CINEMA

Compulsion. Meyer Levin's bestselling casebook of "The Crime of the Century," the Leopold-Loeb murder case of 1924, makes a tense, intelligent melodrama.

Alias Jesse James. The best Bob Hope picture since old fender-nose and The Groaner stopped traveling The Road.

The Diary of Anne Frank. A massive and moving epic of the Dutch Jewish girl and her family in hiding during World War II. A fine performance by Newcomer Millie Perkins as Anne, and brilliant direction by George Stevens.

Some Like It Hot. Director Billy Wilder gets as many laughs as possible out of the gimmick of female impersonation, largely because the impersonators are Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, and the object of their attentions a wickedly skilled comedienne: Marilyn Monroe.

The Sound and the Fury. Joanne Woodward, Yul Brynner, Margaret Leighton in Hollywood's skillful and carefully laundered treatment of a William Faulkner novel.

The Mistress (Japanese). A poignant Eastern view of a fallen woman, who rises by union with nature rather than by struggle against it.

He Who Must Die (French). The screen's most compelling religious statement in years.

TELEVISION

Wed., April 22

United States Steel Hour (CBS, 10-11 p.m.).* A first teleplay by Joe Palmer Jr.; Actor Richard Boone (The Rivalry; Have Gun, Will Travel) plays a tuberculosis patient of unusual imagination.

Thurs., April 23

Du Pont Show of the Month (CBS, 8-9:30 p.m.), starring Sir John Gielgud and Margaret Leighton, in a superior version of The Browning Version, Terence Rattigan's sentimental play about an embittered British schoolmaster and the little boy who gives him back his self-respect.

Fri., April 24

Gene Kelly Pontiac Special (CBS, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). Gene Kelly running and dancing wild to a background of a new poem by Carl Sandburg, a jazz jam session by Arranger Nelson Riddle, a ballet score by Peter Gunn Composer Henry Mancini.

Your Hit Parade (CBS, 7:30-8 p.m.). Dorothy Collins and Johnny Desmond sing taps at the funeral of a show that, since 1935, has taken everything the tunesmiths and a faddist public could throw at it, is finally succumbing to the effects of rock 'n' roll.

Sun., April 26

Johns Hopkins File 7 (ABC, 12:30-1 p.m.). A fascinating look at the evidence that a few hardy explorers--the Vikings, a Scandinavian named Bjarni Herjulfson, or an Irish saint named Brendan--may have sighted North America's shores centuries before Columbus peeked over the horizon.

Tournament of Champions (NBC, 6-7 p.m.). The windup of the high-money ($40,000) invitational golf tournament at Las Vegas, with such shooters as Masters Champion Art Wall Jr., Arnold Palmer, Gene Littler and Gary Middlecoff gunning for the green.

Twentieth Century (CBS, 6:30-7 p.m.). A repeat of the film on the building of the 3,600-m.p.h. X-15 rocket plane, and a look at the men who will fly it.

Pete Kelly's Blues (NBC, 8:30-9 p.m.). The music, in this series about a cornet player forever running head on into underworld bricks, is authentically blue, but the story line is too often merely mauve.

Meet Me in St. Louis (CBS, 9-11 p.m.). Jane Powell, in the role that carried Judy Garland far beyond the end of the trolley line; with Walter Pidgeon, Myrna Loy, Jeanne Grain and all the old songs.

Mon., April 27

Bold Journey (ABC, 8:30-9 p.m.). More adventure, this time a filmed account of 5,000 miles of canoemanship on the rivers of the U.S.

The Jack Paar Show (NBC, 11:15 p.m.1 a.m.). A misnomer for this week, as whimsical Eddie Albert and wife Margo mind the store for the vacationing Paar.

Tues., April 28

Hallmark Hall of Fame (NBC, 9:30-11 p.m.). Helen Hayes, Lloyd Nolan, Burgess Meredith in an ambitious assault on Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness!

THEATER

On Broadway

A Raisin in the Sun. The Drama Critics' Circle prize play about a South Side Chicago Negro family's deferred dreams, budding hopes and inner conflicts. Honestly observed, superlatively acted.

Redhead. A faltering musical whodunit kept on the spin through the matchless body English of Musicomedienne Gwen Verdon.

J.B. Job in the guise of a wealthy modern businessman. Though Archibald MacLeish's version lacks Biblical richness of speech and rigor of logic, it brings excitement to the theater.

La Plume de Ma Tante. This antic French revue is virtually speechless, and so are its laugh-weary audiences.

Flower Drum Song. Rodgers & Hammerstein's blithe-spirited romp through San Francisco's Chinatown.

A Touch of the Poet. The late Eugene O'Neill's trenchant portrait of an alcoholic innkeeper who cannot live up to his illusions, or without them.

Two for the Seesaw. The way of an Omaha man with a Greenwich Village maid is often funny and bittersweet.

Off Broadway

Mark Twain Tonight! A vividly lifelike re-creation of the great white-maned humorist as a platform-stager of 70. In a brilliant one-man feat, 34-year-old Hal Holbrook flourishes Twain's omnipresent cigar like a wand over two hours of delightfully recaptured Americana.

On Tour

The Warm Peninsula. Julie Harris as a Milwaukee miss who wants what some Miami socialites have got. In TORONTO.

My Fair Lady in CINCINNATI, Two for the Seesaw in KANSAS CITY and DENVER, and The Music Man in CHICAGO do justice to the Broadway originals.

BOOKS

Best Reading

The Marauders, by Charlton Ogburn Jr. Merrill's Marauders went through some of the most vicious infantry fighting of World War II. Veteran Ogburn recalls the savage Burmese actions with sharp description and incisive reflection.

By the North Gate, by Gwyn Griffin. A taut little novel that shows Britons at an outlying African desert post trying unsuccessfully to stand up under the white man's burden.

The King's War: 1641-1647, by C. V. Wedgwood. History is a people's memory, and few have summoned up Britain's more vividly than Wedgwood in this scholarly account of Cavalier v. Roundhead.

Mountolive, by Lawrence Durrell. An exciting writer adds politics to a projected tetralogical cycle (others: Justine, Balthazar) that wheels around the magnetic hub of Alexandria.

The Notion of Sin, by Robert McLaughlin. A coterie of non-blue-chip sophisticates examined by a market analyst who knows both their prices and their values.

The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot, by Angus Wilson. An English widow sentenced under the law of diminishing returns to social work, the company of Angry Young Men, and bohemian sex.

Spinster, by Sylvia Ashton-Warner. A rage to teach fires some first-rate action about a child-intoxicated woman.

Borstal Boy, by Brendan Behan. A lively swearing of the green by Ireland's latest IRAte young man.

The Fig Tree, by Aubrey Menen. Nature gets the last laugh on science in this aphrodisiacal spoof.

Unarmed in Paradise, by Ellen Marsh. A skillful, honest and haunting love story.

Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak. The eternal validity of the moral struggle affirmed by a man who is living it.

Best Sellers FICTION

1. Doctor Zhivago, Pasternak (1)*

2. Exodus, Uris (2)

3. The Ugly American, Lederer and Burdick (3)

4. Lolita, Nabokov (4)

5. Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris, Gallico (6)

6. Lady L., Gary (7)

7. Dear and Glorious Physician, Caldwell (9)

8. From the Terrace, O'Hara (5)

9. The Watch That Ends the Night, MacLennan

10. The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot, Wilson

NONFICTION

1. Mine Enemy Grows Older, King (1)

2. Only in America, Golden (2)

3. What We Must Know About Communism, Harry and Bonaro Overstreet (3)

4. Twixt Twelve and Twenty, Boone (5)

5. Elizabeth the Great, Jenkins (4)

6. How I Turned $1,000 into $1,000,000 in Real Estate, Nickerson

7. Brotherhood of Evil, Sondern (7)

8. Collision Course, Moscow (6)

9. My Brother Was an Only Child, Douglas

10. The Valadon Drama, Storm (9)

*All times E.S.T. through April 25, E.D.T. thereafter.

* Position on last week's list.

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