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. Alfred 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.
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. 10
Music for a Summer Night (ABC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.).* Pianists Eugene List and Olegna Fuschi should make Guest Hostess Margaret Truman feel at home.
United States Steel Hour (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Red Buttons, playing a Cockney copper assigned to Malaya, unravels The Case of the Missing Wife.
The Jack Paar Show (NBC, 11:15 p.m.1 a.m.). The regulars joined by Buddy Hackett, Florence Henderson, Body Goodman and Arthur Treacher. Still some of the liveliest TV available, particularly in this summer of reruns and cheap fill-ins.
Fri., Aug. 12
Moment of Fear (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). A summer suspense series continues with The Third Party, about the sudden death of a presidential candidate on election eve. Color.
1960 College All-Star Football Game (ABC, 10 p.m. to conclusion). Rushing the season, as usual, with the heroes of last year's campus amateur hours tackling the 1959 professional champs, the Baltimore Colts.
Sun., Aug. 14 Music on Ice (NBC, 8-9 p.m.). Singers Johnny Desmond and June Valli plus skaty-eight skaters in a variety show called Continental Holiday. Color.
Mon., Aug. 15 What Makes Sammy Run (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). A worthwhile repeat: the first half of Budd Schulberg's dramatized novel, with Larry Blyden as Sammy Glick, the slum boy who becomes Hollywood's archetypical heel.
New Comedy Showcase (CBS, 10-10:30 p.m.). They Went Thataway, a western parody, with James Westerfield as Black Ace Burton, a no-hit gun fighter.
THEATER
On Broadway
All still quiet on the West Side front as far as new shows are concerned, and among the old, the summer sun has roasted into oblivion a few that the critics missed. Of the more durable musicals, there are Bye Bye Birdie, a rousing rock-'n'-roll call for an Elvis-type monster; Fiorello!, a more fun-than smoke-filled memoir of New York City's late mayor; and West Side Story, Romeo and Juliet in a brilliantly choreographed Manhattan rumble. Among the dramatic works, the midsummer's night cream includes Toys in the Attic, Lillian Hellman's corrosive piece about a weakling whose old-maid sisters depend on his dependence; and The Tenth Man, ancient Jewish exorcism strikingly put to work on modern neurosis.
Off Broadway
With several shows having moved lock and barrel to stock country, the survivors are headed by Little Mary Sunshine, a boffo operetta satirizing the Kern-y, Frimlous past; The Connection, a pad full of hipsters seeking to prove that the opiate of the people is heroin after all; and a skillfully acted double bill of disenchantment: Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, in which a beaten and lonely ex-writer poignantly and often amusingly grovels in his past, paired with Edward Albee's Zoo Story, in which a desperately lonely beatnik attempts the hopeless, tragicomic feat of making human contact with a square.
Straw Hat
Ogunquit, Me., Playhouse: a new deal for Sunrise at Campobello with Howard Keel.
Dennis, Mass., Cape Playhouse: Golden Fleecing gilded by Dick Shawn.
Ivoryton, Conn., Playhouse: Dana Andrews and Gerry Jedd at loose ends in Two for the Seesaw.
Stratford, Conn.: Twelfth Night, The Tempest and Antony and Cleopatra with stars including Katharine Hepburn, Robert Ryan, and Morris Carnovsky.
Bayville, L.I., North Shore Playhouse:
Toni Arden plumps for Wintergreen in Of Thee I Sing.
Traverse City, Mich., Cherry County Playhouse: Noel Coward's Present Laughter with Reginald Gardiner.
Hillside, III., Melody Top Theater: Damn Yankees with Shelley Berman.
Danville, Ky., Pioneer Playhouse: Waiting for the Bluebird, a pre-Broadway try-out of a new romantic drama.
Ashland, Ore.: Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Richard II and Taming of the Shrew.
Laguna, Calif., Playhouse: The Boy Friend.
Stratford, Ont.: King John, Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet with Julie Harris and Christopher Plummer.
BOOKS
Best Reading The Last Temptation of Christ, by Nikos Kazantzakis. The final novel by the author of Zorba the Greek: a searing, soaring, shocking "biography" depicting Jesus less as God than as man, agonizingly torn between flesh and spirit.
Captain Cat, by Robert Holles. The social rise and moral downfall of a precociously cynical 15-year-old in the British army, described in authentic Teddy talk.
Lament for a City, by Henry Beetle Hough. A bitter novel by an aging New England editor illustrating that the soul of a town is its newspaper, and that both can be sold down the Styx.
Dictionary of American Slang, by Harold Wentworth and Stuart Berg Flexner. A handy thesaurus of American as she is spoke, from amscray to zuch.
The Cheerful Day, by Nan Fairbrother. A London doctor's wife gracefully comments on bringing up father and two sons.
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.
Collected Poems, by Lawrence Durrell. Expert and evocative, if too often baffling, verse by the author of the acclaimed Alexandria tetralogy.
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.
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 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. Advise and Consent, Drury (3)*
2. The Leopard, Di Lampedusa (1)
3. Hawaii, Michener (2)
4. The Chapman Report, Wallace (4)
5. The View from the Fortieth Floor, White (5)
6. Water of Life, Robinson (7)
7. The Lovely Ambition, Chase
8. Diamond Head, Oilman (8)
9. The Affair, Snow (6)
10. Before You Go, Weidman
NONFICTION
1. How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market, Darvas (5)
2. May This House Be Safe from Tigers, King (1)
3. Born Free, Adamson (2)
4. I Kid You Not, Paar (4)
5. Folk Medicine, Jarvis (3)
6. Felix Frankfurter Reminisces (7)
7. The Night They Burned the Mountain, Dooley (8)
8. The Good Years, Lord (10)
9. Enjoy, Enjoy! Golden
10. Mr. Citizen, Truman (6)
*All times E.D.T.
* Position on last week's list.
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