Wednesday, October 9 CHRONICLE (CBS, 7:30-8 p.m.).* Interviews with three octogenarians whose recollections cover a large span of American history.
ESPIONAGE (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). A French doctor (played by Patricia Neal) betrays the allies in World War II. John Gregson also stars.
Thursday, October 10
KRAFT SUSPENSE THEATER (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Premiere of a new dramatic series that will appear every other week. Tonight's show begins a two-part drama about the court-martial of an Army sergeant accused of treason. Cast includes Bradford Dillman, Vera Miles, Lee Marvin and Lloyd Nolan. Color.
Friday, October 11
THE GREAT ADVENTURE (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Massacre at Wounded Knee, second part of a drama about Sitting Bull; with Ricardo Montalban, Joseph Gotten, Lloyd Nolan and James Dunn.
BOB HOPE PRESENTS THE CHRYSLER THEA TER (NBC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). A difficult time in the life of 1930s Blues Singer Lee Wiley, starring Piper Laurie and Claude Rains.
Saturday, October 12
EXPLORING (NBC, 1-2 p.m.). Vincent Price expounds on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver.
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 9-11:27 p.m.). The Asphalt Jungle, MGM's 1950 jewel robbery, with Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, and Marilyn Monroe in a bit part.
Sunday, October 13
DISCOVERY (ABC, 12:30-1 p.m.). A recreation of the first voyage of Columbus, filmed in Spain and San Salvador.
SUNDAY SPORTS SPECTACULAR (CBS, 5-5:30 p.m.). Premiere includes highlights of the day's N.F.L. pro-football games and film excerpts from the World Series.
THE JUDY GARLAND SHOW (CBS, 9-10 p.m.). Guests are Lena Home and Terry-Thomas.
Monday, October 14
MONDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 7:30-9:30 p.m.). The Rains of Ranchipur, a triangle with Lana Turner. Richard Burton, Michael Rennie.
HOLLYWOOD AND THE STARS (NBC, 9:30-10 p.m.). The second part of a documentary on the love goddesses, including Rita Hay worth, Ava Gardner, Kim Novak, Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot and Liz Taylor.
THEATER
The first two weeks of the new season have produced two solid dramas:
THE REHEARSAL is one of the most brilliant and bitter black comedies yet written by French Playwright Jean Anouilh. In it, some worldly French aristocrats ferret out and destroy the true love that exists between a count and a governess.
LUTHER, by John Osborne, is dominated by Albert Finney's magnificent portrayal of the title role. Finney's Luther is fiery in ardor, tormented by doubt, and intoxicated by God. Playwright Osborne's major error lies in suggesting that Protestantism probably owes more to Luther's griping intestines than to his vaulting intellect.
Best of the Broadway holdovers:
WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, by Edward Albee, provides a corrosive, explosive evening with a middle-aged campus couple who can only reach each other through a malignant duelogue of hate. Arthur Hill and Uta Hagen are shatteringly good.
SHE LOVES ME is orchestrated to the warm, old-fashioned heartbeat of young love. The musical's innocent, ardent and appealing lovers are Daniel Massey and Barbara Cook.
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM. Since Plautus originally wrote it, this musical is more than 2,000 years old, but the situations are still funny, the houris are delectable, and Zero Mostel is a pluperfect master of the comic revels.
HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING will probably run as long as its title. Going into its third year, it is still sharp, sassy and socko.
Best of off-Broadway holdovers:
THE DUMBWAITER and THE COLLECTION, by Harold Pinter. Britain's most stimulating young playwright likes to write comedies of terror, and no one writes them better.
THE BOYS FROM SYRACUSE. Plautus does it again, this time with the added tinkering of Shakespeare, George Abbott, and Rodgers and Hart. Apart from being a tuneful comic delight, the show contains an adorable and gifted cutie named Julienne Marie.
THE BLACKS, by Jean Genet, just past the 1,000-performance mark, may just possibly be the finest work of art ever produced on the color question.
SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR, by Luigi Pirandello, offers a model revival of a modern classic.
CINEMA
THE V.l.P.s. Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Louis Jourdan, Orson Welles, Rod Taylor and Margaret Rutherford spend the night in an airport, and believe it or not, they seem to enjoy the experience. So do the customers.
THE CONJUGAL BED. There's no fool like an old fool, and it's sometimes painfully funny to see one learn just how foolish he is in this Italian comedy about a middle-aged man (Ugo Tognazzi) who marries a young girl (Marina Vlady).
THE MUSIC ROOM. India's Satyajit Ray tells a poignant and profoundly Asiatic tale about a man who ruined his life to save his face.
THE SUITOR. This slap-happy story about a young man in a hurry to get married is a magnificent catalogue of sight gags, all of them written, directed and personally interpreted by a young French funnyman named Pierre Etaix.
WIVES AND LOVERS. A jack (Van Johnson) and two queens (Janet Leigh, Martha Hyer) make a full house in this amusing game of stud devised by Scriptwriter Edward Anhalt and Director John Rich, who for the most part play their cards very well indeed.
THE LEOPARD. Burt Lancaster gives the finest performance of his career in one of the year's finest films: Luchino Visconti's noble, ironic and richly mournful lament for the death of feudalism in Sicily.
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 little more than a scary adventure story about a band of castaway boys on a desert island.
BOOKS
Best Reading
THE FAIR SISTER, by William Goyen. A white Texan peers behind the facades of the store-front cathedrals in the Negro ghettos of great East Coast cities and finds a world of religion, chicanery and entertainment that only Negroes know from the inside. The novel's heroine, part prophetess, part charlatan, is all woman.
THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV, by Will and Ariel Durant. In the eighth volume of their massive study of Western civilization, the Durants describe with wit and a wealth of anecdote an age preoccupied by the confrontation between rationalism and faith.
CHARLOTTE, by Charlotte Salomon. A touching, visual diary of one Jewish family's persecution and extermination by the Nazis, painted by Charlotte just before her death in Auschwitz in 1943.
THE LETTERS OF ROBERT FROST TO LOUIS UNTERMEYER. The anthologist and the poet corresponded for 46 years. Frost did the talking, Untermeyer the prompting, and the result is a wonderful portrait of Frost, with all his crotchets on display.
TRAVELS: NEAR AND FAR OUT, by Anthony Carson. An engaging, if impractical, travel book by the most freewheeling, freeloading, freethinking tourist guide ever to enter the trade.
THE GROUP, by Mary McCarthy. Miss McCarthy's acerbic portrait of eight Vassar graduates ('33) is bestselling fiction, first-rate sociology about the Depression, and fascinating, previously unrecorded female lore.
THE UNMENTIONABLE NECHAEV, by Michael Prawdin. The story of the youthful fanatic who became the model for the nihilist Verkhovensky in Dostoevsky's classic study of the ethics and psychology of revolutionaries, The Possessed, and who devised the bleak, dehumanized code of conspiracy and terror that became the model for Lenin's Bolsheviks.
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. The Group, McCarthy (2 last week)
2. The Shoes of the Fisherman, West (1)
3. Caravans, Michener (3)
4. The Collector, Fowles (5)
5. On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Fleming (8)
6. Elizabeth Appleton, O'Hara (4)
7. Joy in the Morning, Smith (7)
8. City of Night, Rechy (6)
9. The Living Reed, Buck 10. The Concubine, Lofts (9)
NONFICTION
1. The American Way of Death, Mitford (1)
2. J.F.K.: The Man and the Myth, Lasky (4)
3. The Fire Next Time, Baldwin (2)
4. My DaVling Clementine, Fishman (3)
5. Rascal, North (7)
6. I Owe Russia $1,200, Hope (5)
7. The Day They Shook the Plum Tree, Lewis (6)
8. The Whole Truth and Nothing But, Hopper (8)
9. The Wine Is Bitter, Eisenhower (9)
10. Terrible Swift Sword, Catton (10)
* All times E.D.T.
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