Time Listings: CINEMA

From Hollywood Damn Yankees. Gwen Verdon, as the nimblest dancer in this or other worlds, and Ray Walston, as a button-down Beelzebub, in a bouncy remake of the Broadway musical.

Me and the Colonel. Danny Kaye, in one of his funniest films, as a gentle, indestructible Polish refugee outwitting and outrunning the Wehrmacht.

The Defiant Ones. Stanley Kramer’s black and white drama about a chain-gang escape, with Tony Curtis, Sidney Poitier.

The Reluctant Debutante. Rex Harrison and Wife Kay Kendall in a wonderful peek at Mayfair manners and amorals.

Indiscreet. Cary Grant dispensing yachts and yacht-ta-ta to Ingrid Bergman in a funny, freewheeling romance.

From Abroad

Premier May (French). A skinny-shanked French boy (Yves Noel) and his Papa (Yves Montand) make a low-keyed, humorous pair as each, in his own way, adds to his knowledge of the facts of life.

The Case of Dr. Laurent (French). Frankly polemic, frankly physiological, this story of a rural doctor hipped on natural childbirth can claim the virtues of warmth and humor even before the moving, utterly candid final scene; with Jean Gabin, Nicole Courcel.

La Parisienne (French). Brigitte Bardot, leaning voluptuously on the sure comic talents of Charles Boyer and Henri Vidal, finally makes a film that is as funny as it is fleshy.

TELEVISION

Wed., Oct. 15

The Ginger Rogers Show (CBS, 9-10 p.m.).-Grand news: Old Hoofer Rogers kicks up her heels on TV, with the uplifting presence of Ray Bolger to help her over the jumps. The antique Ritz Brothers may need even more help as they try to parody Russia’s superb Moiseyev Dance Company. Unfortunately missing from the party: Fred Astaire, who starts his own new show this week (see below).

The Patti Page Show (ABC, 9:30-10 p.m.). Talented Singer Steve Lawrence, at present a U.S. Army private at Fort Dix, uses up part of his furlough time warbling with Smoothie Songstress Page.

Thurs., Oct. 16

Little Women (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Question: Which side will win in the contest between Richard (Damn Yankees) Adler’s tunes and Louisa May Alcott’s sentimentalities, in this musical adaptation of the 1868 novel. The cast is not so much well-rounded as well-scattered: the Met’s Rise Stevens as Marmee, toothy Comedienne Jeannie Carson as Jo, grown-up Cinemoppet Margaret O’Brien as Beth (who will not die in this version).

The Ford Show (NBC, 9:30-10 p.m.). Tennessee Ernie ankles back with more of his dexterously aw-shucked corn and with City Slicker Ernie Kovacs as his guest.

Playhouse 90 (CBS, 9:30-11 p.m.). Comedian Jack Carson, who snapped to dramatic attention as Gooper in the movie version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, plays a reserve officer, retreaded for the Korean war, involved in a bitter tangle with a martinet colonel.

Fri., Oct. 17

An Evening with Fred Astaire (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). The dancing master, still loose as a goose at 59, launches on his first network TV flight; with him is Barrie Chase, lis new partner. In color.

Sun., Oct. 19

NBC Kaleidoscope (NBC, 5-6 p.m.). In the premiere of an ambitious news show that promises to look at everything under the moon—and perhaps a few things on it—the network has brought its correspondents in from London, Vienna, Tokyo and Moscow for a powwow on the world situation.

Dinah Shore Show (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). Ethel Merman, Danny Thomas and Marge and Gower Champion as guests in a program that might be titled, “All this and Dinah too.”

Mon., Oct. 20

Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). The Case for Dr. Mudd concerns the Maryland physician, who, early on the morning of April 15, 1865, treated the injured foot of John Wilkes Booth—not knowing who Booth was or what he had done. Lew Ayres plays the beleaguered G.P. who was convicted of abetting Booth’s escape.

THEATER

On Broadway

A Touch of the Poet gives the late Eugene O’Neill a last chance to retell the tragedy of a man who lives by dreams—and lives on after they die. One black day in the life of Con Melody, Irish-born cavalry officer turned New England innkeeper, mirrors the bleak decline of a lifetime. But before the day ends, Kim Stanley makes Sara, the old tosspot’s daughter, a character of fierce inner strength. Eric Portman brings painful reality to Con’s boozy Byronic self-deception and Helen Hayes is a fine foil as his sentimental biddy of a wife. A massive and moving piece of theater.

The Music Man, now Broadway’s hottest ticket, is a triumph of Meredith Willson’s one-man showmanship (book, lyrics, music) and an exuberant romp for Robert Preston as the itinerant con man who invades an Iowa town and conjures up a corn-fed band.

My Fair Lady, with Edward Mulhare and Sally Ann Howes, is still the fairest of them all.

The Visit brings the Lunts back to Broadway in an existentialist fable of a woman’s vengeful hate and a whole com munity’s greed.

The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, by William (Bus Stop) Inge, is both poignant and funny as it reveals the secret fears of a small-town family in the 1920s; with Teresa Wright, Pat Hingle and Eileen Heckart.

On Tour

Auntie Mame, the cyclonic stage version of Novelist Patrick Dennis’ bookfu” of lunacy, is playing SAN FRANCISCO with brassy Eve Arden, NEW ORLEANS with tiny but dynamic Sylvia Sidney, and

CHICAGO with Constance Bennett, who is nearly as good as the original production’s Rosalind Russell.

My Fair Lady is proving in CHICAGO that even a starless company cannot harm this musical comedy masterpiece.

Look Back in Anger brings DETROIT the snarls of Britain’s Angry Young Man, Playwright John Osborne.

The Music Man, in DALLAS, maintains its racy air, although Cinemactor Forrest Tucker cannot match the brash enthusiasm of Robert Preston.

BOOKS

Best Reading

95 Poems, by e. e. cummings. The typographical playboy of U.S. poetry uncorks some champagne music that is lyrical, effervescent, and young in heart.

In Flanders Fields, by Leon Wolff. An absorbing and grim reappraisal of the 1917 campaign, one of history’s bloodiest. The Secret, by Alba de Cespedes. A middle-aged woman’s sensitive and often painful assessment of her changing roles as mother, wife, secret dreamer.

Women and Thomas Harrow, by John P. Marquand. Marquand may have harrowed the ashes of middle-class success and marriage once too often, but a considerable literary glow remains.

A World of Strangers, by Nadine Gordimer. South Africa’s finest novelist writes of her homeland’s direst hour.

Dr. Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak. Russia’s greatest living poet affirms in Russia’s greatest novel since the Revolution that lot even Communism can destroy his people’s hopes and humanity.

The Once and Future King, by T. H. White. Good King Arthur’s golden knights oust again in this loving and witty retelling of the old tale.

Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov. This superb novel shuttles between the lyrical, the hilarious and the horrifying to tell of a middle-aging emigre’s love for a “nymphet,” with highly ironic variations on the theme of American innocence and European corruption.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. Lolita, Nabokov (1)

2. Around the World with Auntie Mame, Dennis (2)

3. Doctor Zhivago, Pasternak (3)

4. Anatomy of a Murder, Traver (4)

5. Women and Thomas Harrow, Marquand (7)

6. The Best of Everything, Jaffe (5)

7. The Enemy Camp, Weidman (6)

8. The Law, Vailland

9. The Bramble Bush, Mergendahl

10. The King Must Die, Renault (8)

NONFICTION

1. Aku-Aku, Heyerdahl (2)

2. Only in America, Golden (1)

3. Baa Baa Black Sheep, Boyington (3)

4. Inside Russia Today, Gunther (4)

5. Kids Say the Darndest Things! Linkletter

6. The Affluent Society, Galbraith (5)

7. On My Own, Roosevelt

8. Eisenhower: Captive Hero, Childs (6)

9. The Insolent Chariots, Keats (10)

10. Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, Kerr (8) (Numbers in parentheses indicate last

week’s position.)

*-All times E.D.T.