Last Glow

SHOW BUSINESS

As the television season petered, several shows last week gave off an unaccustomed, last-minute brightness before the long summer night. In addition to NBC's Mark Twain's America (see below), they included:

P: Ninotchka (ABC), a new version of Hollywood's 1939 Greta Garbo classic about a dehumanized female commissar who goes to France on official duty and turns into a woman under the warm touch of Paris. While hindered by a plot that is out of date in this age of itinerant dictators and a so-so performance by Actor Gig Young, the show was carried along on the sense and sensuality of Actress Maria Schell, whose eyes alone contain more sex than all the perfumed jades of Hollywood.

P: Biography of a Cancer (CBS Reports} graphically and unsentimentally showed the case history of Jungle Physician Tom Dooley's bout with cancer (TIME, Aug. 31), made the point that the disease is not necessarily as hopeless as many people imagine.

P: Journey to the Day (Playhouse go, CBS), a loose-jointed drama about group therapy in a state mental hospital, was marred by some psychiatric cliches, but served brilliantly as a set piece for some memorable performers. Making his first dramatic appearance, Comedian Mike Nichols was highly plausible as a wearingly tense young actor whom the stage has struck too hard. And Janice Rule, as an attractive young schizophrenic of deep education and intelligence, gave a performance that would shock insulin: giggling behind a waterfall of hair, pacing the room on invisible paths of tension, she movingly evoked the torment of madness with subtle and abandoned gestures, darted back and forth across the borders of sanity from the vague lostness of Ophelia to the purring, look-how-balanced-I-am attitude of a Dr. Joyce Brothers.

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