Television: Oct. 29, 1965

Wednesday, October 27

BOB HOPE PRESENTS THE CHRYSLER THEATER (NBC, 9-10 p.m.).* In “Back to Back,” Shelley Winters and Jack Hawkins pose as a happily married couple in order to get the jobs they want. Color.

I SPY (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Agents Culp and Cosby do their best to protect the life of an arrogant mobster so he can inform on a Hong Kong racket. Color.

Thursday, October 28

CBS THURSDAY NIGHT MOVIE (CBS, 9-11:15 p.m.). The screen version of Jean Kerr’s comedy Mary, Mary. Color.

Friday, October 29

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Phyllis Newman appears as a desert tribe princess who wants to trade her prisoner for a camel in “The Arabian Affair.” Color.

TEENAGE REVOLUTION (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). With Van Heflin as narrator, the program examines the increased influence that today’s youth wields in society.

Saturday, October 30

ABC SCOPE (ABC, 7-7:30 p.m. in New York; nationally, 10:30-11 p.m.). “Jomo Kenyatta: Burning Spear Turns Builder.” A visit with Kenya’s leader.

GET SMART! (NBC, 8:30-9 p.m.). Don Adams stars as the bungling secret agent Maxwell Smart in “Kaos in Control.” It appears that a Kaos agent has infiltrated Control Headquarters. Color.

JIMMY DURANTE MEETS THE LIVELY ARTS (ABC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). Durante and Guests Rudolf Nureyev, Roberta Peters, Robert Vaughn and the rock-‘n’-rolling Shindogs survey culture and entertainment. Color.

Sunday, October 31

THE BIG EAR (NBC, 6:30-7:30 p.m.). Robert MacNeil reports on the wide extent of electronic eavesdropping and telephone wiretapping in the U.S. Guests include Senator Robert Kennedy.

Monday, November 1

RUN FOR YOUR LIFE (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). The hero of this series (Ben Gazzara), who has only a short time to live and gads about a lot while waiting for the end, reluctantly agrees to defend a woman accused of murdering her husband. Color.

Tuesday, November 2

TUESDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 9-11 p.m.). Little Boy Lost (Paramount 1953), with Bing Crosby and Claude Dauphin in a story about an American newsman searching Paris for the son he lost during World War II. Color.

THEATER

The new season is under way but so far warrants little more than desultory interest. Most of the best shows are holdovers.

GENERATION. Playwright William Goodhart measures the distance between generations in a comedy imbued with fond regard for the humor implicit in human nature. In one of his ablest performances, Henry Fonda gives not only body to a role but substance to a man.

HALF A SIXPENCE and one Tommy Steele stir up a light froth of song and dance.

THE ODD COUPLE. On leave from unhappy marriages, Walter Matthau and Paul Dooley try to set up a masculine ménage à deux; their farcical failure makes for highly successful comedy.

LUV. Satirist Murray Schisgal pokes at the poses and spoofs the self-seriousness of a society and theater weaned on analysis and fed by Freud.

THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT. Alan Alda is an “author” (meaning book clerk) and Diana Sands a “model” (meaning prostitute) in this ironic version of the mating game.

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF. Sholom Aleichem’s story of a Russian village in 1905 becomes a lively musical with Luther Adler as Tevye, a dairyman who has wit, compassion, and five daughters.

Off Broadway

A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE. Arthur Miller’s near tragedy tells of a Brooklyn longshoreman who destroys himself and his family by feeding on his incestuous desires and jealousies.

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ENTIRE WORLD AS SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF COLE PORTER owes little to Gibbon and much to Cole, whose lesser-known songs add life to a highly camp revue.

RECORDS

Popular Instrumentalists

WHIPPED CREAM AND OTHER DELIGHTS (A & M) are confected with two mellow trumpets and a trombone by Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass. Trumpeter Alpert started out in Mexico three years ago to capture the sound of the corrida (in The Lonely Bull), but his blend of Dixieland and mariachi is now receiving oles north of the border on the Sunset Strip. His musical menu includes, besides Whipped Cream, A Taste of Honey, Ladyfingers, Peanuts, Tangerine, Lemon Tree and Love Potion No. 9.

SUMMER WIND (Kapp). This is a Roger Williams album, but he could slip away unnoticed, what with two orchestras, a massed chorus and chimes. Indeed, the record jacket shows a grand piano abandoned on a windy beach at sunset. Williams apparently remained staunchly at his post during the recording session, however, for every so often (in A Walk in the Black Forest, Cumana, You’ll Never Walk Alone) a freshet of trills and runs floods forth.

THE MAGIC MUSIC OF FAR AWAY PLACES (Decca) is evoked in Moon over Naples, Hava Nagila, Midnight in Moscow and Star Dust (the U.S. entry). The pieces are all translated into the international language of fox trot by the German bandleader Bert Kaempfert, whose dancy, brassy swing style keeps trumpeting LPs up the bestseller lists, where they tend to stay put for months.

ONLY THE BEST (United Artists) means the pieces everyone is recording, like Red Roses for a Blue Lady, Chim Chim Cheree and Downtown. The middle-aged instrumentalists are Arthur Ferrante and Louis Teicher, who perform their expectable, rather staid two-piano exercises to the expectable, rather staid accompaniment of a large orchestra.

AN EVENING AT THE “POPS” (RCA Victor). If one is going to hear an orchestra play TV themes (The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Munsters) and songs from Fiddler on the Roof, it might as well be the Boston Pops with its own ineffable fiddlers. And Arthur Fiedler’s Hard Day’s Night, though not up to the Beatles, is pretty fab, all things considered.

SOMETHING TO REMEMBER YOU BY (RCA Victor), along with Dancing in the Dark and I See Your Face Before Me, are three of a dozen songs by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz that are dressed in silk and satin by the strings and orchestra of the late George Melachrino.

AL HIRT: LIVE AT CARNEGIE HALL (RCA Victor). The big trumpeter, who left jazz for more popular razzle-dazzle on the wings of Java, shows some of the old spark in pieces like Kansas City and Going to Chicago Blues.

CINEMA

THE HILL. Looking less like Bond and more like Gable, Sean Connery leads a handful of World War II unfortunates up and down a sandy pyramid in Director Sidney (The Pawnbroker) Lumet’s forceful if conventional drama of men v. masters in a British army stockade.

REPULSION. With monstrous art, Writer-Director Roman Polanski wrings a classic chiller from the pulse-quickening misdeeds of a lovely French manicurist (Catherine Deneuve) whose problems seem reminiscent of that classic chiller Psycho.

THE RAILROAD MAN. The commonplace woes of everyman catch up with a devil-may-care railroad engineer in this family drama, made in 1956 by Director Pietro Germi (Divorce—Italian Style), who also plays the title role.

TO DIE IN MADRID. Such narrators as John Gielgud and Irene Worth add eloquent words to rare newsreel footage assembled by French Producer-Director Frédéric Rossif, who reshapes Spain’s savage civil war of 1936-1939 into a powerful work of art.

DARLING. A dazzling playgirl (Julie Christie) learns how to succeed at jet-set fun-and-games, only to discover too late that to win can be to lose.

KING AND COUNTRY. Pity and terror are evoked by Director Joseph Losey (The Servant) and by Actor Tom Courtenay as a baffled army deserter en route to his execution during World War I.

THE MOMENT OF TRUTH. Blood, sand and social protest mix liberally in Director Francesco Rosi’s angry drama about the rise and fall of a great bullfighter—played with impressive sting by Spanish Matador Miguel Mateo.

RAPTURE. A handsome fugitive (Dean Stockwell) shakes up the inhabitants of an old, dark house on a storm-ravaged coast. It has been done before, but Patricia Gozzi (the provocative waif of Sundays and Cybele) brightens the premises with a performance of remarkable subtlety.

BOOKS

Best Reading

CONVERSATIONS WITH BERENSON, recalled by Count Umberto Morra, translated by Florence Hammond. The late Bernard Berenson, the American critic who trained his eye on Italian Renaissance art and his tongue in the art of conversation, was both wise and wise guy when discussing painting, disseminating gossip, or commenting on life. Count Morra, one of Berenson’s frequent guests, fortunately took notes.

PROUST: THE LATER YEARS, by George D. Painter. British Museum Curator George D. Painter concludes his rich biography of Marcel Proust in a second volume. Remembrance of Things Past is virtually required prior reading, but once that hurdle is out of the way, the reader is treated to a detailed and near-reverent account of Proust’s agonizing labors over Remembrance, his homosexuality, and his pathetic transformation from social climber to neurotic recluse.

AN END TO CHIVALRY, by Tom Cole. This initial book of stories by a lecturer at M.I.T. is witty, charming, and dominated by a superb novella that casts a young American couple against the primordial background of Sicily, hurls them into the frenzy of a carnival, and delicately records their individual reactions.

THE VINLAND MAP AND THE TARTAR RELATION, by Thomas E. Marston, R. A. Skelton, George D. Painter. The circumstances surrounding the recent discovery of the only known pre-Columbus map of the New World and the painstaking research to authenticate the faded document are chronicled in a scholarly and expensive ($15) volume. But the reproduction of the 1440 map alone is worth the price.

THE SILENT SKY, by Allan W. Eckert. The author, who earlier wrote The Great Auk, laments the fate of the passenger pigeon, whose species numbered in the millions before man trapped, bludgeoned and shot the bird into extinction.

ALICE’S ADVENTURES UNDER GROUND, by the Rev. C. L. Dodgson. Alice makes her first trip down the rabbit hole in this delightful original version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, reproducing the handwriting and original lacy sketches by Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll.

THE AMERICANS: THE NATIONAL EXPERIENCE, by Daniel J. Boorstin. In booming pre-Civil War America, ingenuity, speed, and a belief in the future gave the settlers their grip on the vast land. Historian Boorstin brings the period to life in a masterful blend of statistics and steamboat races.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. The Source, Michener (1 last week)

2. Airs Above the Ground, Stewart (2)

3. Up the Down Staircase, Kaufman (4)

4. The Honey Badger, Ruark (10)

5. Hotel, Hailey (6)

6. The Man with the Golden Gun, Fleming (3)

7. The Green Berets, Moore (5)

8. The Rabbi, Gordon (7)

9. The Looking Glass War, le Carré (9)

10. Thomas, Mydans (8)

NONFICTION

1. Kennedy, Sorensen (2)

2. Intern, Doctor X (3)

3. The Making of the President, 1964, White (1)

4. A Gift of Prophecy, Montgomery (5)

5. Yes I Can, Davis and Boyar (6)

6. Games People Play, Berne (4)

7. Is Paris Burning? Collins and Lapierre (7)

8. Manchild in the Promised Land, Brown (9)

9. Markings, Hammarskjold

10. My Twelve Years with John F.

Kennedy, Lincoln (8)

* All times E.D.T. through Oct. 30. E.S.T. thereafter.