, from Chicago’s Cathedral of the Holy Name.

The Tender Grass (NBC, 2-2:30 p.m.). Repeat of a Passover drama by the late Morton Wishengrad, with Marian Seldes, Sam Wanamaker and Martin Brooks.

The Twentieth Century (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). Part 2 of “Ethiopia: The Lion and the Cross,” includes an interview with Emperor Haile Selassie.

Voice of Firestone (ABC, 10-10:30 p.m.). Highlights from Verdi’s Otello, with Tenor James McCracken, Soprano Gabriella Tucci and Baritone Robert Merrill.

Monday, April 8

Academy Awards (ABC, 10 p.m. to conclusion). The 35th annual, with Frank Sinatra as Bob Hope, M.C.

Tuesday, April 9

Chet Huntley Reporting (NBC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Averell Harriman is interviewed.

THEATER

Too True to Be Good, by George Bernard Shaw, is substandard G.B.S., full of mildewed seventyish garrulities on religion, militarism and the idle rich. A full cast of stars—Glynis Johns, Robert Preston, David Wayne, Cyril Ritchard, Eileen Heckart, Lillian Gish, Cedric Hardwicke, Ray Middleton—rushes about filling the dramatic vacuum.

Strange Interlude, by Eugene O’Neill, is a theatrical event of fascinating and ironic magnitude. Geraldine Page acts with dazzling prismatic splendor, but the play, a 4½-hour marathon, is a dated Lost Generation relic, infused at odd moments with O’Neill’s personal anguish.

Enter Laughing, by Joseph Stein. The Jewish situation comedy is not a trend but a glut. This one offers traces of honest observation, and as a clown of a would-be actor, Alan Arkin is outrageously funny.

Photo Finish, by Peter Ustinov. An old party of 80 confronts his onstage self at earlier ages and is alternately apoplectic and philosophical at what he sees. Actor-Director-Author Ustinov gives the proceedings elegant polish.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, by Edward Albee, makes a no-exit verbal hell out of a college professor’s living room. Arthur Hill and Uta Hagen beat ugly truths and fond illusions out of each other with savage, flailing brilliance.

BOOKS

Best Reading

A Favourite of the Gods, by Sybille Bedford. Grand opera without music, about the dynastic rich of 19th century Europe, by a novelist with a fine feel for revoked wills, missing rubies, and the trials of being wellborn.

A Fortune in Dimes, by Mary Carter. An artful novelist’s look at the beachbound aborigines of Pasadena, where teen culture embraces all ages, and life is full, rich and empty.

On Revolution, by Hannah Arendt. In a shrewd study, Historian Arendt examines the long-held notion that revolutions cure social ills, concludes that most of them do more harm than good.

That Summer in Paris, by Morley Callaghan. How it was on the Left Bank in the 1920s by a Canadian writer who once knocked Hemingway down in a boxing match while Scott Fitzgerald kept time.

V., by Thomas Pynchon. A disordered but engaging first novel about alligators in a city sewer system, and a zany hero’s search for the meaning of the letter V.

Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller, A Private Correspondence. The snap, crackle and pop of prose writers on each other’s prose, culled from 25 talkative years and studded with wit and wisdom.

The Second Stone, by Leslie Fiedler. A zany triangle of Americans in Rome soon turns out to be a parable in which Author-Critic Fiedler pits the U.S. artist as rebel against the U.S. artist as public entertainer.

Best Sellers FICTION

1. Seven Days in May, Knebel and Bailey (2, last week) 2. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour An Introduction, Salinger (1) 3. The Sand Pebbles, McKenna (3) 4. Fail-Safe, Burdick and Wheeler (4) 5. The Moon-Spinners, Stewart (5) 6. Triumph, Wylie (9) 7. The Moonflower Vine, Carleton (8) 8. A Shade of Difference, Drury (7) 9. $100 Misunderstanding, Gover (6) 10. The Man Who Played God, St. John

NONFICTION

1. Travels with Charley, Steinbeck (2) 2. Happiness Is a Warm Puppy, Schulz (1) 3. The Whole Truth and Nothing But, Hopper (3) 4. Final Verdict, St. Johns (6) 5. O Ye Jigs & Juleps!, Hudson (5) 6. The Points of My Compass, White (8) 7. The Fire Next Time, Baldwin (4) 8. The Fall of the Dynasties, Taylor (10) 9. Silent Spring, Carson (7) 10. My Life in Court, Nizer (9)

* All times E.S.T.