Television, Theater, Records, Cinema, Books: Jul. 9, 1965

TELEVISION

THE DEFENDERS (CBS, 10-11 p.m.).*Douglas Campbell plays a pharmacist and Teresa Wright his junkie wife in “The Pill Man.” Repeat.

Friday, July 9

F.D.R. (ABC, 8-8:30 p.m.). Roosevelt’s evolution from Hyde Park patroon to internationalist, encompassing his early espousal of dollar diplomacy in Latin America, his Wilson-inspired support of the League of Nations, and his ultimate commitment to the good-neighbor policy and the U.N.

VACATION PLAYHOUSE (CBS, 9:30-10 p.m.). Another exhumation from the graveyard of TV pilot shows that died at birth, The Barbara Rush Show introduces a mother of three who supports her med-scholar husband by working as a public stenographer.

Saturday, July 10

WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). The British Open golf championship from Southport, England, and the Daytona Firecracker “400” stock-car championship from Florida.

Sunday, July 11

ZOORAMA (CBS, 5-5:30 p.m.). Penguins of all ranks and classes—kings, emperors, little blues and Galapagos Islanders—plus some footage on nearly extinct zoo inhabitants and a field trip to collect snakes.

NBC SPORTS IN ACTION (NBC, 6:30-7:30 p.m.). Highlights of the Henley Regatta from England and the 1965 International Grand Prix motor race from Daytona Beach, Fla.

Monday, July 12

CBS REPORTS (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). The long-awaited CBS examination of “The Rating Game,” which explores network dependence on ratings in programming policies. ABC President Thomas Moore, CBS President John Schneider, former NBC President Pat Weaver and Rating Maker A.C. Nielsen Sr. are among those who are interviewed.

THEATER

Straw Hat

“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” Thus Shakespeare himself provides the reason why productions of his plays, flourishing in barns and parks beneath the stars, have become a hardy harbinger of summer. Nowadays, nearly every American is within a day’s drive of some performance of the Bard. It may be spoken in Elizabethan English or Spanish with a New York accent, played by a professional repertory group or a traveling troupe, mounted in an authentic replica of the 16th century Globe Theatre or on a mobile stage truck.

In the end, of course, the play’s the thing:

NEW YORK SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL, New York City: Up in Central Park, Robert Burr plays the title role in Coriolanus with an able assist from James Earl Jones who also works out in Troilus and Cressida.* A mobile company, complete with dressing rooms, stage, and a 1,600-seat theater stowed into trucks, tours New York’s five boroughs performing The Taming of the Shrew and Henry V in English and Romeo and Juliet en Espanol.

AMERICAN SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL, Stratford, Conn.: Featured players this season are Philip Bosco as the noble-natured but uncouth general, Coriolanus; Lillian Gish as the malapert nurse in Romeo and Juliet; Morris Carnovsky in his-famed portrayal of King Lear; Ruby Dee as the knockabout Kate in Shrew.

STRATFORD FESTIVAL, Stratford, Ont.: Both parts of Henry IV and Julius Caesar. Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard has also been added to the repertory.

NEW JERSEY SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL, Cape May: Antony and Cleopatra, The Merry Wives of Windsor. July 27-Aug. 8.

WASHINGTON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL, Washington, D.C.: Staged at the foot of the Washington Monument, The Merry Wives of Windsor. July 17-Aug. 15.

AMERICAN CONSERVATORY THEATRE, Pittsburgh: King Lear.

THE ACADEMY THEATRE, Atlanta: Richard III. July 15-Aug. 15.

ASOLO THEATRE FESTIVAL, Sarasota, Fla.: Hamlet.

GREAT LAKES SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL, Lakewood, Ohio: Henry VI, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Coriolanus.

CINCINNATI SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL, Cincinnati: Macbeth. July 9-Aug. 12.

HARPER THEATRE, Chicago: William Marshall as Othello re-creates a role he has made memorable in New York’s City Center and Central Park, and at Dublin’s Theatre Festival as well.

OLD GLOBE THEATRE, San Diego: In a replica of the Globe Theatre of Shakespeare’s day, a repertory group enacts The Merry Wives of Windsor, Henry VIII, and Coriolanus. Preperformance festivities include typical 16th century entertainment by madrigal singers.

COMEDIA REPERTORY COMPANY, Palo Alto, Calif.: The Merchant of Venice, with cadaverous Stage and Screen Actor John Carradine as Shylock. Aug. 10-29.

OREGON SHAKESPEAREAN FESTIVAL, Ashland: One of the oldest of U.S. festivals, now in its 25th year, offers Henry VI, Part 2, Much Ado About Nothing, The Winter’s Tale and Macbeth.

RECORDS

Folk Music

BOB DYLAN: BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME (Columbia). To match his electric lyrics, folk music’s newest muse now sings along with a plug-in guitar, and the resulting reverberations sometimes short-circuit the words. But the sharp edge of Dylan’s discontent still manages to cut through, particularly in Mr. Tambourine Man, Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream and It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding), a stream of coffee-house consciousness that runs for 7½ minutes and excoriates everything from plastic Christs to old woman judges.

THE BYRDS: MR. TAMBOURINE MAN (Columbia). To make folk music the music of today’s folk, this quintet has blended Beatle beats with Leadbelly laments, created a halfway school of folk-rock that scores at the cash box if not with the folk purists. Besides their own quasi-folk creations they blare out four Dylan tunes, including the title song, which they have already popularized as a single.

BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: MANY A MILE (Vanguard). A Cree Indian whose voice and mood range from taffy to Tabasco, Buffy is the latest pretender to Baez’ crown. She gives old songs new, refreshing twists, whispering Come All Ye Fair and Tender Girls as if she were the first to discover man’s mischief and booming out Lazarus with all the strident, hand-clapping fervor of a Negro spiritual. The best songs are her own, including Welcome Welcome Emigrante, Los Pescadores and an earthy, bewitching love ballad called Until It’s Time for You to Go.

PETE SEEGER: STRANGERS AND COUSINS (Columbia). Recording after an around-the-world junket, Seeger proves once again that he knows no boundaries. He sings in Russian, Swahili, German and Yiddish, rambles from a delightful ditty that depicts the plight of a Scottish manure shoveler to a pun-filled sermon on the spread of atom bombs (“we’ve got to stick together or disintegrate”). Most interesting is his sing-along version of his own paean to international peace, If I Had a Hammer, which he wrote in 1949 with Lee Hayes.

AN EVENING WITH BELAFONTE/MAKEBA (RCA Victor). Two of the best Negro singers of the decade combine to give voice to South Africa’s sorrow. Singing in Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho or Swahili, they manage to cast light on the Dark Continent through the warmth and vigor of their interpretations.

IAN & SYLVIA: EARLY MORNING RAIN (Vanguard). British Columbia-born Ian and Ontario-born Sylvia weave a spritely texture of vocal contrast and concert as they sing country and Western music with a Northwest twang. Less bent on social comment than on soothing harmony, they sing gaily of whisky, women and want, waxing serious only when they try to patch up the French-English rift back home in Song for Canada (“How come we can’t talk to each other any more?”).

CINEMA

A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA. Based on Richard Hughes’s classic novel about the corruptive power of young innocents, this lively adventure film follows seven captive children as they hasten the ruin of a dissolute pirate captain (Anthony Quinn) and his raffish crew.

THE COLLECTOR. A psychotic clerk (Terence Stamp) turns from collecting butterflies to capture a vivacious young art student (Samantha Eggar) in Director William Wyler’s gripping, if somewhat glamorized thriller.

THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES. Reproductions of vintage aircraft soar blithely skyward bearing Terry-Thomas, Alberto Sordi and Gert Frobe to the high points of a fiaphappy comedy about a London-Paris air race in 1910—while vixenish Sarah Miles waits in the winners’ circle to choose between Stuart Whitman and James Fox.

SYMPHONY FOR A MASSACRE. Five crooks, with a double-crosser in their midst, embark on a million-dollar deal, and French Director Jacques Deray makes what happens next a matter of grave concern.

LA TlA TULA. A beautiful spinster (Aurora Bautista) is tormented by mixed desire and disgust for her widowed brother-in-law in Spanish Director Miguel Picazo’s impeccable first film, an essay on the rigors of virginity Castilian style.

CAT BALLOU. Wild western heroics are trampled into horselaughs by Jane Fonda as a schoolmarm turned outlaw queen and Lee Marvin, doubly hilarious as a couple of no-good gunfighters, one her friend, one her foe.

THE PAWNBROKER. A compelling performance by Rod Steiger gives focus to this grim drama about an embittered old Jew caught between the horrors of Spanish Harlem and the Nazi horrors of yesteryear.

BOOKS

Best Reading

THE MAKING OF THE PRESIDENT, 1964, by Theodore H. White. The author shows as much skill as he did in his bestselling account of the 1960 campaign. But he is hard put to overcome the fact that he is writing about a dull, one-sided election.

MUSTANGS AND COW HORSES, edited by J. Frank Dobie, Mody C. Boatwright and Harry H. Ransom. A classic collection of authentic, unromanticized Western lore about the wild mustangs and the men who brutally tamed and rode them in the conquest of the continent.

THE MEMOIRS OF PANCHO VILLA, by Martin Luis Guzman. The author, who knew the fiery Mexican revolutionary personally, says that Villa would have written his memoirs from this collection of documents, letters and recalled conversations if he had not been illiterate. As it is, they give a disjointed but fascinating insight into the passionate, near-demented leader.

STORMY PETREL; THE LIFE AND WORK OF MAXIM GORKY, by Dan Levin. A balanced restrained biography of one of the wild men of writing. Gorky’s life was a series of violent escapades, recaptured here in his superb early reminiscences. His creative forces were often wasted on polemics, first on behalf of Lenin and later for Stalin, who lured him from voluntary exile; five years later, after crying out against Stalin’s bloody purges, Gorky mysteriously died.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. Up the Down Staircase, Kaufman (2 last week)

2. The Ambassador, West (1)

3. The Source, Michener (3)

4. Hotel, Hailey (4)

5. Don’t Stop the Carnival, Wouk (5)

6. The Green Berets, Moore (7)

7. Herzog, Bellow (6)

8. The Flight of the Falcon, Du Maurier (8)

9. Night of Camp David, Knebel (9)

10. A Pillar of Iron, Caldwell (10)

NONFICTION

1. The Oxford History of the American People, Morison (2)

2. Markings, Hammarskjold (1)

3. Is Paris Burning? Collins and Lapierre (3)

4. Journal of a Soul, Pope John XXIII (4)

5. The Founding Father, Whalen (6)

6. Queen Victoria, Longford (7)

7. The Italians, Barzini (5)

8. Sixpence in Her Shoe, McGinley (10)

9. My Shadow Ran Fast, Sands (8) 10. How to Be a Jewish Mother,

Greenburg

*All times E.D.T.

Unless noted, most plays rotate in repertory or run through the summer