Review

Victor Borge: To be excruciatingly funny, Pianist-Comic Victor Borge needs only to munch a sticky peanut-butter sandwich, or hunt for a B-flat for the score he is pirating from the great composers. For this season's one-night stand on CBS, the theater's longest-run one-man show (849 performances on Broadway) shared his whopping $200,000 fee with an orchestra and guest stars. But the evening was mostly comedy, and, comic or serious, it was all Borge's.

His solemn face frozen in bewilderment, the zany Dane had a fine time telling about his 2 1/2 brothers (three half brothers, one regular brother) and bumbling through a Chopin waltz that was later rippled off by a stagehand wearing gloves.

To change pace, Borge sat down and did some serious playing (the best: a Gershwin medley done while cameras ghosted through Manhattan streets that the composer once prowled). Even the commercials were fun. When Borge showed a picture of his Pontiac. it turned out to be a mound of snow. "The bad thing, of course," he confided, "is that my wife is still in it." As always, he wrapped up the show with a farewell line gilding sentiment with a gag: "When a hand comes out and wipes away a tear, that's my reward. The rest goes to the government."

Du Pont Show of the Month: When Humorist S. J. Perelman talked with interviewers about his libretto for CBS's musical Aladdin, he mused: "It is an extremely simple story known to every unintelligent schoolboy. Very little exists beyond the bare bones of the legend. It will take 90 minutes. That means a whole lot of me ringue." Producer Richard (Cinderella} Lewine spooned up $350,000 worth of meringue, enough to satisfy all the princes of Persia -- and give viewers indigestion.

TV's Aladdin, a sort of Horatio Alger story smothered in Oriental opulence, had everything except taste. There were fire-eaters, elephants and Chinese superbazaars, and special effects that must have taken all of Sponsor Du Font's chemical resources. The score -- his first for TV-seemed not so much by Cole Porter as against him. Cyril Ritchard's sporadic drollery clashed with the eager droolings of the teen-ager's rage, Sal Mineo, whose Aladdin only maddened. As for Perelman, even his "native sportiveness" was lacking. He would probably have done better with one of the earthier versions he came across in his research, "but they were too spectacular for TV."

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