On Broadway: Jun. 1, 1962

CINEMA

The Miracle Worker. On film as on Broadway, the story of the child Helen Keller’s release from the condition of a blind deaf-mute becomes an almost unbearably moving performance.

I Like Money. Peter Sellers in a new film version of Marcel Pagnol’s Topaze—a little slow, but fey and funny.

Joan of the Angels? Made in Poland and based loosely on the case of the erotic nuns of Loudun in 17th century France, this picture is a nearly successful work of art, relentlessly ambiguous, ultimately confusing, but strong and moving.

A Taste of Honey. Shelagh Delaney, Britain’s angry young ma’am, tells a story of the Lancashire slums with concussive humor, dramatic drive, and a melancholy flair for the poetry of wasted lives.

Jules and Jim. Two young men and a girl love, laugh and write poetry in Paris 50 years ago, in a film that is a clutter of inconsequence transformed by imagination as a trash heap is transformed by moonlight.

The Counterfeit Traitor. Incessantly exciting story of an Allied agent in Sweden during World War II.

State Fair. This remake of a remake of a remake may not win any Oscars, but durned if it don’t take the blue ribbon for country corn.

Five Finger Exercise. A study in family life, concluding that all too often home is where the hurt is.

Bell’ Antonio. A serious and discreet discussion of a case of impotence.

Sweet Bird of Youth. Tennessee Williams’ so-soporific play becomes a fast, smart, squalid movie melodrama that offers its customers three of the year’s top film performances, by Paul Newman, Geraldine Page and Ed Begley.

Through a Glass Darkly. A brilliant analysis of four lives—a father, his son, daughter and son-in-law—by Sweden’s Ingmar Bergman.

Last Year at Marienbad. An experimental enigma of the screen worked out by French Director Alain Resnais and Novelist-Scenarist Alain Robbe-Grillet, in which past, present and future are refracted endlessly like the image in a child’s kaleidoscope.

TELEVISION

Summer is a-tunin’ in. Television watchers are beginning to suffer from creeping deja vu as reruns start their annual trip around the circuitry. Most promising offerings for the few million viewers who will be watching (and the networks have apparently decided that there are very few indeed):

Wed., May 30 Howard K. Smith: News & Comment (ABC, 7:30-8 p.m.).*Summary of the week’s most important items with analysis.

The Fifty Faces of ’62 (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). A special report on the political campaigns in the 50 states. Eric Sevareid is anchor man.

David Brinkley’s Journal (NBC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Brinkley inspects the guard of honor at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Color.

Thurs., May 31

At the Source (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). An interview with Maurice Couve de Murville, French Foreign Minister, on the subject of France’s problems in Algeria, her participation in NATO, and her nuclear arms policy.

Fri., June 1

The Twilight Zone (CBS, 10-10:30 p.m.). Donald Pleasence stars as the venerable instructor at a boys’ school who resists a request that he retire.

Sun., June 3

Lamp Unto My Feet (CBS, 10-10:30 a.m.). The dedication of the new Coventry Cathedral, attended by Queen Elizabeth II, taped in Great Britain.

Issues and Answers (ABC, 4-4:30 p.m.). Walt Rostow, the State Department’s head policy planner, discusses new plans for global defense.

Wide World of Sports (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). Calf roping, bareback bronc riding and steer wrestling from the Las Vegas Rodeo.

Du Pont Show of the Week (NBC 10-11 p.m.). The D-day invasion of France is documented in film never seen in tne U.S. before and in interviews with people present at the landing.

THEATER

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum stars Zero Mostel as a Roman slave in a racy adaptation of the plays of Plautus. Classic vaudeville and burlesque routines give this musical a high hilarity quotient, and six near nudettes prance appealingly amid the golden corn.

A Thousand Clowns, by Herb Gardner. A fine fresh comedy on a tired subject, nonconformism. As the arch-nonconformist, Jason Robards Jr. is beset by a captivating set of plodballs, and an irresistible sweetie named Sandy Dennis.

The Night of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams. Around four frayed lives on a Mexican veranda, Williams has fashioned an unself-pitying play of self-transcendence. Margaret Leighton’s performance is a touchstone of the acting art.

A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt. This New York Drama Critics Circle prize foreign play focuses on a man who would rather lose his life than his soul. Paul Scofield seems to body forth all the virtues of Sir Thomas More.

Gideon, by Paddy Chayefsky, treats of the largest of themes, the relationship of God and man, but despite bursts of heavenly fire and earthly humor, the playwright’s gifts are not really on the same grand scale as his subject.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying is a tongue-in-cheek musical comedy satire of corporationland. Its honors are longer than its title since it now holds the Pulitzer, Tony, and New York Drama Critics Circle awards.

Off Broadway

Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad, by

Arthur Kopit. Mom never had it so bad. Amid the Venus flytraps, Barbara Harris glistens as a hilariously voracious sexling. Brecht on Brecht. An oasis for parched minds where the playgoer may sip the aphorisms, songs, scenes and poems of a powerful master of 20th century theater.

BOOKS

Best Reading

An Unofficial Rose, by Iris Murdoch. The romantic lower depths of England’s upper classes intricately explored by an artful philosopher-novelist.

Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale, by Gladys Denny Schultz. Though the author oversentimentalizes her heroine and all but drowns her out with petty detail, this account of the cold, superbly gifted soprano who became P. T. Barnum’s greatest exhibit is absorbing for its large store of remarkable anecdotes.

The Wax Boom, by George Mandel. The strange story of an infantry company that longed compulsively for light in the darkness of combat.

Shut Up, He Explained, selections from Ring Lardner, edited by Babette Rosmond and Henry Morgan. A justly famous U.S. satiric wit happily revisited.

Patriotic Gore, by Edmund Wilson. In the hands of erudite Author Wilson, a series of essays on the literature of the Civil War becomes an important and exciting work of history.

The Collected Letters of D. H. Lawrence, edited by Harry T. Moore. Epistolary barbs and insights from the pen of a pungent novelist-poet.

Ship of Fools, by Katherine Anne Porter. A brilliant disenchanted voyage freighted with human folly.

George, by Emlyn Williams. Playwright and Author Williams shows himself to be a thoroughly readable autobiographer in this wry account of his Welsh boyhood.

Scott Fitzgerald, by Andrew Turnbull. A lovingly exhaustive biography of a writer whose talent was a diamond very nearly as big as the Ritz, but whose life was a far from tender nightmare.

Pigeon Feather and Other Stories, by John Updike. The perceptive, accomplished author of Rabbit, Run and Poor house Fail-scores another major triumph in his minor mode.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. Ship of Fools, Porter (1, last week)

2. The Bull from the Sea, Renault (4)

3. Franny and Zooey, Salinger (3)

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

5. Devil Water, Seton (5)

6. The Fox in the Attic, Hughes (6)

7. A Prologue to Love, Caldwell (7)

8. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee

9. Hornstein’s Boy, Traver (9)

10. Captain Newman, M.D., Rosten (8)

NONFICTION

1. The Rothschilds, Morton (1)

2. My Life in Court, Nizer (3)

3. Calories Don’t Count, Taller (2)

4. The Guns of August, Tuchman (5)

5. Six Crises, Nixon (6)

6. In the Clearing, Frost (4)

7. Scott Fitzgerald, Turnbull (8)

8. The Making of the President 1960, White (9)

9. The New English Bible

10. The Last Plantagenets, Costain (7)

*All times E.D.T.