Wednesday, September 18
As the new TV season gets under way, the networks are putting on display their new entries in the armchair dial-flicker's game of Russian roulette.
CBS REPORTS (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.)* "The Priest and the Politician," a report on the duel between Louisiana Political Boss Leander Henry Perez and a Catholic priest who tried to integrate his parochial school.
THE PATTY DUKE SHOW (ABC, 8-8:30 p.m.). A new series starring Patty Duke, who plays a dual role as an American teen-ager and her European-bred cousin. Premiere.
CHANNING (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). Jason Evers plays a professor and Henry Jones the dean in this new college series. John Cassavetes is guest star. Premiere.
Thursday, September 19
TEMPLE HOUSTON (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Set in the early American Southwest, this new dramatic series stars Jeffrey Hunter as a traveling legal eagle with a peculiar name (the title of the show). Premiere.
SID CAESAR-EDIE ADAMS TOGETHER (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). A special to inaugurate two shows that will alternate.
AN EXPERIMENT IN EXCELLENCE (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). An NBC News special on the contrast between the single dedicated schoolteacher and such modern devices as team teaching, teaching with TV, and teaching machines.
Friday, September 20
77 SUNSET STRIP (ABC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). The first part of a five-hour mystery (to run for the next five weeks) with a five-hour cast that includes Burgess Meredith, Richard Conte, Wally Cox, Peter Lorre, Herbert Marshall, Joseph Schildkraut, Walter Slezak, Ed and Keenan Wynn.
BURKE'S LAW (ABC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Gene Barry stars in this new series about a Rolls-Royce-driving, millionaire detective. The opening segment is also rich in guest stars, including Suzy Parker, William Bendix, Bruce Cabot, Will Rogers Jr., ZaSu Pitts, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Fred Clark and Rod Cameron. Premiere.
HEDDA GABLER (CBS, 9:30-11 p.m.). Ibsen's play, with Ingrid Bergman, Sir Michael Redgrave, Sir Ralph Richardson and Trevor Howard.
THE FARMER'S DAUGHTER (ABC, 9:30-10 p.m.). A new series based on the 1947 movie, this time with Inger Stevens as the farm girl, William Windom and Cathleen Nesbitt as the political family she works for. Premiere.
Saturday, September 21
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 9-11:07 p.m.). The Seven Year Itch, with Tom Ewell and Marilyn Monroe--one of MM's best roles.
THE JERRY LEWIS SHOW (ABC, 9:30-11:30 p.m.). Guests include Mort Sahl, Harry James and Kay Stevens. Premiere.
Sunday, September 22
SUNRISE SEMESTER (CBS, 9:30-10 a.m.). New York's excellent adult education show goes network. Courses offered this year by members of the N.Y.U. faculty will be Introduction to Ethics, Outlines of the History of Art, the Legacy of Greece and Rome. Daily programs will be broadcast on the network at 1-1:30 p.m. weekdays. Premiere.
THE ROOTS OF FREEDOM (CBS, 6-7 p.m.). "The Golden Age of Greece," second in a series of specials on the contributions that major civilizations have made to Western culture.
THE BILL DANA SHOW (NBC, 7-7:30 p.m.). A new situation comedy about a hotel bellhop based on the character Jose Jimenez. Premiere.
LINCOLN CENTER DAY (CBS, 8-9 p.m.). A special celebrating the first anniversary of the opening of Lincoln Center, with Ethel Merman, Robert Merrill, David Wayne participating. Richard Rodgers will narrate the musical section.
Monday, September 23 OPENING NIGHT (CBS, 9-10 p.m.). A special to inaugurate the opening of the season for five shows: Lucy, Jack Benny, Andy Griffith, I've Got a Secret, and Danny Thomas, in which the stars of all five shows will participate.
EAST SIDE/WEST SIDE (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). George C. Scott will star in this new drama series about a Manhattan social worker. Premiere.
Tuesday, September 24
MR. NOVAK (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). A large metropolitan high school is the setting of this new series about a teacher played by Jim Franciscus. Premiere.
PETTICOAT JUNCTION (CBS, 9-9:30 p.m.). For those who loved Cousin Pearl on Beverly Hillbillies, here's more of the same (from the same producer) with Bea ("Pearl") Benaderet as a widder lady running a country hotel with her three beautiful daughters. Premiere.
RICHARD BOONE (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). A new series of original dramas featuring a "repertory company" headed by Boone. Premiere.
CINEMA
THE MUSIC ROOM. The story of an old baron who squanders his wealth on private musicales has been transformed by India's Satyajit Ray (the Apu trilogy) into a subtle and poignant tragedy of pride.
THE SUITOR. This nutty French nougat stars Pierre Etaix, who is also its director and screenwriter. Etaix's grimly determined girl-chasing, his gazelle-like caperings, his soulful dead-pantomiming are hilarious, and the whole picture has about it a zany silent-movie look as if it had been made at the old Hal Roach studios under the direction of a madman.
WIVES AND LOVERS. Van Johnson, Janet Leigh, Martha Hyer and Shelley Winters toss around this ball of connubial catnip in sassy style, having fun with the lines but worrying none too much about the deeper meanings of the plot.
THE LEOPARD. Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon star in this excellent Italian film about the fortunes of a fading princely household in 19th century Sicily. Luchino Visconti (Rocco and His Brothers) is the director.
LORD OF THE FLIES. With scarcely a nod to Novelist William Golding's chilling allegory of the essential evil in man's nature, the producers end up with nothing but a scary adventure story about a band of castaway boys on a desert island.
THE GREAT ESCAPE. Here is James Garner again, this time without Doris Day. But Steve McQueen and an excellent all-male cast join him in this exciting and absorbingly detailed story about a wholesale breakout from a Nazi P.W. camp.
BOOKS
Best Reading THE GIRLS OF SLENDER MEANS, by Muriel Spark. This brief comic novel concerns seven young ladies who live at the May of Teck Club in London right after the war. Though penniless and threadbare, they plot to acquire love and money (in that order) with the determination and cunning of the girls in The Best of Everything.
THE GROUP, by Mary McCarthy. Vassar's cleverest alumna tells all about eight girls who might have graduated with her into the confused Depression world of New York in the '30s. Though it is brilliantly fictionalized sociology of a sad period, Vassar may think of it as a class portrait by Charles Addams.
THE UNMENTIONABLE NECHAEV, by Michael Prawdin. Serge Nechaev was the student terrorist whom the Czar imprisoned and whom the Soviets would like to forget. This youthful fanatic became the model for the dreadful nihilist Verkhovensky in Dostoevsky's classic study of the ethics and psychology of revolutionaries, The Possessed, and he devised the bleak dehumanized code of conspiracy that became the model for Lenin's Bolshevik Party.
VISIONS OF GERARD, by Jack Kerouac. With this story of a big, noisy family of French Canadians in the mill town of Lowell, Mass., Beat Author Kerouac joins J. D. Salinger in the small company of current writers who suggest that a child can be not only innocent but a prism of grace.
THE LEARNING TREE, by Gordon Parks. Like Author Parks, the young hero of this first novel grew up in the Negro end of a small Kansas town. His unabashed nostalgia for what was good there, blended with some sharp recollections of violence and stark fear, makes a readable, sometimes unsettling book.
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. THE SHOES OF THE FISHERMAN, West (1, last week)
2. CARAVANS, Michener (4)
3. ELIZABETH APPLETON, O'Hara (2)
4. THE GLASSBLOWERS, Du Maurier (6)
5. ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE, Fleming
6. THE COLLECTOR, Fowles (3)
7. THE GROUP, McCarthy (9)
8. CITY OF NIGHT, Rechy (5)
9. THE CONCUBINE, Lofts (7)
10. SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, Knebel and Bailey (10)
NONFICTION
1. THE FIRE NEXT TIME, Baldwin (1)
2. I OWE RUSSIA $1,200, Hope (4)
3. THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT, Hopper (2)
4. THE AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH, Mitford
5. TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY, Steinbeck (9)
6. THE DAY THEY SHOOK THE PLUM TREE, Lewis (5)
7. MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, Fishman (3)
8. TERRIBLE SWIFT SWORD, Catton (6)
9. THE WINE IS BITTER, Eisenhower (7)
10. PACIFIC WAR DIARY, Fahey
* All times E.D.T.
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.