Television, Theater, Cinema, Books, Best Sellers: Aug. 20, 1965

TELEVISION Wednesday, August 18WEDNESDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 9-10:47 p.m.).* Hot Spell (1958) with Shirley Booth and Anthony Quinn.

Thursday, August 19 If the tentatively scheduled Gemini-Titan 5 space shot goes as planned, it will be covered by a three-network pool (a TV first) during the 8½-day flight. Plans for live pool coverage of the recovery, however, have been postponed until G-T 6.

Friday, August 20 VACATION PLAYHOUSE (CBS, 9:30-10 p.m.). Tony Randall stars as a World War II foreign correspondent who’s chicken about covering the war until the enemy starts dropping eggs on him.

Saturday, August 21 N.F.L. PRESEASON GAME (CBS, 2 p.m. to conclusion). The Green Bay Packers face the Chicago Bears in Milwaukee. A.F.L. EXHIBITION GAME (NBC, 2 p.m. to conclusion). The Buffalo Bills play the New York Jets at New Brunswick, N.J. ABC’S WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). The National A.A.U. swimming and diving championships in Maumee, Ohio, and the American skateboard championships in Anaheim, Calif.

Sunday, August 22 THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). “Man with a Mission, Dr. Howard A. Rusk,” who directs the New York Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Repeat.

THE ROGUES (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Charles Boyer, Robert Coote and Gladys Cooper star in an episode about teaching the true meaning of giving to a tightwad millionaire, played by John McGiver. Repeat.

Monday, August 23 THE MAN FROM U.N.C.LE. (NBC, 8-9 p.m.). Solo and Illya tangle with Thrush’s mad scientist, Elsa Lanchester. Repeat.

Tuesday, August 24 TUESDAY MOVIE SPECIAL (NBC, 8:30-11 p.m.). Designing Woman (MGM, 1957) starring Lauren Bacall as a fashion designer and Gregory Peck as a sportswriter.

THEATER

Musical comedy, America’s contribution to the legitimate stage, is a hardy summer theater perennial. To wit:

HYANNIS, MASS., Cape Cod Melody Tent: Again, it’s West Side Story, Leonard Bernstein’s crossbreeding of Romeo and Juliet and Hell’s Kitchen.

BRUNSWICK, ME., Summer Playhouse: 110 in the Shade’s non-rainmaking rainmaker fits right in with the Northeast’s drought.

WOODSTOCK, N.Y., Woodstock Playhouse: Little Mary Sunshine (coy heroine) is threatened (egads) with foreclosure (hiss), but (just in time) her hero comes to the rescue. ANDOVER, N.J., Gristmill Musical Playhouse: Damn Yankees still keeps bringing them in even though the real-life Yankees seem to have gone to the devil.

HILLSIDE, ILL., Melody Top: Camelot, starring Earl Wrightson.

OMAHA, Community Playhouse, and WALLINGFORD, CONN., Oakdale Musical Theater: The King and I.

FORT WORTH, Casa Manana: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum; by Plautus out of Minsky.

SAN DIEGO, Circle Arts Theater: The Most Happy Fella, somewhat south of the Napa Valley.

KANSAS CITY, MO., Starlight Theater: She Loves Me spins its cotton candy romance, with John Gary.

HIGHLAND PARK, ILL., Tenthouse Theater: Margaret Whiting and Gene Rayburn on the Gypsy caravan.

GAITHERSBURG, MD., Shady Grove Music Fair: Annie Get Your Gun has Lee Remick packing the pistols.

ANAHEIM, CALIF., Melodyland Theater: Edie Adams and Chita Rivera in Can-Can.

DALLAS, Music Hall: Kiss Me Kate, with Patrice Munsel and George Wallace.

CINEMA

DARLING. A playgirl’s progress from obscurity to celebrity is charted by Director John Schlesinger (Billy Liar) whose brittle, jet-set satire owes much to Julie Christie’s presence in the title role.

THE IPCRESS FILE. Freed from Bondage to gags and gimmickry, this British suspense yarn plays up the honest good humor in the exploits of a secret agent (Michael Caine) who saves England’s top scientists from a massive brainwash.

SHIP OF FOOLS. This flashy melodrama is by Producer-Director Stanley Kramer out of Novelist Katherine Anne Porter’s mordant allegory. Despite the Meaningful Dialogue they spout, Vivien Leigh, Lee Marvin, Simone Signoret and Oskar Werner make fast company for the long haul.

THESE ARE THE DAMNED. Goose bumps abound at an English coastal resort, where Director Joseph Losey (The Servant) brings his razzle-dazzle skills to bear on a heavily guarded secret project that is infiltrated by a tourist (MacDonald Carey) and a trollop (Shirley Anne Field).

THE KNACK. An embattled virgin (Rita Tushingham) fends off three zany British bachelors, millions of sight gags and reels of New Cinema gimmickry in Director Richard Lester’s (A Hard Day’s Night) version of the stage hit.

THE COLLECTOR. In Director William Wyler’s grisly but somewhat glamorized treatment of the novel by John Fowles, a lovely art student (Samantha Eggar) wages a war of nerves against a manic lepidopterist (Terence Stamp) who has locked her in a dungeon.

THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES. The good old days are giddily recalled in a great London-Paris air race of 1910, highlighted by a collection of flaphappy vintage aircraft, with Gert Frobe, Alberto Sordi and Terry-Thomas among the madcaps at the controls.

CAT BALLOU. Two no-good gunfighters (both played to perfection by Lee Marvin) brighten a way-out western about a schoolmarm (Jane Fonda) who trades readin’ and writin’ for a catch-up course in train robbery.

HIGH INFIDELITY. The perils of extra-marital dalliance are polished off ever so lightly in a four-part Italian comedy dominated by a jealous but accessible wife (Monica Vitti), a discreet businessman (Nino Manfredi) and other stray mates.

BOOKS

Best Reading

REPORT TO GRECO, by Nikos Kazantzakis. The tormented Greek writer’s autobiography is a powerful, personal testament and a key to the sources of his obsession with God. Kazantzakis died when the book was only in first draft, but the occasional rudeness and awkwardness show the raw energy in his creative gift.

THE LOOKING GLASS WAR, by John le Carré. The author sends another ungim-micky thriller out to fight the cold war with James Bond. Grey East Germany and red-taped London are again the settings, and the spy is another drab, lonely man.

THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS, by Giorgio Bassani. The author was responsible for the posthumous publication of Lampedusa’s The Leopard, and he has learned much from the master. Bassani’s gracefully written novel depicts the elegant, decadent world of a rich Jewish family and its confrontation with Fascism and death.

THE MAKEPEACE EXPERIMENT, by Abram Tertz. The pseudonymous author, a Russian satirist who smuggled out four previous novels, writes a deft parable about Communism in which a village bicycle mechanic learns to control people by “mental magnetism.” With his new powers, the mechanic makes the village government “wither away,” with disastrously funny results.

INTERN, by Doctor X. A young doctor’s log of his internship in a city hospital is filled with continual, overlapping crises, costly mistakes and occasional triumphs.

MICHAEL FARADAY, by L. Pearce Williams. Faraday (1791-1867) was probably the greatest experimental scientist who ever lived; Williams’ biography details his laborious efforts to educate himself and his triumphant advances in science—the first induction of electric current and the first dynamo.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. The Source, Michener (1 last week)

2. Up the Down Staircase, Kaufman (2)

3. Hotel, Hailey (4)

4. The Looking Glass War, le Carre (3)

5. The Green Berets, Moore (6)

6. The Ambassador, West (5)

7. Don’t Stop the Carnival, Wouk (7)

8. A Pillar of Iron, Caldwell

9. Night of Camp David, Knebel (8) 10. Herzog, Bellow (9)

NONFICTION

1. The Making of the President, 1964, White (1)

2. Markings, Hammarskjöld (3)

3. Is Paris Burning? Collins and Lapierre (2)

4. Intern, Doctor X (5)

5. The Oxford History of the American People, Morison (4)

6. Journal of a Soul, Pope John XXIII (6)

7. Games People Play, Berne (7)

8. Sixpence in Her Shoe, McGinley (8)

9. The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, Wolfe (9)

10. My Shadow Ran Fast, Sands

*All times E.D.T.