CINEMA,TELEVISION,THEATER,BOOKS: Time Listings, Jun. 29, 1959

CINEMA

Street of Shame (Japanese). A study of prostitution in Japan, made by the late Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu) in a mood that merges Dickens and documentary.

The Rabbit Trap. A gentle little tract for the times that describes how a yes-man learned to say no.

Pork Chop Hill. Director Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front), working from S.L.A. Marshall’s battle report, has produced a nerve-shattering study of how the American infantryman met his trial by fire in Korea.

Gideon of Scotland Yard. Jolly good fun for the crime crowd.

Ask Any Girl. Shirley MacLaine is delightful in a story about some not-very-hidden persuaders of motivational research.

The Roof (Italian). The housing shortage may sound like a trivial subject, but in Rome it can be heartbreaking, as this excellent neorealist film demonstrates with both humor and pathos.

Room at the Top. A tragicomedy of Angry Young Manners about a Julien Sorel of the welfare state. Sometimes embarrassingly close to caricature, it remains one of the best British pictures in years.

Compulsion. Leopold and Loeb’s “crime of the century” re-created in a tight, suspenseful film.

The Diary of Anne Frank. One of Hollywood’s masterpieces.

Some Like It Hot. One of the top box-office attractions has Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis dressed as females and Marilyn Monroe half-dressed as herself.

The Sound and the Fury. A laundered but effective version of Faulkner’s novel about a hard man (Yul Brynner) and a wild, bewildered girl (Joanne Woodward) who fight each other and the genteel Southern decay around them as well.

Aparajito (Indian). Part two, following Father Panchali, of Director Satyajit Ray’s brilliantly illuminating trilogy on a poverty-stricken Indian family.

TELEVISION

Wed., June 24

Music for a Summer Night (ABC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.).* An earnest effort to show that even though the network dropped the Voice of Firestone, it can still put on an exceedingly pleasant pop concert. With Metropolitan Baritone Theodor Uppman, Soprano Elaine Malbin, Pianist Earl Wild, Broadway Songstress Jacquelyn McKeever and Comedienne Alice Ghostley.

This Is Your Life (NBC, 10-10:30 p.m.). This time there is no point in sticking to secrecy—better to spread the word and warm up a teen-age audience that the show has never known before. The object of M.C. Ralph Edwards’ exasperating attentions: Disk Jockey Dick Clark.

Armstrong Circle Theater (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). The infinite difficulties of teaching a deaf child to talk are explored in Zone of Silence.

Thurs., June 25

Playhouse 90 (CBS, 9:30-11 p.m.). Tony Randall, Judith Anderson and Margaret O’Brien concoct an evening full of problems out of the small talk and big times of cafe society. Based on The Second Happiest Day, 1953 bestseller by John Phillips, son of Bestseller John P. Marquand.

Fri., June 26

Dedication of the St. Lawrence Seaway (CBS, 10 a.m.-12 noon, live; ABC, 11 a.m.-12 noon, live; NBC, 1-1:30 p.m., tape). Speeches by President Eisenhower and Queen Elizabeth to commemorate the completion of the big ditch.

The St. Lawrence Seaway (NBC, 8-9 p.m.). For latecomers, a tape of Ike and the Queen. For everyone, a newsy tour of the seaway aboard a British freighter.

Sat., June 27

Dedication of Moses-Saunders International Dam (ABC, 1-1:30 p.m.). One more ceremony to make the seaway official: speeches by Vice President Nixon and Queen Elizabeth.

Mon., June 29

For Better or Worse (CBS, 2-2:30 p.m.). Case histories of marital problems taken from the files of Marriage Counselor Dr. James A. Peterson of U.S.C.

The Alcoa Theater (NBC, 9:30-10 p.m.). That old pacifist and talented actor, Lew Ayres, plays an old soldier reminiscing about his Civil War heroics in a filmed play, Corporal Hardy.

* All times E.D.T

THEATER

A Raisin in the Sun. A superb cast seems to live rather than act this impressive first play by Lorraine Hansberry about a South Side Chicago Negro family.

Redhead. This musical would have a high discomfort index were it not for the cool perfection and gently wafted charm of the wondrous Gwen Veidon.

J.B. With powerful assists from the Bible and the stagecrafty hand of Director Elia Kazan, Poet Archibald MacLeish has fashioned an uneven but exciting verse drama around the tribulations of a businessman’s Job.

La Plume de Ma Tante. This French revue is as funny and almost as silent as a Keystone Cops movie.

Flower Drum Song. R. & H. are resting on their oars, but with Pat Suzuki and Miyoshi Umeki in the boat, who cares?

Phonetics professors and small-town con men may be Out, but star them in musicals called My Fair Lady and The Music Man and they couldn’t be more delightfully In.

Off Broadway

Mark Twain Tonight! It takes brilliant Actor Hal Holbrook, 34, about three hours to make up, but no more than three minutes to convince audiences that he is the great humorist as a platform lecturer of 70. After that, the evening is pungently wise and uproariously funny.

Once Upon a Mattress. A feather-light romp that updates the famed nursery fable about the princess and the pea.

BOOKS

Best Reading

The Way It Was, by Harold Loeb. Paris, for the expatriates of the ’20s, was a free balloon buoyed by incandescent ideals and hot breath, according to the memoirs of the man who was caricatured as Robert Cohn in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.

The Zulu and the Zeide, by Dan Jacobson. First-rate short stories, mostly set in South Africa, in which the failings of whites are shown mercilessly against a black background.

Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, by Simone de Beauvoir. The existentialist as a young girl, recalled in an absorbing book of memoirs.

So Be It or The Chips Are Down, by Andre Gide. The last book of an unregenerate old genius reaffirms his unbelief and shows clearly the high quality of his artistic conscience.

Day Before Yesterday, by Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. The great T.R.’s son was only a so-so politician, but as an Army officer in two World Wars, recalls his wife in a warmly partisan biography, he won every combat decoration awarded by U.S. ground forces.

The Godstone and the Blackymor, by T. H. White. A whimsical, occasionally whiskified account of ramblings through western Ireland, well told by the quirky medievalist who wrote The Once and Future King.

Kenneth Grahame, by Peter Green. A delightful biography of the gentle, eccentric British banker who wrote The Wind in the Willows.

The Sleepwalkers, by Arthur Koestler. The author, who formerly concentrated on an agonized view of political epicycles, discusses cosmology from Ptolemy to Newton.

War Memoirs, by Charles de Gaulle. France’s monolithic leader accords himself the honor that is clearly his due in the second volume (1942-44) of his war memoirs.

Time Walked, by Vera Panova. Day-by-day wonders in the life of a six-year-old boy, warmly told by a skillful Russian novelist.

Points of View, by W. Somerset Maugham. In his latest last book, the writer, who ages like fine brandy, rambles thoughtfully about miscellaneous topics.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. Exodus, Uris (1)*

2. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Lawrence (4)

3. The Ugly American, Lederer and Burdick (3)

4. Doctor Zhivago, Pasternak (2)

5. Dear and Glorious Physician, Caldwell (5)

6. Lolita, Nabokov (6)

7. Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris, Gallico (8)

8. Nine Coaches Waiting, Stewart (10)

9. Celia Garth, Bristow (7)

10. The Light Infantry Ball, Basso

NONFICTION

1. The Status Seekers, Packard (1)

2. Mine Enemy Grows Older, King (2)

3. How I Turned $1,000 into $1,000,000 in Real Estate, Nickerson (3)

4. Only in America, Golden (4)

5. The Years with Ross, Thurber (5)

6. My Brother Was an Only Child, Douglas (7)

7. The House of Intellect, Barzun (9)

8. Elizabeth the Great, Jenkins (6)

9. What We Must Know About Communism, Harry and Bonaro Overstreet (8)

10. Folk Medicine, Jarvis

* Position on last week’s list.