CINEMA
Ocean's 11. Frank Sinatra's off-screen clansters (Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Jr. et al.) as their usual tough-talking, gamboling selves ham up a Las Vegas robbery with enough foolishness to make it look like fun.
Jungle Cat. Another of Walt Disney's magnificently photographed, though sometimes badly edited and narrated, True-Life Adventures, this time about jaguars in the Amazon jungles.
It Started in Naples. A Neapolitan holiday that is pleasurable enough, with Clark Gable, Sophia Loren and Vittorio De Sica, becomes occasionally hilarious, thanks to a scene-thieving nine-year-old called Marietto.
Sons and Lovers. Director Jack Cardiff and an excellent cast including Trevor Howard and Wendy Hiller achieve a literate, literal translation of the D. H. Lawrence novel about the artist son of a coal-mining father and a carnivorous mother.
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-crossing switchboard spinster.
The Apartment. Producer-Director Billy Wilder combines a cynical commentary on grey-flannel suitors with a comedy of men's-room humors and water-cooler politics.
TELEVISION
Thurs., Aug. 25
Silents Please (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.).* ABC's new series of excerpts from the silent screen follows a pre-Cassidy William Boyd through typhoon and mutiny aboard the Yankee Clipper, the 1920 spectacular in which the U.S., under the guiding hand of young Cecil B. DeMille, battles Britain for the China tea trade.
Fri., Aug. 26
The 1960 Summer Olympic Games in Rome (CBS, 9-10 p.m.). With nearly as many experts as cameras, CBS is the only U.S. network at the games. The first taped telecast covers the opening ceremonies.
Moment of Fear (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). The Accused tells the story of Nazi Adolf Eichmann. Color.
Sat., Aug. 27
Little League World Series (ABC, 1:45-4 p.m.). From Williamsport, Pa., comes the first telecast of a Little League championship game -- six innings.
Olympic Games (CBS; a half-hour wrap-up between 11 and 12 p.m.).
Sun., Aug. 28
Olympic Games (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). The Twentieth Century (CBS, 6:30-7 p.m.). Liberation of Paris. Repeat.
Olympic Games (CBS; a 15-minute
wrap-up sometime between 11:15 and 12 p.m.).
Mon., Aug. 29
Project 20 (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Life in the Thirties. Repeat.
Olympic Games (CBS; a half-hour wrap-up sometime between 11 and 12 p.m.).
Tues., Aug. 30 Olympic Games (CBS, 8-8:30 pm.).
THEATER
On Broadway
As the summer wanes, the musicals still impervious to seasonal change include Bye Bye Birdie, which takes some of the curl out of a rock-'n'-roll idol's pompadour; Fiorello!, a deft, sunny salute to New York City's late Mayor La Guardia, and West Side Story, Romeo and Juliet in jazz time. Among the straight dramas still pulling customers from the hot pavements are Toys in the Attic, in which Lillian Hellman pits poor Jason Robards Jr. against three women--two old maid sisters and a wife--who need him to need them; The Tenth Man, Alchemist Paddy Chayefsky's murky but potent mixture of out-of-date mysticism and up-to-date neurosis; The Miracle Worker, a tour de force of acting by Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft as the young Helen Keller and her teacher, Anne Sullivan; and The Best Man, Gore Vidal's cutting caricature of coldblooded politics.
Off Broadway
Still fresh and unwilted by the heat are Little Mary Sunshine, a crisp, straight-faced spoof of the Grand Old Operettas; The Balcony, Jean Genet's surrealist universe ensconced in a brothel; The Connection, a pad full of Pirandelloish characters waiting, not for Godot, but the heroin fix; and a neat double dose of disenchantment: Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, in which a defeated, Proust-like writer plays back his own past, on the same bill with Edward Albee's Zoo Story, which stars a lonely beatnik trying to communicate with an awful square. Up in Central Park: The Taming of the Shrew.
Straw Hat
Boothbay, Me., Playhouse: Premiere of Charade, a darkling view of wartime Europe through a child's eyes, by Mark Walker, dramatizing Edita Morris' novel.
Stratford, Conn.: Twelfth Night, The Tempest and Antony and Cleopatra with casts including Katharine Hepburn, Robert Ryan and Morris Carnovsky.
Saratoga Springs, N.Y., Spa Summer Theater: June Havoc stars in The Time of the Cuckoo.
Milburn, N.J., Paper Mill Playhouse: Eve Arden takes it like a man in Goodbye, Charlie.
La Jolla, Calif., Playhouse: Wendell Corey and Marge Champion as The Great Sebastians.
Ashland, Ore.: Shakespeare in rotation, with Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Richard II and The Taming of the Shrew.
Seattle, Orpheum: Forrest Tucker belts out the corn as Broadway's darling, The Music Man.
Stratford, Ont.: Romeo and Juliet, King John and Midsummer Night's Dream, with Julie Harris and Christopher Plummer leading the repertory.
BOOKS
Best Reading
The Stormy Life of Lasik Roitschwantz, by Ilya Ehrenburg. A previously untranslated 1927 satire of revolutionary Russia by Communism's No. 1 court jester. This kosher Candide reincarnates the non-hero of Jewish folklore: Peter Schlemiel, the enemy of commissar and cop.
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 commonplace can be touched with mystery.
All Fall Down, by James Leo Herlihy. A fresh, Salingering description of a hookey-playing 14-year-old, his ne'er-do-well brother and their offbeatnik parents.
Captain Cat, by Robert Holies. A 15-year-old British G.I. claws his way up society's ladder in genuine Teddy lingo.
The Last Temptation of Christ, by Nikos Kazantzakis. A searching, scandalizing novel of Jesus by the late brilliant Greek poet-novelist-philosopher who looked for God in man's lusting, tormented soul.
Lament for a City, by Henry Beetle Hough. An unsentimental novel by an aging New England editor, demonstrating that the soul of a town is its newspaper, and that both can be sold down the Styx.
Summer bonus: four remarkably fine first novels. The Bridge, by Manfred Gregor, a brisk, bitter account of teen-age Nazi conscripts, thrown into the suicidal campaign 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 (5)
6. The View From the Fortieth Floor, White (6)
7. The Lovely Ambition, Chase (7)
8. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee
9. Watcher In the Shadows, Household (10)
10. Diamond Head, Oilman
NONFICTION 1. Born Free, Adamson (1) 2. May This House Be Safe From Tigers, King (3) 3. How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market, Darvas (2) 4. The Conscience of a Conservative, Gold water (6) 5. Felix Frankfurter Reminisces, Frankfurter with Phillips (7) 6. I Kid You Not, Paar (9) 7. Folk Medicine, Jarvis (5) 8. Enjoy, Enjoy! Golden (5) 9. The Good Years, Lord 10. Mr. Citizen, Truman (10)
* All times E.D.T.
*Position on last week's list
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