The Fugitive Kind. The screen version of Playwright Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending has a kind of nauseating beauty, luridly reworking the myth of Orpheus in a dirty little town in Mississippi. With Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Joanne Woodward, Victor Tory.

Conspiracy of Hearts. In a tear-and-terror flick that generates ulcer-perforating tension, Jewish children escaped from a Nazi concentration camp are sheltered in an Italian convent. With Lilli Palmer.

A Lesson in Love (Swedish). In a comedy of morals as well as manners, brilliant Writer-Director Ingmar Bergman presents a riskily sophisticated satire about marital fidelity.

The Magician (Swedish). Bergman in another mood tells the story of a small-time 19th century Mesmer whose mystical mask covers an ordinary man (but is he really?) forced by poverty to be a "ridiculous vagabond, living a lie."

The Poacher's Daughter. With the magic of language, Julie Harris and the players of the Abbey Theatre lift a banal comedy plot high off the green sod.

TELEVISION

Wed., April 20

Ninotchka (ABC, 8:30-10 p.m.).* The hat-happy comrade whose first incarnation was Greta Garbo returns in the shape of Cinemactress Maria Schell. Costars: Gig Young, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Mischa Auer.

Thurs., April 21

Du Pont Show of the Month (CBS, 8-9:30 p.m.). A remake of Actress-Author Ruth Gordon's autobiographical play, Years Ago, tells about a stage-struck teen-ager who fights her parents for a crack at Broadway. Sandra (Gypsy) Church stars as the young Ruth, Robert (Music Man) Preston as her father.

CBS Reports (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). The hopeful progress of Dr. Tom Dooley, who has devoted his life to medical work among the natives of Laos. "Biography of a Cancer" reports his trip to the U.S. for surgery and his return to Laos, as an example of man's fight against the disease.

Fri., April 22

Journey to Understanding (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). De Gaulle's visit to Washington. Followed Saturday, April 23 (CBS, 11 a.m.-12 noon) by a look at his press conference at the National Press Club.

Project 20 (NBC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Mark Twain's America makes a racy panorama, in the technique of animated still-pictures that was brilliantly used in "Meet Mr. Lincoln." Promised: many newly discovered photographs of Sam Clemens.

Playhouse 90 (CBS, 9-10:30 p.m.). Comedian Mike Nichols (in his first TV drama), Actresses Janice Rule and Mary Astor are among six inmates undergoing therapy in a state mental hospital.

Sun., April 24

New York Philharmonic's Young People's Concerts (CBS, 1-2 p.m.). Leonard Bernstein's last offering for the kids this season: Copland's Second Hurricane.

Face the Nation (CBS, 5-5:30 p.m.). Gamal Abdel Nasser on film.

Conventions 1960 (NBC, 5:30-6 p.m.). A look at past presidential conventions and a preview of what may be ahead. With Chet Huntley and David Brinkley.

Twentieth Century (CBS, 6:30-7 p.m.). Author Fannie Hurst, a lifelong friend of New York's late Mayor La Guardia, helps out in an eyewitness account of the life and times of the Little Flower.

The Princess and the Photographer (NBC, 8-9 p.m.). A slice of what former Punch Editor Malcolm Muggeridge describes as the great royal soap opera: the story of Princess Margaret from childhood to the pomp and ceremony preceding her marriage to Photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones.

The Dow Hour of Great Mysteries (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Barbara Bel Geddes threads her way among assorted corpses in a story that mixes 20th century suburbia with 17th century witchcraft.

Tues., April 26

Jack Paar Presents (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). With Shelley Berman, Oscar Levant, Elaine May and Mike Nichols.

THEATER

On Broadway

Toys in the Attic. Playwright Lillian Hellman's taut, powerful drama about a weak ne'er-do-well's sudden acquisition of wealth and the anguish this brings to his wife and sisters. Jason Robards Jr. heads a fine cast.

A Thurber Carnival. The men, women and dogs that chase one another through Humorist James Thurber's mind come yakking and yipping to the stage in a grand, slightly bland evening.

The Tenth Man. Playwright Paddy Chayefsky, in his best work to date, cures two young Jewish people's mental illness with ancient rites, setting off an explosion of faith in a synagogue full of unbelievers.

The Miracle Worker. With more feeling than art Playwright William Gibson draws an outline of the early childhood of Deaf-Mute Helen Keller, leaves it to be filled by the uncompromisingly excellent acting of Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke.

Five Finger Exercise. A quite ordinary British family implodes with suppressed hate, nearly killing an innocent bystander.

The Andersonville Trial. A sharply theatrical treatment of a war-crimes trial after the U.S. Civil War that evokes (but never quite faces) the moral issues also raised by Nuremberg.

Off Broadway

The Prodigal. The season's best new playwright is a 24-year-old Columbia University graduate who unflinchingly appropriates the material of Greek tragedy, keeps his characters in Argos and in Argive dress, but turns Orestes into a mocking young man of the present.

The Balcony. To French ex-Convict Jean Genet the world is a brothel, and his play--more interesting for its conception and staging than for the playwright's wild threshings of language--is set in a brothel where customers are dressed as bishops, judges and generals to salve their egos.

BOOKS

Best Reading

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, by Alan Sillitoe. Well-done short stories of Britain's slumdwellers and their guerrilla warfare with society's overdogs.

The Dandy, by Ellen Moers. A chart of the dwindling course of dandyism, from Beau Brummell, who issued dictates to 19th century England on the curve of a brim and the blend of a snuff, to the modern male who trembles at the brink of foppishness when he folds a handkerchief into his breast pocket.

D'Annunzio, by Anthony Rhodes. An entertaining biography of the fabulous Italian poet-soldier, whose antics intoxicated Italy with blood, glory and poppycock, and did much to prepare the nation for the grim Mussolini hangover.

Clean and Decent, by Lawrence Wright. The natural history of the bathroom may be an unlikely subject, but the author's wit and scholarship make this book better bathtub reading than most novels.

A Separate Peace, by John Knowles. The end of innocence and the beginnings of adulthood are treated with skill and power in this exceptionally good first novel about two schoolboys.

Clea, by Lawrence Durrell. The concluding novel in the author's exotic, brilliant and often over-lush tetralogy about contemporary Alexandria.

The Edge of Day, by Laurie Lee. The British poet states the common truths of boyhood uncommonly well in this pleasant, unsentimental memoir.

Commandant of Auschwitz, by Rudolf Hoess. That the worst criminal can be self-pitying is proved in this grim memoir by the SS captain, since executed, who gassed 2,000,000 Jews at Auschwitz.

The Reluctant Surgeon, by John Kobler. John Hunter, the brilliant and eccentric 18th century medical experimenter, is well portrayed in a readable biography.

Kiss Kiss, by Roald Dahl. The author concentrates on the female of the species in these stories, and proves Kipling's point about its deadliness with chilling wit.

Best Sellers FICTION

1. Hawaii, Michener (1)*

2. Advise and Consent, Drury (2)

3. The Lincoln Lords, Hawley (5)

4. The Constant Image, Davenport (4)

5. Ourselves to Know, O'Hara (3)

6. Clea, Durrell

7. The Devil's Advocate, West (9)

8. Two Weeks in Another Town, Shaw (8)

9. Kiss Kiss, Dahl (7)

Aimez-vous Brahms . . . Sagan (10)

NONFICTION

1. May This House Be Safe From Tigers, King (1)

2. Folk Medicine, Jarvis (2) 3. My Wicked, Wicked Ways, Flynn (6)

4. Act One, Hart (7)

5. The Enemy Within, Kennedy (3)

6. Grant Moves South, Catton (5)

7. The Law and the Profits, Parkinson (4)

8. Name and Address, Matthews

9. The Joy of Music, Bernstein (8)

10. Meyer Berger's New York, Berger

* All times E.S.T. until Sunday, April 24; thereafter, E.D.T.

*Position on last week's list.

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