It Started in Naples. Clark Gable occasionally gets upstaged by a somewhat younger performer, Marietto, 9, in a rowdy, frequently funny Neapolitan holiday also boasting Sophia Loren and Vittorio De Sica.
Sons and Lovers. Director Jack Cardiff and an excellent cast including Trevor Howard and Wendy Miller achieve a literate, literal translation of the D. H. Lawrence novel about the artist son of a coalmining father and a carnivorous mother.
Psycho. Although more of a stomach-churner than a spine-tingler, Alfred Hitchcock's latest is still a high-grade horror show.
Elmer Gantry. In one of his best performances, Burt Lancaster puts the old Sinclair Lewis tent show on the road in a flavorful resurrection of the 1927 novel.
Bells Are Ringing. A poor book and so-so score are rescued by lively Comden-Green lyrics and the extraordinary comic art of Judy Holliday, re-creating her Broadway role of the star-crossed, wire-crossed switchboard spinster.
The Apartment. Producer-Director Billy Wilder happily combines a cynical commentary on grey-flannel suitors with a superb comedy of men's-room humors and watercooler politics.
TELEVISION
Wed., Aug. 17
Wednesday Night Fights (ABC, 10 p.m. to conclusion).* World Junior Lightweight Champion Flash Elorde, who gained his 130-lb. title last March with a seventhround knockout of Harold Gomes, puts it back on the line against Gomes in a scheduled 15-rounder at San Francisco.
Thurs., Aug. 18
Wrangler (NBC, 9:30-10 p.m.). A new adventure series about a Western wan derer who, in the opening saga, rakes in a gambling pot that includes an Indian maid.
Silents Please (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). This week's condensed silent classic: Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the 1920 version, with John Barrymore.
Sun., Aug. 21
College News Conference (ABC, 1-1:30 p.m.). Rear Admiral William Raborn Jr., the Polaris pioneer, faces the undergraduates and Moderator Ruth Hagy.
The Ed Sullivan Show (CBS, 8-9 p.m.). Out of the usual mixed bag of guests comes Sam Levene reading from the works of Shalom Aleichem.
Mon., Aug. 22 What Makes Sammy Run (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). A welcome reprise: the second half of Budd Schulberg's dramatized novel, with Larry Blyden as Sammy Glick, the slum boy who becomes Hollywood's archetypical heel.
Tues., Aug. 23
The Comedy Spot (CBS, 9:30-10 p.m.). Welcome to Washington, with Claudette Colbert as a freshman Congresswoman with some not so fresh problems.
THEATER
On Broadway
The summer sun has roasted into oblivion a few shows 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 embattled 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 concerning a weakling whose old-maid sisters depend on his dependence; The Tenth Man, ancient Jewish exorcism strikingly put to work on modern neurosis; and The Miracle Worker, featuring extraordinary performances by Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft as the young Helen Keller and her teacher.
Off Broadway
The survivors are headed by Little Mary Sunshine, a boffo operetta satirizing the Kern-y, Friml-ous past; The Balcony, Jean Genet's world view through a brothel window; 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. Up in Central Park: the final Festival offering, The Taming of the Shrew.
Straw Hat
Beverly, Mass., North Shore Music Theater: Julia Meade in The Pa jama Game.
Wallingford, Conn., Oakdale Musical Theater: Carousel, with the original lead, John Raitt, taking another turn.
Stratford, Conn.: Twelfth Night, The Tempest and Antony and Cleopatra.
Westport, Conn., Country Playhouse: First U.S. performance of Ugo Betti's The Burnt Flower Bed, starring Eric Portman, Signe Hasso and Gloria Vanderbilt.
Nyack, N.Y., Tappan Zee Playhouse: A Party with Betty Comden and Adolph Green rages on.
Hyde Park, N.Y., Playhouse: The premiere of a straight drama by Gore Vidal, On the March to the Sea, provides another Civil War role for Albert Dekker.
East Hampton, L.I., John Drew Theater: Dorothy Stickney leads A Lovely Light.
New Hope, Pa., Bucks County Playhouse: Ruth Chatterton and Conrad Nagel in Happy Ending, now in its ninth year of pre-Broadway testing and rejiggering.
Philadelphia, Playhouse in the Park: Kim Hunter in The Disenchanted.
Dallas, State Fair Musicals: The touring caucus of Fiorello!
Ashland, Ore.: Richard II, The Taming of the Shrew, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, and a sleeper, John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi.
Stratford, Ont.: Romeo and Juliet, King John and Midsummer Night's Dream.
BOOKS
Best Reading
The Ballad of Peckham Rye, by Muriel Spark. A brief encounter between a London Mephistopheles and the local mediocrities produces a hilarious novel, and some reflections about how even the common place can be touched with mystery.
All Fall Down, by James Leo Herlihy. A fresh, warm, Salingering description of a hooky-playing 14-year-old, his ne'er-do-well older brother and their offbeatnik parents.
Captain Cat, by Robert Holies. The social rise and moral downfall of a precociously cynical 15-year-old in the British army, told in rich, authentic Teddy talk.
The Last Temptation of Christ, by Nikos Kazantzakis. The final novel by the author of Zorba the Greek is a searing, soaring, shocking "biography" depicting Jesus less as God than as man, agonizingly torn between flesh and spirit.
Lament for a City, by Henry Beetle Hough. An unsentimental 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.
The Cheerful Day, by Nan Fairbrother. A London doctor's wife gracefully comments on bringing up father and two sons.
Plus four remarkably fine first novels: The Bridge, by Manfred Gregor, a brisk, bitter account of Nazi teen-age conscripts thrown into the suicidal campaigns of 1945; Now and at the Hour, by Robert Cormier, the touching story of how death brings dignity to an obscure factory worker; To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, an uncommonly well-written tale about the irregular but effective education of the most appealing little Southern girl since Carson McCullers' Frankie; and The Paratrooper of Mechanic Avenue, by Lester Goran, more growing pains but this time those of a less savory hero on the loose in a Pittsburgh slum.
Best Sellers
FICTION 1. Advise and Consent, Drury (1) *
2. The Leopard, Di Lampedusa (2)
3. Hawaii, Michener (3)
4. The Chapman Report, Wallace (4)
5. Water of Life, Robinson (6)
6. The View from the Fortieth Floor, White (5)
7. The Lovely Ambition, Chase (7)
8. The Affair, Snow (9)
9. Before You Go, Weidman (10)
10. Watcher in the Shadows, Household
NONFICTION 1. Born Free, Adamson (3)
2. How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market, Darvas (1)
3. May This House Be Safe from Tigers, King (2)
4. Folk Medicine, Jarvis (5)
5. Enjoy, Enjoy! Golden (9)
6. The Conscience of a Conservative, Goldwater
7. Felix Frankfurter Reminisces, Frankfurter with Phillips (6)
8. The Night They Burned the Mountain, Dooley (7)
9. I Kid You Not, Paar (4)
10. Mr. Citizen, Truman (10)
*All times E.D.T. *Position on last week's list.
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