Cinema: Jan. 19, 1962

The Second Time Around. Debbie Reynolds plumes herself with horsefeathers in a comedy western that, saving her presence, would have been just one more prairie dog.

Mysterious Island. A fizzy reinflation of Jules Verne’s gasbag thriller.

The Innocents. A story of profound religious horror, The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, has been diminished by Director Jack (Room at the Top) Clayton into a sophisticated psychiatric chiller. Deborah Kerr is exquisitely hysterical as the haunted heroine.

La Belle Americaine. A running gag about U.S. automobiles that sometimes stalls but usually crowds the speed limit; written, directed and acted by Robert (La Plume de Ma Tante) Dhery, a French comedian who is rapidly emerging as a sort of tatty Tati.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The best puppet picture ever made: a feature-length version of Shakespeare’s play put together by Czechoslovakia’s Jiri Trnka, the Walt Disney of the Communist bloc.

El Cid. The Spanish Lancelot, hero of the wars against the Moors, is celebrated in the year’s best superspectacle.

One, Two, Three. Director Billy Wilder employs contemporary Berlin as location for a Coca-Colonial comedy of bad manners that relentlessly maintains the pace that refreshes.

Throne of Blood. Director Akira (Rashomon) Kurosawa’s grand, barbaric Japanization of Macbeth is probably the most original and vital attempt ever made to translate Shakespeare to the screen.

The Five-Day Lover. France’s Philippe de Broca has directed a gay-grim comedy of intersecting triangles in which the participants suddenly discover that the dance of life is also the dance of death.

TELEVISION

Wed., Jan. 17

Stars—Pathway to Space (ABC, 7:30-8 p.m.).*Astronomy’s contribution to space probing, with panel of astronomers and astrophysicists.

David Brinkley (NBC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Report on the conservative movement on U.S. college campuses. Color.

Thurs., Jan. 18

Young People’s Concert (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). New York Philharmonic with Leonard Bernstein, features Gershwin’s An American in Paris, De Falla’s The Three-Cornered Hat.

The World of Jimmy Doolittle (NBC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). The story of the World War II hero and aviation pioneer.

CBS Reports (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). “The Fat American,” a look at the causes and cures of overweight. Among experts interviewed: Dr. Paul Dudley White and Ancel Keys, physiologist and co-inventor of wartime K ration.

Fri., Jan. 19

Bell Telephone Hour (NBC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). Guitarist Andres Segovia and Dancers Maria Tallchief and Erik Bruhn appear with the Bell Telephone Orchestra. Eyewitness to History (CBS, 10:30-11 p.m.). Spotlight on the top news story of the week.

Sat., Jan. 20

Accent (CBS, 1:30-2 p.m.). Part 2 of Folklorist J. Frank Dobie’s recollections of the Old West.

Sun., Jan. 21

Focus (NBC, 5-6 p.m.). A dramatization of Arthur Miller’s novel.

The Twentieth Century (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). A documentary on the problems of airports.

Walt Disney (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Part 1 of “Sancho, the Homing Steer” tells about a Texas longhorn that sneaks away from a cattle drive to find his way home again, traveling 1,200 miles in a year. Color.

Du Pont Show of the Week (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). A Project 20 documentary that traces circuses from early times to present. Clown Emmett Kelly is storyteller.

Mon., Jan. 22

Expedition! (ABC, 7-7:30 p.m.). Adrian Cowell, explorer and anthropologist, is guide on a trip through the impenetrable rain forests of British Guiana.

Tues., Jan. 23

Ernie Kovacs Special (ABC, 10-10:30 p.m.). Kovacs stages a Gay Nineties melodrama entirely in pantomime.

THEATER

On Broadway

The Night of the Iguana, by Tennessee Williams. A quartet of life’s castaways gather on a Mexican veranda and probe their defeated dreams and violated hearts in what may be Williams’ wisest play.

Ross, by Terence Rattigan, presents an absorbing theory of T. E. Lawrence as a man whose triumph and tragedy was his will. Actor John Mills portrays the hero with lacerating honesty.

A Man for All Seasons, by Robert Bolt. Rarely has the problem of duty v. conscience been posed with more precision of language and lucidity of thought than it is in this play. In Actor Paul Scofield, the hero Sir Thomas More is reincarnated.

Gideon, by Paddy Chayefsky, takes a large theme, the relationship of God and Man, and treats it with more humor than awe, but the performances of Fredric March and Douglas Campbell are full of fire and brimstone.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying is a secret that Actor Robert Morse exuberantly shares with the audience in his great, grinning rush to the top of the corporate heap.

The Caretaker, by Harold Pinter, mingles brooding poetry with eruptive passion as it unfolds a strange, shifting relationship between two brothers and a scrofulous tramp.

Off Broadway

Brecht on Brecht is an arresting two hours with the late great German playwright, a sort of literary and dramatic revue composed of selections from his poems, letters, songs, plays and aphorisms, and acted out with selfless intensity.

2 by Saroyan proves that Saroyan cafes, like Scott Fitzgerald parties, have a magic and a logic that is out of this world.

Misalliance, by George Bernard Shaw. That old boulevardier of the intellect, G.B.S., loved to wear ideas like carnations. Unlike carnations, few of the ideas in this 1910 buttonhole have withered.

BOOKS

Best Reading

Sylva, by Vercors. In a clever reworking of the woman-into-fox fable, French Novelist Vercors investigates the nature of man and man’s will in a way that is moralistic but never sententious.

The Papers of Alexander Hamilton (Volumes I & II), edited by Harold C. Syrett and Jacob E. Cooke. These first installments of a proposed 20-volume collection, which follow Hamilton through his 27th year, show something other than the bloodless autocrat of popular fancy; Hamilton was, as his eloquent letters prove, a man of passion and conviction.

The Burning Brand and The House on the Hill, both by Cesars Pavese. Respectively, a gloomy, brilliant private diary and a dour novel of Italy in World War II by a gifted Italian man of letters who killed himself for reasons he explained painfully in the journal.

But Not in Shame, by John Toland. The first half year of the Pacific war, one of the most discouraging periods in U.S. history, is vividly chronicled by a knowing historian.

The Letters of Beethoven, edited by Emily Anderson. The glimpses into the composer’s private affairs are fascinating, but frustrating to those who think genius can be rationally explained; on the evidence of the letters taken alone, Beethoven appears to have been little more than a petty, quarrelsome crank.

Assembly, by John O’Hara. The laureate of upper-middle-class Easterners ranges ably across the old home pastures and sometimes jumps the fence into other pastures in 26 short stories.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. Franny and Zooey, Salingej (1, last week)

2. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Stone (2)

3. Little Me, Dennis (5)

4. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (3)

5. Daughter of Silence, West (6)

6. Spirit Lake, Kantor (7)

7. Chairman of the Bored, Streeter (4)

8. A Prologue to Love, Caldwell (9)

9. The Carpetbaggers, Robbins (8) 10. The Judas Tree, Cronin

NONFICTION

1. My Life in Court, Nizer (1)

2. The Making of the President 1960, White (2)

3. Living Free, Adamson (3)

4. A Nation of Sheep, Lederer (5)

5. The Coming Fury, Catton (7)

6. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer (4)

7. The New English Bible (6)

8. My Saber Is Bent, Paar (9)

9. I Should Have Kissed Her More, King (8)

10. Citizen Hearst, Swanberg (10)

*All times E.S.T.