Television, Theater, Records, Cinema, Books: Jul. 29, 1966

TELEVISION

Summer viewing, for eyes that come in from the hot, is pretty well limited to sports, variety shows, twice-shown movies and wintertime reruns. Among the best of a thin crop:

Thursday, July 28

THE AVENGERS (ABC, 10-11 p.m.).* Steed enrolls in a school for gentlemen’s gentlemen, and graduates valet-dictorian.

Friday, July 29

WAYNE AND SHUSTER TAKE AN AFFECTIONATE LOOK AT W. C. FIELDS (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Fields, notable during his life for absentmindedly blowing the heads off ice-cream sodas, will probably be glaring back from somewhere at these old film clips and new comments.

Saturday, July 30

WORLD CUP SOCCER CHAMPIONSHIP (NBC, 12 noon2 p.m.). The final game broadcast via satellite from Wembley Stadium near London.

ABC’S WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). The Masters’ Water-Ski Championship at Pine Mountain, Ga., and the National Motorcycle Race of Champions at Winchester, Va.

Sunday, July 31

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). “Jackpot in Libya,” a report on the changes in the once-poor North African kingdom since oil was discovered in 1959. Repeat.

LONDON PALLADIUM SHOW (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Fess Parker is host to some British vaudevillians as well as Dancers Rudolf Nureyev and Svetlana Beriosova of the Royal Ballet.

Tuesday, August 2

CBS REPORT (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). “UFO: Friend, Foe or Fantasy,” a report on unidentified flying objects filmed in Michigan, California, Colorado and England. Repeat.

THEATER

Straw Hat

Shakespeare festivals are still a mainstay of summer theater, but more and more the Bard’s works are blended with a touch of contemporary:

BERKSHIRE THEATER FESTIVAL, Stockbridge, Mass. The Merchant of Venice, July 19-30, performed as it was by the inmates of the Theriesenstadt concentration camp in Nazi Germany in 1943—the costumes are stark prison uniforms and the set is a bare hall in the camp. To be followed by Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Aug. 2-13.

CHAMPLAIN SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL, Burlington, Vt., at the University of Vermont. Comedy of Errors, Hamlet and Henry VI, Part 1 will run through Sept. 3.

AMERICAN SHAKESPEARE THEATER, Stratford, Conn. Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar and Falstaff (Henry IV, Part 2) as counterpoint to T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral. Through Sept. 11.

NEW YORK SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL, New York City. At the Delacorte Theater in Manhattan’s Central Park, the company will perform Measure for Measure through July 30, then Richard III, Aug. 3-27. A second, mobile company is touring the city’s boroughs doing Macbeth in English and from Aug. 25 through Sept. 5, in Spanish. Presumably the battlements will resound with cries of “Mañana y mañana y mañana . . .”

CROTON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL, Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y. The season starts with Comedy of Errors, July 28-30, continues with Cymbeline, Aug. 4-6, and ends with George Bernard Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion, Aug. 11-13.

NEW JERSEY SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL, Cape May, N.J. Comedy of Errors and Macbeth alternate on the boards with John Whiting’s The Devils and the British satirical review Beyond the Fringe. Through Aug. 14.

WASHINGTON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL, Washington, D.C. In the Sylvan Theater at the foot of the Washington Monument the company will perform The Winter’s Tale.

ASOLO THEATER FESTIVAL, Sarasota, Fla. Much Ado About Nothing shares the spotlight through Aug. 27 with Molière’s The Miser, Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and Eugene Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano.

UTAH SHAKESPEAREAN FESTIVAL, Cedar City, Utah. The Taming of the Shrew, Julius Caesar, The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Through July 30.

OREGON SHAKESPEAREAN FESTIVAL, Ashland, Ore. America’s oldest Elizabethan theater group, in its 26th season, which will run through Sept. 11, performs A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Henry VI, Part 3. Matinee audiences will see The Beggar’s Opera Aug. 16 through Sept. 9.

OLD GLOBE THEATER, San Diego, Calif. The 17th National Shakespeare Festival will perform Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest and The Two Gentlemen of Verona in their replica of the Globe Theater. Through Sept. 11.

RECORDS

Folk Music

BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE: Little Wheel Spin and Spin (Vanguard). Buffy is strong on conviction, whether she is singing as a Cree Indian protesting the injustices inflicted on her people (My Country ‘Tis of Thy People You’re Dying), or as a mother crooning a spine-shivering lullaby (Winter Boy). She is best when she accompanies herself on the vibrant mouth-bow or guitar, and least satisfying when her own pure style is hoked up with electric guitar and bass.

THE ROBERT DeCORMIER SINGERS: The Folk Album (Command). A wholesome-sounding chorus of young Americans tackles two centuries of folk tunes, and proves for the most part that sound musical training, plus a lifetime of Mom’s apple pie, does not produce the passion necessary for suffering songs of the Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie type. Nevertheless, some of the old campfire favorites (So Long; Good Night, Irene) are effectively revived.

TOM RUSH: Take a Little Walk with Me (Elektra). Rush is not the man to whine about the ugly old world. He sings as a lively young man less concerned with eternal verities than with simple joys: wandering and women and money. In fine, rich voice, he moves through finger-snappers from the 1950s (You Can’t Tell a Book by the Cover; Sugar Babe), making them bis own with easy style and grace.

IAN AND SYLVIA: Play One More (Vanguard). Just about the most pleasant-sounding folk twosome within hearing offers what is sure to be the couple’s fourth bestselling album—this time country-and-western tunes. These young Canadians have gone successfully from pure folk to an electric-guitar background that suits their rhythmic way as they weave together songs of loneliness and love, mostly unrequited.

RICHARD AND MIMI FARIÑA: Reflections in a Crystal Wind (Vanguard). Bitter protest by Joan Baez’ sister and late brother-in-law, who were making quite a name for themselves among fans of this sort of thing before Richard was killed in a motorcycle crash last May. Backed by an electronic wonderland (piano, guitar, bass, plus drums, harmonica, dulcimer, celesta), and using a smoky, Hoagy Carmichael beat, they sing the House UnAmerican Blues Activity Dream and the Sell-Out Agitation Waltz. Sample lyrics:

Society is never geared To people who wear a beard.

THE PENNYWHISTLERS: Folksongs of Eastern Europe (Nonesuch). For those who like their folk music ethnic, a group of seven American girls offers a pastiche of infrequently heard items from the banks of the Danube: Bulgarian planting songs, Hungarian love lyrics, Croatian hymns. Many of them are sung a capella—sustained by the septet’s own strong harmony.

CINEMA

HOW TO STEAL A MILLION. Ars graftia artis. Audrey Hepburn and Peter O’Toole in an elegant comedy about the joys of burgling and forging the old masters.

WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? Edward Albee’s drama about a venomous all-night orgy of truth and consequences on faculty row has reached the screen with every four-letter word intact. Elizabeth Taylor, playing bitch-wife to Richard Burton’s hagridden husband, proves that there is talent on both sides of the family.

THE ENDLESS SUMMER. Two California surfers prowl the world in a studious documentary on the quest for the perfect wave.

A BIG HAND FOR THE LITTLE LADY. The full house includes Henry Fonda, Joanne Woodward and a couple of other aces in a mock-heroic poker comedy.

THE NAKED PREY. Manhunting in Africa a long dark century ago, with resourceful Director-Star Cornel Wilde as the sole survivor of an ill-fated safari, who becomes fair game for savage warriors.

“THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING.” The best thing about this cold war comedy is Broadway’s Alan Arkin, hilarious as a Red-roving Soviet sailor whose sub is beached on a tight little island off the New England coast.

AND NOW MIGUEL. A ten-year-old boy comes of age among New Mexican sheep ranchers in an intelligent juvenile film by the makers of Island of the Blue Dolphins and Misty.

LE BONHEUR. Writer-Director Agnès Varda translates the French word for happiness into an exquisite tale of infidelity.

BORN FREE. A lioness named Elsa is as winning on the screen as she was in Joy Adamson’s celebrated animal biography.

MANDRAGOLA. In Director Alberto Lattuada’s romp through a Renaissance classic, some bold types carry out Machiavellian plots against the virtue of a Florentine beauty (Rosanna Schiaffino).

DEAR JOHN. The subjects of this perceptive essay on sex in Sweden are a sailor and a girl who spend a weekend learning that there is more to their relationship than lust at first sight.

THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET. Well deserving of its Oscar, the best foreign film of the year owes much of its impact to Josef Króner and Ida Kamińska as a couple of harmless villagers who have to work out their own answers to the Jewish question—orrather, the Nazi question—in German-occupied Czechoslovakia.

BOOKS

Best Reading

LYNDON B. JOHNSON AND THE WORLD, by Philip L. Geyelin. A perceptive, sometimes tartly irreverent account of how L.B.J. has fared in foreign affairs, by the Wall Street Journal’s diplomatic correspondent.

LOVE’S BODY, by Norman O. Brown. As a follow-up to his Life Against Death, which has become an undergraduate’s delight, University of Rochester Professor Brown offers further Freudian ruminations on his theory that mankind’s greatest enemy is sexual repression.

JUSTICE IN JERUSALEM, by Gideon Hausner. Prosecutor Hausner’s taut account of the arrest and trial of Adolf Eichmann.

MR. CLEMENS AND MARK TWAIN, by Justin Kaplan. No one disputes Mark Twain’s lofty position in literature, but Author Kaplan’s searching biography reveals him as an embittered and despairing cynic who courted the values of his time and despised himself for doing so.

JAMES BOSWELL: THE EARLIER YEARS, by Frederick A. Pottle. Johnson’s Boswell comes stunningly to life in this warm portrait of a rakish genius.

THE BIG KNOCKOVER, by Dashiell Hammett. In a collection of his early detective stories, the late founding father of the tough-guy school of fiction proves that he is still at the head of his class.

ARIEL, by Sylvia Plath. Author Plath, who committed suicide at 30, wrote a mass of morbid but powerful poetry in the last few months of her unhappy life, and in the three years since her death has become the most celebrated woman poet of her generation.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. Valley of the Dolls, Susann (1 last week)

2. The Adventurers, Robbins (2)

3. Tai-Pan, Clavell (4)

4. The Source, Michener (3)

5. Tell No Man, St. Johns (5)

6. The Embezzler, Auchincloss (6)

7. Those Who Love, Stone (8)

8. The Double Image, MacInnes (7)

9. The Detective, Thorp 10. I, the King, Keyes (9)

NONFICTION

1. How to Avoid Probate, Dacey (1)

2. The Last Battle, Ryan (2)

3. Papa Hemingway, Hotchner (3)

4. Human Sexual Response, Masters and Johnson (4)

5. In Cold Blood, Capote (5)

6. Games People Play, Berne (6)

7. Churchill, Moran (8)

8. Unsafe at Any Speed, Nader (9)

9. The Crusades, Oldenbourg (7) 10. The Big Spenders, Beebe

*All times E.D.T.