TELEVISION
Wednesday, August 7
Hollywood: the Fabulous Era (CBS, 10-11 p.m.).* First of two programs on the history of motion pictures, narrated by Henry Fonda. This segment takes in the first big "talkie," The Jazz Singer, with Al Jolson.
Thursday, August 8 The World of Darryl F. Zanuck (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Portrait of Hollywood's leading executive and producer. Repeat.
Saturday, August 10 ABC's Wide World of Sports (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). Men's National A.A.U. Swimming and Diving championships from Oak Park, Ill., and West Germany's Grand Prix from Nuerburg.
The Defenders (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Repeat of the Emmy award-winning two-part drama about a psychotic killer and the problem of legal insanity.
Saturday Night at the Movies (NBC, 9-11 p.m.). Niagara, starring Marilyn Monroe and Joseph Gotten. Color.
Sunday, August 11
Issues and Answers (ABC, 2:30-3 p.m.). Guest is USIA Director Edward R. Murrow.
Du Pont Show of the Week (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). U.S. counter-intelligence summons a U.S. corporal to view the body of a Communist agent who closely resembles him. Lloyd Nolan, Larry Blyden, Martha Scott.
Crucial Summer: the 1963 Civil Rights Crisis (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). First of a series of five studies of the current integration struggle.
Monday, August 12
The Milton Berle Show (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). The comedian stars in a variety special along with Jack Benny, Laurence Harvey and Lena Home. Color.
RECORDINGS
Theater, poetry, and other spoken-word recordings are adding to the surprising girth and growth of the U.S. culture boom. After starting from little more than a stylus scratch over a decade ago, Caedmon Records, Inc., one of the pioneers in the field, this year expects to top $2,700,-000 in sales. Columbia recently announced plans to record all of the 45 published plays of Eugene O'Neill starting with Strange Interlude, which will be released in September. Play-listening house parties have been held, and some college instructors find recordings the best instructional tools for stressing the beat and flow of a Shakespearean line. Herewith, a sampling of distinctive recordings--some old, some new:
Coriolanus (Caedmon; three records, $17.85). When he spits out martial monosyllables, Richard Burton's tongue cuts like the short, Roman sword. When he comes to the cascading Shakespearean poetic arias, Burton is a Welsh singer of unstopped breath and unconfined eloquence. Either way, he is the finest Shakespearean actor currently off the stage. As the prouder-than-proud Coriolanus, he oozes aristocratic disdain at every verbal pore. Another noteworthy new release of Caedmon's Shakespeare Recording Society: Much Ado About Nothing, with Rex Harrison and his gifted actress-wife Rachel Roberts.
The Importance of Being Oscar (Columbia; $4.98) does for Oscar Wilde what Gielgud's Ages of Man did for Shakespeare. Like a verbal magician, Irish Actor Micheal MacLiammoir conjures up Wilde the dandy, the wit, the poet, the playwright, and the prey to his own curiously self-dooming nature.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Columbia; four records, $15) explodes with the same stinging ferocity in the living room that it has on stage. The poisoned rapiers are words, and they are wielded with lethal skill by the original cast: Arthur Hill, Uta Hagen, George Grizzard and Melinda Dillon. Those who wish to achieve a malignantly Woolfish rapport may duplicate the time scheme of the play by tinkling the ice cubes and spinning the disks, starting about 2:30 a.m. Match the cast drink for drink and watch the 5:30 dawn come up like anathema.
The Human Voice (Caedmon; $5.95), with Ingrid Bergman, is a brilliant one-woman tour de force written by Jean Cocteau and originally released in 1960. The woman is alone, talking to her lover on the phone. He is about to marry someone else and she is desolate. Intimate, anguished, yearning, tender, this is a portrait of a woman desperately trying to breathe life into a dead love. As one critic put it, "Had the piece been played in the barren Sahara, the dunes would have moved closer to listen."
Brendan Behan on Joyce (Folkways; $5.95) is a hilariously informal lecture delivered by the barroom-and-music-hall playwright to the learned exegetes of the James Joyce Society. This is pub criticism, garrulous and guileful, with now and again a boozy glint of insight.
The School for Scandal (Command; three records, $14.94). Style is the touchstone of the 18th century, and style is the capstone of this play and these players in the Sheridan classic. In the 20th century theater, John Gielgud's English ranks above the king's. In the rest of the all-star cast, Ralph Richardson is a gem-crusty Sir Peter Teazle and Geraldine McEwan is a minx of rare merit as Lady Teazle.
The Art of Ruth Draper (Spoken Arts; five records, $29.75) is the understatement of several years. The late monologuist was one of the most formidable artists in the history of the U.S. theater. Her monologues were not stunts but acute siftings of men and women as social beings. Her Doctors and Diet is worth 100 Helen Hokinson cartoons, her Three Generations in a Court of Domestic Relations pours oceans of immigrant experience into a mother's tears. The Italian Lesson, beginning with Dante's "Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself in a dark wood, where the right way was lost," exposes all the confusion, vapidity, and self-delusion that an upper-class middle-aged woman can pack into a single morning.
CINEMA
My Hobo. This Japanese song of the open road involves a clever tramp, a lady tramp, and two waifs who tramp along with them on the road to Tokyo. Seemingly inspired more by Italian comedy than Nipponese realism, Hobo nonetheless makes some sharp comments on the present state of prosperous, overly Westernized Japan.
Summer Magic. Hayley Mills has graduated from Pollyanna to Mother Carey's Chickens in this latest bit of Walt Disney Americana. Dorothy McGuire and Burl Ives also figure in the innocent little plot. Great escapism for jaded pre-teeners.
A Gathering of Eagles. The best parts of this film about the Strategic Air Command are scenes where SAC itself provides the action. Rock Hudson's rantings as a tyrannical wing commander are too wild even for the blue yonder.
The Nutty Professor. A bit of summer madness that allows Jerry Lewis to play a dual role: the apelike Professor Kelp, who drinks a Dr. Jekyll potion and transforms himself into a Dean Martin-like pop singer. Lewis, as usual, goes too far, and the results are funny only half the time.
The Great Escape. Steve McQueen, James Garner, Donald Pleasence are among the Allied officers who stage a wholesale escape from a Nazi prison camp in one of the season's most exciting pictures.
This Sporting Life. This English picture is brutally honest as long as it stays on the playing fields and in the locker room. But when its rugby-playing hero (Richard Harris) gets tangled in a love affair with a widow, both he and the plot become confused.
My Name Is Ivan. An extraordinary Russian film about a boy who spies behind the Nazi lines during World War II, made with sensitivity and human understanding.
Murder at the Gallop. Margaret Rutherford in an Agatha Christie murder mystery is galloping good fun.
8 1/2. Italian Director Federico Fellini (aided by Marcello Mastroianni) lays bare his psyche in this richly visual, often perplexing film about a moviemaker who cannot get started on a new project.
BOOKS
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. The Shoes of the Fisherman, West (1 last week)
2. Elizabeth Appleton, O'Hara (2)
3. The Glass-Blowers, Du Maurier (3)
4. City of Night, Rechy (4) 5. Seven Days in May, Knebel and Bailey (6)
6. Grandmother and the Priests, Caldwell (5)
7. Raise High the Roof Beam, Salinger (7)
8. The Sand Pebbles, McKenna (8)
9. The Bedford Incident, Rascovich (9)
10. When the Legends Die, Borland (10)
NONFICTION
1. The Fire Next Time, Baldwin (1)
2. The Whole Truth and Nothing But, Hopper (2)
3. I Owe Russia $1,200, Hope (3)
4. The Day They Shook the Plum Tree, Lewis (4)
5. Terrible Swift Sword, Catton (5)
6. My Darling Clementine, Jack Fishman
7. The Great Hunger, Woodham-Smith
(8)
8. Travels with Charley, Steinbeck (7)
9. The Living Sea, Cousteau (6)
10. O Ye Jigs & Juleps!, Hudson (10)
*All times E.D.T.
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