Pollyanna. Walt Disney's best live-actor movie to date sticks to the original tear-jerking plot like icing to a sugar bun, tells the simpering story of the horrid little prig (intelligently acted by 13-year-old Hayley Mills) whose armor of cheerfulness and joy remains impenetrable to the bitter end.
The Battle of the Sexes. Outguinnessing Guinness, in a transatlantic adaptation of James Thurber's The Catbird Seat, Britain's Peter Sellers is an Edinburgh bookkeeper ready to murder the 20th century's threat to his traditional way of life.
I'm All Right, Jack. Sellers again-- as union shop steward in a cracking good sociopolitical satire.
Come Back, Africa. Filmed in secret and crude in craftsmanship, Lionel (On the Bowery) Rogosin's candid-camera movie manages a fairminded, matter-of-fact look at a modern nightmare: the black depths of South African society.
The Fugitive Kind. A high-priced cast pat includes Marlon Brando, Anna Magriani, Victor Tory and Joanne Woodward turns Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending into a Mississippi bayou, now and then happens on islands of poetry in sea of mud.
Conspiracy of Hearts. In a film that uses every known device to strap its audience with suspense, Lilli Palmer is the mother superior of an Italian convent where Jewish children-- escaped from a Nazi concentration camp--are sheltered.
TELEVISION
Wed., May 11
Not by Bread Alone (ABC, 8-8:30 p.m.)* A report on lunch counter sitdown demonstrations and store boycotts in the South.
Thurs., May 12
Frank Sinatra Timex Show (ABC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). Sinatra, his 19-year-old Daughter Nancy and Clansmen Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Jr. and Joey Bishop meet in Miami Beach to welcome Elvis Presley.
Fri., May 13
Roughing It (NBC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). James Daly is Mark Twain in dramatization of Twain's famed collection of stories about the Nevada gold rush. Color.
Person to Person (CBS, 10:30-11 p.m.). Charles Collingwood visits Herbert Hoover at the ex-President's cottage on Florida's Key Largo.
Sat., May 14
John Gunther's High Road (ABC, 8-8:30 p.m.). Jack-of-all-trade-winds is off to Antarctica, ramming his way through thickening ice on a scientific expedition.
Journey to Understanding (NBC, 8:30-9 p.m.). Reports from five national capitals fill in the background of the summit meting. ABC presents Presidential Mission--the Summit, Sun. May 15, 4-4:40 p.m., and CBS's Eyewitness to History weighs in with its first report on Tues., May 17, 8-8:30 p.m.
World Wide 60 (NBC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). Report from Outer Space includes, among others, T. Keith Glennan, head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and William Howells, Harvard anthropology professor. The program attempts to outline the why and wherefore of moon shots, deep space probes, weather satellites and astronauts.
Sun., May 15
Lamp Unto My Feet (CBS, 10-10:30 a.m.). An original ballet by Carlos Surinach on the David and Bathsheba theme.
Meet the Press (NBC, 6-6:30 p.m.). On tape from Berlin, reporters meet Mayor Willy Brandt, who ponders in the shadow of the summit.
Tues., May 17
The Garry Moore Show (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Guests: Carol Haney, Alan King.
THEATER
On Broadway
Bye Bye Birdie. A rampageous musical about a pelvoid crooner named Conrad Birdie (Dick Gautier) and the howling pack of teenagers who pursue him. As staged by Gower Champion, the show is fresh, playful, lustily breezy. With Chita Rivera, Dick Van Dyke, Kay Medford.
Duel of Angels. Vivien Leigh is brilliant in Christopher Fry's adaptation of Jean Giraudoux's gloved, sheathed, cynically scented prose.
The Best Man. In the setting of a frenetic political convention, Playwright Gore Vidal shuffles his cardboard characters with dexterity, but, since no issue is ever mentioned, they could just as well be competing for the presidency of a cement company.
Toys in the Attic. A weak man suddenly gains the strength of money, to the distress of wife and sisters, who preferred him weak. Lillian Hellman's play is excellently brought to life by Jason Robards Jr., Maureen Stapleton, Irene Worth, Anne Revere.
The Tenth Man. The girl is obviously psychotic, but Playwright Paddy Chayefsky--in a strikingly original play set in a Long Island synagogue--suggests that she might be possessed by a dybbuk, an evil spirit that has all but vanished from currency in the age of Freud.
The Miracle Worker. This moving show--about the deaf-mute child, Helen Keller--owes much to the unmatchable acting of Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke.
Five Finger Exercise. One of the Broadway season's few well-written plays is the work of British Playwright Peter Shaffer, who nearly kills an outsider by shoving him into the deadly crossfire of a devastatingly ordinary and unhappy family.
Off Broadway
Henry IV, Part II. The Phoenix Theater follows up its excellent production of Part I with an equally good treatment of the seldom-performed Part II, graces the continued story of Falstaff and Prince Hal with dynamic staging and statured acting.
The Prodigal. Using the legend of Orestes, 24-year-old Playwright Jack Richardson makes a mocking, modern statement and turns what could have been a dry academic exercise into a deeply written, fully fleshed work of theater.
The Balcony. France's Jean Genet sees the world as one enormous whorehouse, and sets about supporting the notion with ingenious, ironic invention.
BOOKS
Best Reading
The Sign of Taurus, by William Fifield. A curious novel in which the astrological notions of an old Polish countess are mixed with exuberant descriptions of Mexico's sights and sounds; the result, happily, is a triumph of Mexico over metaphysics.
The War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle: Vol. Ill, Salvation 1944-1946. Written in bold, eloquent prose that serves as an admirable carriage for the author's honesty and sense of destiny, this third and last volume of memoirs is a revealing testament to the man and his country.
The Leopard, by Giuseppe di Lampedusa. A wry, moving, melancholy elegy to the last century's aristocratic life--a major fictional creation.
A Distant Trumpet, by Paul Horgan. The Southwest comes vividly and impressively alive in this fictional reconstruction of the Indian wars.
The Roguish World of Doctor Brinkley, by Gerald Carson. The biography of the greatest medical quack ever to barter colored water for cash tells a wild but true story in an appropriately cornball style.
The Kremlin, by David Douglas Duncan. A superb photographic study.
The Dandy, by Ellen Moers. The impulse to pluperfection in male attire, scarcely visible in the age of the sack suit and Truman shirt, ran high from Beau Brummell's time to Max Beerbohm's, and the author charts it with sober care.
D'Annunzio: The Poet as Superman, by Anthony Rhodes. Italy's flamboyant warrior-poet is portrayed in an entertaining biography.
A Separate Peace, by John Knowles. A first novel that is exceptionally well written and, rarer still, thoroughly controlled, about a schoolboy's discovery of a knot of homicidal jealousy within himself.
Clea, by Lawrence Durrell. The febrile and exotic creatures with whom the author has peopled Alexandria are on view in the final volume of a vivid tetralogy.
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. Hawaii, Michener (1)*
2. Advise and Consent, Drury (2)
3. Trustee from the Toolroom, Shute (5)
4. The Lincoln Lords, Hawley (4)
5. Clea, Durrell (8)
6. Ourselves to Know, O'Hara (6)
7. The Constant Image, Davenport (3)
8. The Devil's Advocate, West (10)
9. Two Weeks in Another Town, Shaw (9)
10. Kiss Kiss, Dahl (7)
NONFICTION
1. May This House Be Safe From Tigers, King (1)
2. Folk Medicine, Jarvis (3)
3. The Law and the Profits, Parkinson (4)
4. The Enemy Within, Kennedy (2)
5. Hollywood Rajah, Crowther (5)
6. Grant Moves South, Catton (6)
7. Act One, Hart (7)
8. Born Free, Adamson
9. Meyer Berger's New York, Berger (9)
10. My Wicked, Wicked Ways, Flynn (8)
*All times E.D.T. *Position on last week's list.
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