CINEMA

Sons and Lovers. An understated, succinct and highly effective rendering of the D. H. Lawrence novel, with a fine cast topped by Trevor Howard, playing the hardhanded, hard-drinking coal miner.

Elmer Gantry. Director Richard Brooks's wonderfully gaudy, artfully graphic adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' notorious 1927 novel about a carny-style revivalist specializing in the Seventh Commandment.

Psycho. Hitchcock's hand may be heavier than usual and totally immersed in blood, but it can still grip the spectator by the throat more expertly than the claws of any horror artist in the business.

Hiroshima, Mon Amour (French). A poetic, sometimes slow depiction of the Japanese city as a Calvary of the Atomic Age, where the heroine is reborn through love.

The Apartment. Billy Wilder oats uproariously sown by Jack Lemmon as a latter-day Alger hero who earns the key to the executive washroom by lending four philandering executives the key to his apartment.

Bells Are Ringing. Judy Holliday, a great comedienne, and some typically sprightly lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green save an otherwise mediocre cinemusical.

TELEVISION

Wed., Aug. 3

Wednesday Night Fights (ABC, 10 p.m. to conclusion).* Middleweights Henry Hank and Rudy Ellis have it out in Chicago. In their previous bout in 1958, Hank handed Ellis the only knockout of his career; Hank has never been stopped.

Thurs., Aug. 4

Silents Please (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Rudolph Valentino's final film, Son of the Sheik, opens a summer series of condensed silent sagas. This one co-stars Vilma Banky.

Fri., Aug. 5

California All-Star Rodeo (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). A corralful of the nation's top broncobusters stage a Salinas showdown.

Sat., Aug. 6 John Gunther's High Road (ABC, 8-8:30 p.m.). The globetrotter explores The Great Barrier Reef, a chain of coral islets off Australia's northeastern coast. Repeat.

Our Man in the Mediterranean (NBC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). The man is David Brinkley, who lightfoots his way through Greece, Lebanon, Egypt, Algeria, Spain, Monaco and France in an hour.

Inside Argonne (ABC, 10-12 p.m.). A documentary on the peacetime uses of atomic energy, spotlighting the work of the Argonne National Laboratory.

Mon., Aug. 8 Esther Williams at Cypress Gardens (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). A musical soak opera co-starring Fernando Lamas and Joey Bishop with Producer Williams. Color.

THEATER

On Broadway

Among the familiar musicals that seem determined to survive the summer: West Side Story, about street-fighting Montagues and Capulets; Fiorello! a lively reminiscence of the Little Flower; and Bye Bye Birdie, a romp about a rock-'n'-roll groaner. On the dramatic side, the air-conditioned perennials are The Miracle Worker, the story of the child Helen Keller and her teacher, superbly played by Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft; The Tenth Man, Paddy Chayefsky's modern use of ancient Jewish mysticism; and Toys in the Attic, the savage piece about three women v. a spineless ne'er-do-well.

Off Broadway

Downtown, the summer has also tended to separate the sheep from the turkeys, and the chosen flock includes The Connection, a Pirandelloesque potpourri about junkies at a New York tea party; The Balcony, Jean Genet's ironic world view through a brothel window; and Little Mary Sunshine, the smash-hit parody of vintage operetta. Up in Central Park: Shakespeare's Measure for Measure--under the stars, and gratis.

Straw Hat

Dennis, Mass., Cape Playhouse: Edward (My Fair Lady) Mulhare in a new work by Charles Robinson entitled Memo for a Green Thumb.

Newport, R.I., Playhouse: Dusting off the Thornton Wilder classic, Our Town.

Warwick, R.I., Musical Theater: Gordon MacRae in Redhead, with his wife Sheila assuming the Verdon burden.

Stratford, Conn.: Twelfth Night, The Tempest and Antony and Cleopatra.

Westport, Conn., Country Playhouse: Celeste Holm and Cathleen Nesbitt show off a new play, Royal Enclosure.

Fayetteville, N.Y., Country Playhouse: Joan Bennett in The Gazebo.

Latham, N.Y., Colonie Music Theater: Bert Wheeler floating Show Boat.

East Hampton, L.I., John Drew Theater: From Manhattan's Sullivan Street, an engaging musical called Fantasticks moves 100 miles farther off Broadway.

Philadelphia, Playhouse in the Park: Angel in the Pawnshop, with Eddie Dowling.

Southfield, Mich., Northland Playhouse: Who Was That Lady? with Betty White.

Ashland, Ore.: Rotating Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Richard II and Taming of the Shrew.

Vancouver, B.C., International Cinema Theater: The Deadly Game, a James Yaffe adaptation of a Friedrich Duerrenmatt novel adds gallows humor to the city's International Festival.

Stratford, Ont.: Romeo and Juliet, King John and Midsummer Night's Dream.

BOOKS

Best Reading

Twentieth Century Parody, edited by Burling Lowrey. An entertaining anthology in which authors from Chekhov to Kerouac get the mime of their life by some old hands at the sport from Max Beerbohm to S. J. Perelman.

Lament for a City, by Henry Beetle Hough. An unsentimental novel about the decay of a New England town and its newspaper, by a veteran journalist.

The Cheerful Day, by Nan Fairbrother. Life with mother and two boys in London, painted perceptively and placidly; an antidote for Spockmarked parents.

Dictionary of American Slang, by Harold Wentworth and Stuart Berg Flexner. The best Baedeker of billingsgate and other U.S. lingua frank since Mencken.

Mani, by Patrick Leigh Fermor. A fascinating picture of Peloponnesian barrens where Homeric mythology and bloody clan warfare are a part of the harsh, everyday life.

When the Kissing Had to Stop, by Constantine FitzGibbon. A chilling, Orwell-done account of the day the Iron Curtain clanked down around Britain because of the people's moral disarmament.

Merry Monarch, by Hesketh Pearson. The indulgent and lusty but canny Charles II emerges from this clever biography as an extremely bonny prince.

Thomas Wolfe, by Elizabeth Nowell. Some unforgettable views of an eccentric and legendary giant.

Daughters and Rebels, by Jessica Mitford. Reading like an early Evelyn Waugh novel, this sprightly autobiography tells of the madcap Mitford sisters, a sextet of rebels with diverse causes and husbands.

Plus an encouraging group of uncommonly good first books:

The Paratrooper of Mechanic Avenue, by Lester Goran, the story of a young hood at its snarling best when describing the wrong side of the Pittsburgh tracks; Now and at the Hour, by Robert Cormier, an affecting description of a single man's slow, unheroic but dignified death; A Long Row to Hoe, by Billy C. Clark, an autobiographical sketch of a poverty-stricken Kentucky boy, as authentically American as Huck Finn; and To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, a brilliantly written tale about the awakening to good and evil of an engagingly eccentric little Alabama girl.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. The Leopard, Di Lampedusa (1) *

2. Hawaii, Michener (3)

3. Advise and Consent, Drury (2)

4. The Chapman Report, Wallace (4)

5. The View from the Fortieth Floor, White (5)

6. The Affair, Snow (6)

7. Water of Life, Robinson (7)

8. Diamond Head, Gilman

9. The Constant Image, Davenport (8)

10. Clea, Durrell (10)

NONFICTION

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

2. Born Free, Adamson (2)

3. Folk Medicine, Jarvis (3)

4. I Kid You Not, Paar (4)

5. How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market, Darvas (6)

6. Mr. Citizen, Truman (7)

7. Felix Frankfurter Reminisces, Frank furter with Phillips (5)

8. The Night They Burned the Mountain, Dooley (8)

9. The Conscience of a Conservative, Goldwater (9)

10. The Good Years, Lord

*All times E.D.T. -Position on last week's list.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.