Monday, Nov. 21, 1960

Weddings and Babies. A brilliant technical tour de force by Shoestring Independent Morris (The Little Fugitive) Engel, whose candidly filmed story of a smalltime photographer and his "model" becomes a mordant Manhattan Orpheus.

It Happened in Broad Daylight. A slick but effective suspense film written by Swiss Author Friedrich Duerrenmatt (reversing the usual process, he drew his novel The Pledge from the script) in which a psychopath--brilliantly acted by Gert Frobe--and a police inspector glide through frightening shadows.

Never on Sunday. A seeming reroast of an old chestnut--the tale of reformer being reformed himself by a warmhearted prostitute--ends up a savory satire full of animal spirits and earthy humor. Director Jules (He Who Must Die) Dassin also plays the overgrown American boy scout, opposite mercurial Melina Mercouri's invincible Greek strumpet.

Spartacus. Director Stanley Kubrick has turned out a surprisingly impressive film about Rome's slave uprising, despite the fact that Kirk Douglas, Peter Ustinov, Jean Simmons, Sir Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton, Tony Curtis, Nina Foch and several thousand colleagues do their acting knee-deep in blood.

Sunrise at Campobello. Writer Dore Schary occasionally aims his script at the cheap seats in this adaptation of his Broadway hit, but the film is a craftsmanlike job, and Ralph Bellamy's characterization of Franklin Roosevelt is again excellent.

TELEVISION

Tues., Nov. 15

Dow Hour of Great Mysteries (NBC, 10-11 p.m.).* E. Phillips Oppenheim's World War I spy piece, "The Great Impersonation," starring Eva Gabor and Keith Mitchell.

Wed., Nov. 16

The Bob Hope Buick Show (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). The usual Mach 2 patter, this time originating at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

Du Pont Show of the Month (CBS, 9:30-11 p.m.). "Heaven Can Wait," a remake of the memorable 1941 movie, "Here Comes Mr. Jordan," about a boxer who becomes world champion through heavenly intervention. With Robert Morley, Anthony Franciosa and Wally Cox.

Thurs., Nov. 17

Wonderland on Ice (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Skaters' schmaltz, with the much traveled "Holiday on Ice" troupe.

Fri., Nov. 18

The Flintstones (ABC, 8:30-9 p.m.). In search of capital gains, Papa Fred and Barney Rubble bet their bundle on a 40-to-l shot at the local dinosaur track.

Dave's Place (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). A Garroway "at home" attended by Cliff Norton, Julie London, Joe Wilder's Jazz Group and the New York Woodwind Quintet, among others.

Sat., Nov. 19

N.C.A.A. Football Game (ABC, afternoon). Stanford-California for Western viewers and Illinois-Northwestern for the central states, while the East is allowed Harvard-Yale.

The Nation's Future (NBC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). In this week's debate and panel discussion, Biologist Sir Julian Huxley represents the affirmative on the question, "Is international birth control needed to head off world disaster?"; Belgian Demographer Jacques Mertens de Wilmars is the nay sayer.

Sun., Nov. 20

The Hallmark Hall of Fame (NBC, 6-8 p.m.). Maurice Evans and Dame Judith Anderson lead a first-rate cast in Macbeth. Color.

Belafonte, New York 19 (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). The "19" in the title of his first of two specials refers to the midtown-Manhattan postal zone over which the folk singer will peregrinate--including such nightspots as Birdland and the Palladium.

Mon., Nov. 21

Tomorrow (CBS, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). "Big City--1980" takes the measure of the troubled metropolis, with case studies of newly created Brasilia and creatively renewed Philadelphia. An unlikely lay host, Garry Moore, poses the questions that are authoritatively answered by an M.I.T. panel including Pietro Belluschi, dean of M.I.T.'s School of Architecture and Planning.

THEATER

The Unsinkable Molly Brown. A merely pleasant score by Meredith Willson and a funny-paper treatment of the tale of an illiterate, Missouri-born status seeker are kept afloat only through the magic of the unquenchable Tammy Grimes.

An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May. With their eyes deadly keen and their tongues brilliantly sharp, these freewheeling improvisationists devastate the fatuous, vulgar, neurotic and just plain human, lacing into everything from Tennessee Williams to the P.T.A.

A Taste of Honey. Joan Plowright performs brilliantly in a work of understated, unhistrionic realism, which blinks at nothing in a shabby world. Written by Britain's Shelagh Delaney when she was 19, the play is episodic, yet shows a promising knack for theater and a well-developed sense of truth.

Irma La Douce. A piquant and jaunty French musical comedy fleshed out by the song-and-dance skill and saucy insouciance of Elizabeth Seal, who plays a girl of whom no one can say 'tis a pity she's a whore.

The Hostage. Less a play than a dramatization of the playwright, this sprawling, incoherent account by Brendan Behan of an English soldier held as hostage in a Dublin brothel is howlingly off-key as well as marvelously in tune, humane and hilarious.

The holdovers from last season still holding their own include. The Miracle Worker, Toys in the Attic and Bye Bye Birdie.

BOOKS

Best Reading

The Metamorphosis of the Gods, by Andre Malraux. A handsomely illustrated, portable Uffizi-cum-Louvre and a flight of speculation that soars from the Sphinx to Botticelli's Venus. The author's provocative argument: up to the 15th century, art glorified religion; after it, art became a religion.

The Go-Away Bird, by Muriel Spark. In the title novella and in ten accompanying short stories--mostly semi-supernatural suspense tales--the talented Scottish novelist (The Ballad of Peckham Rye) displays her deft, deceiving style and consummate con-woman skill in unmasking the hoaxing face of the world.

Rabbit, Run, by John Updike. Writing with chilling and relentless despair, the author tells with great craft of the crack-up of a dreary young man; what the reader must decide is whether society (as Updike seems to suggest) or mere poverty of soul caused the collapse.

Incense to Idols, by Sylvia Ashton-Warner. Proving that the power and insight of her first novel, Spinster, sprang from an exceptional talent rather than from mere autobiographical circumstance, the New Zealand schoolteacher dazzlingly describes an amoral and shatteringly beautiful pianist for whom men--except for an unbending, God-obsessed minister --queue up to destroy themselves.

Prospero's Cell and Reflections on a Marine Venus, by Lawrence Durrell. A publishing duet, about the islands of Corfu and Rhodes, by the author of The Alexandria Quartet confirms his superlative gift as a travel writer who uses scenery to intensify personal feeling.

The Last of the Just, by Andre Schwarz-Bart. A sprawling, harrowing, quasi-epic novel that follows, often with eloquence, the travails of Europe's Jews from the medieval pogroms to Hitler's crematories.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. Advise and Consent, Drury (1)*

2. Hawaii, Michener (2)

3. The Leopard, Di Lampedusa (3)

4. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (4)

5. The Lovely Ambition, Chase (5)

6. The Last Temptation of Christ, Kazantzakis (7)

7. Mistress of Mellyn, Holt (6)

8. The Dean's Watch, Goudge

9. The Last of the Just, Schwarz-Bart

10. The House of Five Talents, Auchincloss (9)

NONFICTION

1. The Waste Makers, Packard (1)

2. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer (4)

3. Kennedy or Nixon: Does It Make Any Difference? Schlesinger (2)

4. Born Free, Adamson (3)

5. Baruch: The Public Years (8)

6. The Politics of Upheaval, Schlesinger (5)

7. Folk Medicine, Jarvis (6)

8. The Liberal Hour, Galbraith (9)

9. How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market, Darvas (10)

10. Enjoy, Enjoy! Golden

*All times E.S.T.

* Position on last week's list

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