Time Listings: CINEMA

Ada. Despite an overly cute central idea and the flim-flamboyance of Star Susan Hayward, competent script and direction make this a pleasant political comedy about the road from bawdyhouse to Governor’s mansion. Britain’s Wilfrid Hyde White is superb as a major political snake.

Blood and Roses. Filmed at the Emperor Hadrian’s villa outside Rome under the direction of Roger Vadim (And God Created Woman), this eerie tale of a lady vampire is the most subtle, careful and beautiful of the current crop of chillers. With Mel Ferrer.

Homicidal. Made in imitation of Hitchcock’s Psycho, it surpasses its model in structure, suspense and sheer nervous drive.

The Honeymoon Machine. It is really the Hollywood machine, in a rare moment of felicitous clank, turning out the slick, quick, funny film for which it was designed—in this case about three young people who use a computer to assault the casino in Venice.

Fate of a Man. Among the best of the Soviet films seen in the U.S. during the current three-year-old cultural exchange, this one tells the agonizing story of a village carpenter whose life is shattered by war. Based on a story by Mikhail (And Quiet Flows the Don) Sholokhov.

The Parent Trap. The delightful story of teen-age twins who try to kid their divorced parents into remarrying—both twins played by Hayley Mills, biggest child star since Temple and a better actress than Shirley was.

The Sand Castle. In a charming but not cloyingly sweet story, a little boy builds a castle of sand so stunning that it merits inclusion in Sir Bannister Fletcher’s History of Architecture, while the camera roams in satiric asides among the flesh castles strewn on the beach.

TELEVISION

Wed., Sept. 13 The Connie Francis Show (ABC, 9-10 p.m.).* The current No. 1 girl among pop singers in her first TV special, with Art Carney, Eddie Foy Jr., Tab Hunter.

Thurs., Sept. 14 The Summer Sports Spectacular (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). A season preview of the National Football League, zipped up with ample film clips from last year’s action.

CBS Reports (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). “Our Election Day Illusion—the Beat Majority” analyzes U.S. election laws and procedures. Repeat.

Silents Please (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). C. B. DeMille’s The Road to Yesterday (1925), with William Boyd and Joseph Schildkraut.

Fri., Sept. 15

International Showtime (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). PREMIÈRE of a new series that will present European circuses, magic, aqua and ice shows, etc., all taped abroad. Host: Don Ameche. Tonight: Copenhagen’s Circus Schumann.

Person to Person (CBS, 10:30-11 p.m.). Tonight the show visits the New York apartments of Comedian Phil Silvers, Singer-Comedienne Polly Bergen: Repeat.

Sat., Sept. 16

United Nations Handicap (CBS, 5:30-6 p.m.). The ninth running of the $100,000 invitational horse race in Atlantic City.

The Defenders (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). PREMIÈRE of a new weekly series based on a 1957 Reginald Rose TV play about a father and son, both attorneys at law. E. G. Marshall and Robert Reed star; Rose serves as script editor and occasional writer.

Sun., Sept. 17

Accent (CBS, 5-5:30 p.m.). A tour of the Roman Forum, with Irish-Indian Writer Aubrey Menen.

The Twentieth Century (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). Emperor Franz Joseph, Czar Nicholas II, Edward VII, Kaiser Wilhelm, Alexandre Eiffel, Wilbur Wright, Leo Tolstoy, Mrs. Dreyfus and Emile Zola are all on view in “The Turn of the Century.” Repeat.

Meet the Press (NBC, 6-6:30 p.m.). Guest: Adlai Stevenson.

Car 54, Where Are You? (NBC, 8:30-9 p.m.). PREMIÈRE of a new weekly comedy series about those thigh-slapping side-busters, the cops of New York. Written by Nat Hiken, creator of Sergeant Bilko.

General Electric Theater (CBS, 9-9:30 p.m.). Another showing of,Albert Lamorisse’s The Red Balloon, perhaps the finest short motion picture yet made.

The Du Pont Show of the Week (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). PREMIÈRE of a new series, this item called “Laughter U.S.A.,” a Project 20 essay on the history of American humor.

Tues., Sept. 19

NBC White Paper No. 7 (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). A study of the African rebellion against the Portuguese in Angola.

Playhouse 90 (CBS, 9:30-11 p.m.). William Faulkner’s The Old Man, with Geraldine Page and Sterling Hayden. Repeat.

Cain’s Hundred (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). PREMIÈRE of a new series about a lawyer who once defended gangsters in court but has now climbed on the truth-and-beauty train to help the Federal Government hunt down the 100 top criminals in the U.S. underworld.

BOOKS

Best Reading

The Age of Reason Begins, by Will and Ariel Durant. In the first volume of a trilogy with which he hopes to complete his vast and generally excellent Story of Civilization, the author (assisted by his wife) examines the 16th and 17th centuries with admirably balanced but sometimes passionless rationalism. He finds the whole period marked by “the rise of murderous nationalism and the decline of murderous theologies.”

Kidnap, by George Waller. This meticulous account adds nothing to what is known about the Lindbergh kidnaping, but it summarizes well the bizarre, tragic events of crime and capture.

Ippolita, by Alberto Denti di Pirajno. Highly reminiscent of The Leopard and written, as was that excellent novel, by an aging Sicilian duke, Ippolita draws an evocative portrait of semifeudal Italian society amid the first revolutionary stirrings in the early 19th century. The author depicts princes, peasants, and his skinflint heroine with melodramatic gusto, but his most exact and memorable character is the past itself.

The Children of Sánchez, by Oscar Lewis. A tape-recorded documentary in which each of five members of a slumdwelling Mexico City family tells of his own struggle for respect, love and individuality. Far from the dusty aridities of social science, the book offers a powerful, touching and intimate view of the long, and far from simple, annals of the poor.

An End to Glory, by Pierre-Henri Simon. Writing an eloquent antiwar tract in the form of a novel, the author tells the agony of a French professional soldier who, in Algeria, comes to believe that his is an ignoble role in a shameful war.

The Road Past Mandalay, by John Masters. Another face of war—the pride and nobility of fighting men at their best—is the concern of the author, who tells, more convincingly than in any of his novels, of his World War II service with the Indian army in the East.

Men and Women, by Erskine Caldwell. A collection of the best short stories of an author whose touch with humor and horror is superb, and who deserves better than his reputation as a drugstore patent-fiction merchant.

Collected Poems, by Robert Graves. The bent-nosed Jove of Majorca is no Yeats or Eliot, but he can outdistance these masters in evoking the moods of love, childhood, or the classic past. In his own right he is an impressive poet, truer to his passions than to the literary fashions of his time.

Best Sellers ( previously included in TIME’S choice of Best Reading)

FICTION 1. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Stone (1) *

2. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (2)

3. Mila 18, Uris (3)

4. The Winter of Our Discontent, Steinbeck (4)

5. The Carpetbaggers, Robbins (5)

6. Tropic of Cancer, Miller (6)

7. The Edge of Sadness, O’Connor (7)

8. Rembrandt, Schmitt (8)

9. Mothers and Daughters, Hunter (10)

10. A Shooting Star, Stegner

NONFICTION 1. A Nation of Sheep, Lederer (2)

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

3. The Making of the President 1960, White (1)

4. Inside Europe Today, Gunther (3)

5. The New English Bible (5)

6. Ring of Bright Water, Maxwell (6)

7. The Spanish Civil War, Thomas (9)

8. Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin, Kennan (7)

9. America — Too Young to Die!, De Seversky (8)

10. Life with Women and How to Survive It, Peck

* All times E.D.T.

* Position on last week’s list.