CINEMA
Happy Anniversary. On their 13th anniversary, Husband David Niven and Wife Mitzi Gaynor remember their premarital hotel room in a mattress farce that is slick, sleazy, but hilarious.
They Came to Cordura. A sort of western Pilgrim's Progress through the Mexican badlands with moral depth, wartime violence and Gary Cooper.
The FBI Story. Half soap opera and half documentary, often absorbing, about a G-man (Jimmy Stewart), his job, his wife and kids.
Pillow Talk. Hollywood's top box-office attractions, Doris Day and Rock Hudson, are brought together like a pair of 1960 Cadillacs in a one-car garage.
The Magician (Swedish). A Kafkan swirl of flesh and symbols by Sweden's Writer-Director Ingmar Bergman.
North by Northwest. A wild, completely entertaining Hitchcock yarn, in which enemy spies have the gall to think they can rub out Gary Grant. With Eva Marie Saint.
Diary of Anne Frank. An unforgettable drama.
TELEVISION
Wed., Dec. 2
Sid Caesar Special (CBS, 10-11 p.m.).* Comics Caesar and Audrey Meadows give assorted views of love and marriage from the Victorian parlor to the split-level living room. Jose Ferrer, Marge and Gower Champion, Connie Francis.
Thurs., Dec. 3
Journey to Understanding (NBC, about midnight). Part of The Jack Paar Show will be pre-empted so viewers can hear the parting words of President Eisenhower as he begins his tour.
Fri., Dec. 4
Show of the Month (CBS, 7:30-9 p.m.).
Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, with Robert Morley as the brutish Beadle, Eric Portman as Fagin, Inga Swenson as Rose, Newcomer Frederick Clark, 12, as Oliver.
77 Sunset Strip (ABC, 9-10 p.m.). After an air crash, three men and three women are washed ashore on a desert island. Nothing short of a thermonuclear bomb could upset that sort of paradise--but that is precisely what happens.
Sat., Dec. 5
John Gunther's High Road (ABC, 8-8:30 p.m.). Caves and Mountains gives contrasting views of spelunking (in the Pyrenees) and mountaineering (in the French Alps).
Sun., Dec. 6
A Salute to the American Theater (CBS, 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.). Franchot Tone introduces scenes from Broadway shows-- Waiting for Lefty, Inside U.S.A., South Pacific, Call Me Mister, Watch on the Rhine, There Shall Be No Night, West Side Story, Raisin in the Sun--to demonstrate "the American theater's continuing fight against bigotry." With Phyllis Newman, Eli Wallach, Tom Poston, William Shatner, Bill Tabbert.
College News Conference (ABC, 1-1:30 p.m.). Guest: Adlai Stevenson.
Conquest (CBS, 5-5:30 p.m.). Oceanographers off San Diego dive to the bottom in the Navy bathyscaph Trieste.
The Twentieth Century (CBS, 6:30-7 p.m.). The concluding half of Poland on a Tightrope, filmed on the scene, deals with church-state tension.
Sunday Showcase (NBC, 8-9 p.m.). Variety with Jimmy Durante in Give My Regards to Broadway. Guests: Eddie Hodges, Jane Powell, Jimmie Rodgers, Ray Bolger. Color.
Mon., Dec. 7
Journey to Understanding (NBC, 8-8:30 p.m.). Picks up Ike again on Pearl Harbor Day, covers his weekend in Rome.
The Philadelphia Story (NBC, 9:30-11 p.m.). Philip Barry's carat-dangling romance, with Ruth Roman, Mary Astor, Diana Lynn, Gig Young, Don DeFore. Color.
Tues., Dec. 8
Ford Startime (NBC, 9-10:30 p.m.). My Three Angels: Sam and Bella Spewack's TV adaptation of their own Broadway adaptation of Albert Husson's La Cuisine des Anges, a bizarre comedy about convicts in French Guiana.
THEATER
On Broadway The Miracle Worker. Closed to sound and sight, the mind of the child Helen Keller (Patty Duke) is painstakingly opened by Teacher-Nurse Annie Sullivan (Anne Bancroft) in a memorable, if far from flawless theater piece.
The Tenth Man. In a drab Mineola, L.I. synagogue full of picturesque Jews, Playwright Paddy Chayefsky mixes surrealism and Freud, demonology and farce to create a play that succeeds as theater but fails as anything deeper.
Heartbreak House. Despite Shaw's sprawling treatment, this frankly symbolic picture of England's affluent society on the eve of the first World War is marvelous in bits and pieces. Maurice Evans, Pamela Brown, Diana Wynyard.
Take Me Along. Trusting to mood rather than momentum, this musical version of Eugene O'Neill's only sunny play (Ah, Wilderness!) provides a pleasantly nostalgic evening. With Jackie Gleason, Walter Pidgeon, Eileen Herlie and Robert Morse.
At the Drop of a Hat. One of Broadway's gayest evenings provided by two witty Englishmen with the timing of the solar system and the teamwork of the Lunts.
Holdovers from last season still going strong: My Fair Lady and The Music Man (musicals), La Plume de Ma Tante (French revue), A Raisin in the Sun (a moving play set in Chicago's Harlem).
BOOKS
Best Reading
The Wisdom of the West, by Bertrand Russell. With spirit and skill, the 87-year-old author accomplishes the feat of compressing the history of Western philosophy into 320 pages.
The Liberation of the Philippines, by Samuel Eliot Morison. The 13th volume in the author's massive U.S. naval history of World War II describes the fury of Japan's kamikaze attacks, takes the fighting through the summer of 1945.
The Longest Day, by Cornelius Ryan. Crisp writing and detailed reporting of World War II's D-day make this one of the most tautly exciting of the "day" books.
The West-Going Heart, by Eleanor Ruggles. A warm biography of Vachel Lindsay, whose boomlay-booming verse was once the rage of the lecture circuit.
In the Days of McKinley, by Margaret Leech. A first-rate biography which, if it leaves Mark Hanna's tame president as colorless as ever, also leaves him better understood.
The Anger of Achilles: Homer's Iliad, translated by Robert Graves. A charming prose-and-verse Iliad, in which the customary flavor of chalk dust is replaced by sharp-tasting satire.
James Joyce, by Richard Ellmann. A massive, definitive biography, which details Joyce's quirks without chipping away his greatness.
Krishna Fluting, by John Berry. In this cleverly written comic novel, Quakers in India find that not all love is brotherly.
The Treatment Man, by William Wiegand. Part melodrama, part morality play, this novel of life in a maximum security prison is a sharply written exercise in federal penmanship.
The Mansion, by William Faulkner. The end of a dark, tangled trilogy (the other novels:The Hamlet, The Town).
Edison, by Matthew Josephson. A well-done portrait of the tobacco-chewing Ohioan, who became the U.S.'s most flamboyant inventor partly by being one of its best promoters.
The Armada, by Garrett Mattingly. An exciting history of the great sea battle, and of the climate of political and religious strife that brought the English and Spanish fleets into collision.
The Stones of Florence, by Mary McCarthy. With taste and judgment, the author provides an eloquent appreciation of a magnificent city.
Besi Sellers
FICTION
1. Advise and Consent, Drury (1)*
2. Poor No More, Ruark (3)
3. The Ugly American, Lederer and Burdick (5)
4. Exodus, Uris (6)
5. Hawaii, Michener (9)
6. The War Lover, Hersey (2)
7. The Darkness and the Dawn, Costain (7)
8. Dear and Glorious Physician, Caldwell (4)
9. The Devil's Advocate, West (8)
10. The Breaking Point, Du Maurier
NONFICTION
1. Act One, Hart (1)
2. The Status Seekers, Packard (2)
3. This Is My God, Wouk (5)
4. Folk Medicine, Jarvis (3)
5. For 2-c- Plain, Golden (4)
6. The Armada, Mattingly (6)
7. The Elements of Style, Strunk and White (7)
8. Groucho and Me, Marx (9)
9. How I Turned $1,000 into $1,000,000 in Real Estate, Nickerson (8)
10. The Ape in Me, Skinner
*All times E.S.T.
*Position on last week's list.
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