CINEMA
Question 7. A quietly frightening portrayal of Christianity under Communism.
101 Dalmatians. Dog beats man in Walt Disney's airy, unpretentious cartoon that is sure to please everybody but cats. Even the cats might like Disney's The Absent Minded Professor, a wacky science-fiction farce about Neddie the Nut and his fabulous flubber.
The Hoodlum Priest. A bewildered boy, entrapped by life, finally finds freedom in the gas chamber.
The League of Gentlemen. Ex-Colonel Jack Hawkins leads a proper platoon of the Queen's Own Down-and-Outers in a hilarious campaign against the outmanned forces of law and order.
Breathless. Exciting variations on the old existentialist theme: life is just one damn thing after another, and death is the thing after that.
Other notable current movies: Ballad of a Soldier, Make Mine Mink.
TELEVISION
Wed., March 15
Armstrong Circle Theatre (CBS, 10-11 p.m.).* Douglas Edwards narrates "Minerva's Children," a documentary about an elementary school devoted to gifted pupils.
Thurs., March 16
Family Classics (CBS, 8-9 p.m.). Richard Basehart and Lois Nettleton in Rudyard Kipling's The Light That Failed.
CBS Reports (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). American college students in Guinea provide a preview of the coming invasion in "Crossroads Africa--Pilot for a Peace Corps."
Fri., March 17
The Bell Telephone Hour (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). Music inspired by Shakespeare, sung by Patrice Munsel, Joan Sutherland and Alfred Drake, plus readings by Sir John Gielgud. Color.
Sat., March 18
The Nation's Future (NBC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). "Should Public Funds Be Used for Public and Religious School Students?" Sun., March 19 The Ed Sullivan Show (CBS, 8-9 p.m.).
A tribute to Lerner and Loewe, with scenes from their hits.
Winston Churchill--The Valiant Years (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). The Big Three plan the Second Front.
Mon., March 20
Ingrid Bergman Special (CBS, 9-10:30 p.m.). Portraying an English widow, Actress Bergman spends most of the "Twenty-Four Hours in a Woman's Life" in the gambling halls of Monte Carlo trying to win herself an American (Rip Torn).
The Bing Crosby Show (ABC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). The Groaner's guests: Maurice Chevalier, Carol Lawrence.
Tues., March 21
Show of the Month (CBS, 9:30-11 p.m.). Julie Harris, Jo Van Fleet, Mildred Dunnock and E. G. Marshall fight the Depression, the weather and each other in "The Night of the Storm."
David Brinkley Special (NBC, 10-M p.m.). Commentator Brinkley acts as "Our Man in Hong Kong" with a solo documentary on the crown colony. Color.
THEATER
On Broadway
Come Blow Your Horn. Mixes phone calls and wolf calls, prodigals and playboys, manages to emerge as the season's best of a bad lot of comedy farces.
Camelot. The show's libretto carries only echoes of T. H. White's The Once and Future King, but it is clearly Broadway's once and future run. With Richard Burton and Julie Andrews.
Do Re Mi. Phil Silvers and Nancy Walker are the only bright notes in a gangster-gimmicked reminder of just how good Guys and Dolls really was.
Rhinoceros. Eugene lonesco's nonconformist satire manages to be at once obvious and somewhat farfetched, is nevertheless exhilarating theater.
A Taste of Honey. An episodic but effective, bitter-sweet look at the world's shabbiness.
All the Way Home. James Agee's Knoxville chronicle, A Death in the Family, is turned into poignant drama that retains much of the novel's poetry and power.
Becket. Fine performances by Laurence Olivier and Anthony Quinn help Jean Anouilh's rather superficial version of Murder in the Cathedral.
Irma La Douce. Saucy Elizabeth Seal is a charming chippy in a French musical that loses little in the translation.
Advise and Consent. Allen Dairy's bulky Washington chronicle makes an engrossing if superficial political melodrama.
Show Girl. A revue consisting mainly of Carol Channing. which is enough.
An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May. Probably the funniest people on Broadway.
Off Broadway
Among the better evenings: Call Me By My Rightful Name, an interracial-triangle drama by a new playwright, Michael Shurtleff; The Connection, Jack Gelber's graphic re-creation of a junkies' pad; The American Dream, Edward Albee's surrealistic situation comedy; The Zoo Story, Albee's famed nuino a mano between Natural and Ivy League Man, running on a double bill with Samuel Beckett's lucid monologue, Krapp's Last Tape; Hedda Gabler, another excellent production in the Fourth Street Theater's Ibsen series; In the Jungle of Cities, a mystifying but thoroughly stimulating early play by Bertolt Brecht: and The Balcony, French Playwright Jean Genet's superb argument that the world is a mammoth cat house.
BOOKS
Best Reading
A Burnt-Out Case, by Graham Greene. The despairing architect hero of Greene's latest and best novel attempts to isolate himself from worldwide fame by retreating to a tropical leper hospital. Yet what he finds is a mirror image of himself and of the civilization he fled.
The Gouffe Case, by Joachim Maass. An engrossing tale of murder, featuring a sexually ravenous temptress, and set in the gaslit world of fin-de-siecle Paris.
The Watchman, by Davis Grubb. The author of Night of the Hunter stirs a new cauldron of horror.
Mid-Century, by John Dos Passes. The best novel from Dos Passos since his U.S.A. trilogy. The villain this time is big labor.
Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, by Albert Camus. The late lamented French writer had a conscience like a carpenter's level. In this book he applies it to Algeria, democracy, Christianity and totalitarianism, and his readings are brilliant as well as true.
In Pursuit of the English, by Doris Lessing. A comic nonfictional slice of English lowlife. Spiv, whore or shopgirl, Author Lessing knows them all.
Abandoned, by A. L. Todd. A 19th century foray north of the Arctic Circle in which only seven men lived to tell the grisly fate of the other 17.
If Thine Eye Offend Thee, by Heinrich Schirmbeck. This German novelist takes a bevy of ideas about science and modern life for a metaphysical roller-coaster ride.
Man's Desiring, by Menna Gallic. A Welsh math teacher fends off intellectual bean balls in an English university. Told with a charming gift of Welsh gab.
Here Comes Pete Now, by Thomas Anderson. A Kafka-like parable about man's groping, which is as murky and menacing as the New York waterfront it covers.
The Real Silvestri, by Mario Soldati. In this novel, death reveals what the living rarely guess--that most men lead lives of mistaken identity.
Skyline, by Gene Fowler. A newsman's memories of the '20s, when Broadway was the Rue Regret.
First Family, by Christopher Davis. The author takes his theme from the headlines--what happens when Negroes move in next door--but his prose and his people have a grace, daring and insight that may only be found in superior fiction.
Best Sellers
( * previously included in TIME'S choice of Best Reading)
FICTION
1. The Last of the Just, Schwarz-Bart (1)*
2. Hawaii, Michener (2)
3. Advise and Consent, Drury (3)
4. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (4)
5. A Burnt-Out Case, Greene (8)
6. Pomp and Circumstance, Coward (5)
7. Sermons and Soda-Water, O'Hara (6)
8. Winnie Ille Pu, Milne (7)
9. Decision at Delphi, Maclnnes (9)
10. The Key, Tanizaki
NONFICTION
1. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer (1)
2. Who Killed Society? Amory (2)
3. The Waste Makers, Packard (3)
4. Fate Is the Hunter, Gann (8)
5. The Snake Has All the Lines, Keer (5)
6. Japanese Inn, Statler (10)
7. The White Nile, Moorehead (4)
8. Born Free, Adamson (6)
9. Profiles in Courage, Kennedy (7)
10. The Fifty-Year Decline and Fall of Hollywood, Goodman
* All times E.S.T.
*Position on last week's list.
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