CINEMA
To Kill a Mockingbird. Gregory Peck's Oscar-winning performance as Atticus Finch is good, but the kids, Mary Badham, Phillip Alford and John Megna almost steal the show in this pleasant screen version of the Pulitzer Prizewinning novel.
Lazarillo. Based on a 1554 Spanish novel, Lazarillo is a sort of 16th century Huckleberry Finn which details the misadventures of its young hero as he pits wits and wiles against a world of unscrupulous adults.
Mondo Cane. The bite of this documentary of depravity is even worse than its bark: the thesis that the world has gone to the dogs.
Lafayette. The main reason for seeing this Louis XVI version of the American Revolution is to watch what happens when the French try to give U.S. audiences a taste of their own widescreen, Technicolored medicine. Orson Welles, in a Father Knickerbocker suit and a frenzied-fright wig is hilarious as Benjamin Franklin in one of the film's few intentionally comic scenes.
The Stripper. William Inge's play, A Loss of Roses, comes to the screen with a title that will infuriate customers hoodwinked into thinking they are going to see a sequel to Gypsy. The locale is the same familiar tank-town-in-summer that is the favorite setting for Problem pictures; who would guess what was going on inside the tacky little white house there behind the hydrangea bushes? Who, really, would care?
Fiasco in Milan. This one takes up where Big Deal on Madonna Street leaves off, with Comic Carlo Pisacane trying desperately to keep his tapeworm living in the style to which it has become accustomed. Vittorio Gassman and his Madonna Street gang wiggle through some funny scenes.
The Man from the Diners' Club. Danny Kaye has got into the clutches of the Jerry Lewis people and is forced to caper through a series of predictable sight gags, but television's Telly Savalas as a murderous mobster almost hijacks the show with his menacing geniality.
Landru. A highly colored documentary on France's World War I Bluebeard who killed ten women for their money. Franc,oise Sagan's script drips cynicism, but Claude Chabrol's provocative camera work and the archly stylized acting of the cast (Charles Denner, Danielle Darrieux, Michele Morgan) manage to make it worthwhile.
How the West Was Won. The wraparound wonders of Cinerama embrace huge chunks of U.S. history in a spectacle that is part pageant, part shoot-'em-up and part travelogue. A stampede of stars competes with a herd of buffaloes, and comes off second best.
Love Is a Ball. The ball is filled with hot air, but Hope Lange and Glenn Ford keep it bouncing all along the Riviera.
The Birds. The sea gulls will get you, if you don't watch Hitchcock.
The Ugly American. Ambassador Brando, in a Ronald Colman mustache and a Fred Astaire top hat, matches ideologies with a native revolutionist in faraway South Sarkhan. Most of the Americans involved in this fanciful adaptation of the Burdick-Lederer novel are so lacking in charm that it is hard to decide just who is the ugliest.
Bye Bye Birdie. Ann-Margret is almost convincing as she sings and dances through the story about a small-town chick who tangles with a rock-'n'-roll rooster and nearly loses some tail feathers. All the songs from the Broadway original are here, but most of the life in Birdie seems to have flown the coop.
The Balcony. Jean Genet's allegory of life as a bawdyhouse where men buy illusions at the price of their masculinity. Shelley Winters is the madam.
I Could Go On Singing. Members of the Judy Garland Underground will love this more-than-slightly biographical story about a famous singer who goes to London to sing, gets involved in a child-custody wrangle, ends up on the lonely side of the rainbow.
TELEVISION
Wednesday, May 8
Israel--It Is No Fable (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.).* A special documentary look at Israel, including an interview with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.
The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS, 9:30-10 p.m.). The show's Creator-Writer-Producer Carl Reiner turns actor for an appearance in this episode called "When a Bowling Pin Talks, Listen."
Thursday, May 9
The Twilight Zone (CBS, 9-10 p.m.). An Outward Bounder of a story called "Passage on the Lady Anne," with Gladys Cooper, Wilfred Hyde-White and Cecil Kellaway.
Friday, May 10
The Jack Paar Show (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Guests Pearl Bailey and Peggy Cass will beard Peter Ustinov. Color.
Saturday, May 11 ABC's Wide World of Sports (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). A film-clip reprise of the Pan American Games from Sao Paulo, Brazil.
The Defenders (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). In this episode Lawyer Lawrence Preston falls in love with a client (Geraldine Brooks) who is seeking a divorce.
What's Going On Here? (WNEW-TV, 9-9:30 p.m.). Anti-Establishment satire comes to U.S. television in a show patterned on the BBC's That Was the Week That Wasa rude, comic look at the news. Performers include Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook from Beyond the Fringe, Oh Dad's Barbara Harris, The Establishment's John Bird, Second City's Roger Bowen and others.
Sunday, May 12
The Twentieth Century (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). "The Airport Jam," a discussion of the problems of jet-age airports, including interviews with FAA Administrator Najeeb Halaby and homeowners who live near airports.
Sunday Night Movie (ABC, 8-10 p.m.). James Cagney as Admiral William F. ("Bull") Halsey in The Gallant Hours.
What's Going On Here? (WNEW-TV, 9-9:30 p.m.). Repeat of the Saturday night premiere (see above).
The Dinah Shore Show (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). An au revoir from Dinahthe last of her regular series (except for reruns) for a while. Color.
Monday, May 13
Monday Night at the Movies (NBC, 7:30-9:30 p.m.). Irene Dunne plays Queen Victoria and Alec Guinness plays Disraeli in The Mudlark.
David Brinkley's Journal (NBC, 10-10:30 p.m.). The second of two parts on Haiti.
Ben Casey (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). Academy Award Winner Ed Begley is consulting physician in "Hang No Hats on Dreams."
Tuesday, May 14
As Caesar Sees It (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). The first silent TV showSid Caesar and guests re-create pre-talky movies (an opportunity for viewers to turn off the sound on the commercials and leave it off).
THEATER
On Broadway
She Loves Me is head over heels in love with love. The musical's springtime sweethearts are Barbara Cook and Daniel Massey, son of Raymond, Carol Haney's dance spoofs and the Sheldon Harnick-Jerry Bock score keep this romantic fairy tale spinning gaily.
Rattle of a Simple Man, by Charles Dyer, locks a London floozy and a virginal Manchester clerk in a bedroom and then busily prevents them from going to bed. Stalemated between farce and pathos, the play does not go anywhere either, but Tammy Grimes is a beguiling imp and Edward Woodward a touchingly vulnerable bumpkin.
Mother Courage, by Bertolt Brecht, is intellectual TNT by Broadway standards. In the title role, Anne Bancroft pulls her canteen wagon across the face of Europe during the Thirty Years War and tragically loses her three children. Brecht's reflections on peace and war are deeply ironic, but Anne Bancroft lacks the depth for her part.
Strange Interlude, by Eugene O'Neill, puts its characters on a kind of verbal couch for 4 1/2 hours, but all of the amateur psychoanalyzing currently seems both comic and a trifle freudulent. Nevertheless, Star Geraldine Page rings as true as 14 carats.
Enter Laughing, by Joseph Stein. There is an improvisational air to this play that lends freshness to a stalely familiar genre, the Jewish family comedy. As a youngster with a yen to act, Alan Arkin is rib-splittingly funny.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, by Edward Albee. Winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle award as the best play of the year, Virginia Woolf detonates a shattering three-act marital explosion that, for savage wit and skill, is unparalleled in the recent annals of the U.S. stage. As the embattled couple, Arthur Hill and Uta Hagen enact their roles with magnificent ferocity.
Off Broadway
The Boys from Syracuse. This can't be fluff because it unreels so welleven if it has been 24 years since Abbott, Rodgers and Hart opened it on Broadway, after purloining the mistaken-identity story line from William Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors. Song and skinbut no sobs, no sorrows, no sighs.
To the Water Tower. The Second City troupe is unequaled among U.S. revue groups for its acting skill, imaginative verve and satiric intrepidity. It lives up to its own reputation, in this tart hit-and-run raid on Cuba, bomb shelter salesmen, and the fantasy life of after-hour private club cutups.
Six Characters in Search of an Author is quite possibly the best thought-out and most excitingly executed revival of the Pirandello classic ever to be seen in the U.S. Under William Ball's exceptional direction, a topnotch cast responds seis-mographically to the dramatic shifts between illusion and reality.
RECORDS
Back in Bean's Bag (Coleman Hawkins, Clark Terry; Columbia) was intended as an epochal encounter between Hawkins' tenor sax and Terry's virtuoso trumpet. Then something went wrong; the true soloist turns out to be Tommy Flanagan on piano. During Hawk's flights of fancy, a wildly distorted recording balance hides the horn behind the accompaniment.
Who Is Gary Burton? (RCA Victor) is a question few jazz listeners will be asking a year from now. The answer: a 19-year-old vibraphone player who sounds like Lionel Hampton's sophisticated little brother. He plays with great technique and inventiveness, and behind him is a pluperfect jazz ensemble: Phil Woods, alto sax; Clark Terry, trumpet; John Neves, bass; Joe Morello and Chris Swanson, drums; and of course, Tommy Flanagan, piano.
Orchestra U.S.A. (Colpix) presents the debut of John Lewis' new enterprise, a 30-piece jazz orchestra amazing both for the excellence of its personnel and the flatness of their group performance. Solos by Saxophonist Phil Woods, Trumpeter Herb Pomeroy and Flutist Eric Dolphy far exceed the level of their support.
Red's Good Groove (Red Garland Quintet; Jazzland) is easy, lyrical and hard-swinging music the boys can all cook to their own taste, and here the choice of the whole group is well done. Blue Mitchell plays the trumpet too prettily, but the rest of the group are drivers: Pepper Adams, baritone sax; Sam Jones, bass; Philly Joe Jones, drums; and Garland on piano.
Afro-Bossa (Duke Ellington; Reprise) contains Duke's proof that he was on the scene with something like bossa nova when Brazilians and their music were still in Brazil. Duke called it "Afro-Cuban" in those days. Now he calls it "une nouvelle vague exotique" or "gutbucket bolero." But it still sounds like bird calls.
The Thundering Herds (Woody Herman; Columbia) is a collector's item of three records that covers the progress of the First and Second Herds (Woody's name for his bands) as if Herman were General Patton. The music is the hardest swing ever played by a big band.
Five Feet of Soul (Jimmy Rushing; Colpix) presents the man who inspired the song Mr. Five by Five, singing in the warm blues style no one around but Ray Charles would dare attempt. Rushing's songs are all dandies--'Tain't Nobody's Biz-ness If I Do, Trouble in Mind and My Bucket's Got a Hole in It, among others.
Affinity (Oscar Peterson Trio; Verve) is just the word to describe how Peterson and his two sidemen seem to feel about one another's music. Ray Brown's bass and Ed Thigpen's drums give substance to Peterson's filigree piano style.
BOOKS
Best Reading
Lord Byron's Wife, by Malcolm Elwin. A fascinating and scrupulously documented study of a marriageByron's to the former Annabella Milbankein which the emotional vocabularies of the partners were disastrously different.
Textures of Life, by Hortense Calisher. The obvious is made moving and the cliches eloquent by a skilled technician in this odyssey of early marriage.
The Mercy of God, by Jean Cau. A controversial young French novelist looks with rare insight into the lives of four prisoners racked with guilt.
The Tin Drum, by Guenter Grass. In a sprawling first novel, the most inventive talent to come out of Germany since the war presents a comic and scurrilous dwarf's-eye view of the Third Reich.
Speculations About Jakob, by Uwe Johnson. Another gifted young German turns his novelist's eye on the small tension . and concerns of his divided world,
Sky Falls, by Lorenza Mazzetti. Superbly unchildish reminiscences of childhood in wartime Italy, where innocence suffers a memorably brutal death.
The Sin of Father Amara, by Ec,a de Queiroz. Published in 1874 but now available in the U.S. for the first time, this early novel by Portugal's greatest writer of prose is a chilling and corrosive indictment of the priest-ridden society of Portugal in the 1860s.
What's Become of Waring, by Anthony Powell. First U.S. publication of an early comic novel laid in prewar literary London, which demonstrates that even as a young man Powell had the amused, detached eye and the gift for mimicry so impressively evident in his later, major enterprise, The Music of Time.
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour An Introduction, Salinger (1, last week) 2. The Sand Pebbles, McKenna (4) 3. Seven Days in May, Knebel and Bailey (2) 4. The Glass-Blowers, Du Maurier (3) 5. Grandmother and the Priests, Caldwell (9) 6. Triumph, Wylie (7) 7. Fail-Safe, Burdick and Wheeler (5) 8. The Moon-Spinners, Stewart (8) 9. The Centaur, Updike 10. The Moonflower Vine, Carleton (10)
NONFICTION
1. The Whole Truth and Nothing But, Hopper (2) 2. Travels with Charley, Steinbeck (1) 3. The Fire Next Time, Baldwin (3) 4. The Ordeal of Power, Hughes (5) 5. The Great Hunger, Woodham-Smith (9) 6. O Ye Jigs & Juleps!, Hudson (4) 7. Final Verdict, St. Johns (6) 8. Forever Free, Adamson 9. The Day They Shook the Plum Tree, Lewis 10. My Life in Court, Nizer (10)
*All times E.D.T.
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