CINEMA
Merrill's Marauders. In its underkeyed account of jungle fighting and jungle horror, this semi-documentary film signs with honor the ordeal of 3,000 U.S. volunteers fighting behind Japanese lines in Burma.
The Miracle Worker. Anne Bancroft as Teacher Sullivan and Patty Duke as the child Helen Keller re-create their Broadway roles in what is possibly the most moving double performance ever recorded on film.
A Taste of Honey is a heady pint of bitter drawn from that always leaky cask of discontent, the British working class. As a girl with a wit too many and a skin too few, Rita Tushingham may be the feminine cinema find of the year.
Jules and Jim. In France, love makes the world go triangular. Director Francois Truffaut (The 400 Blows) translates the ways of two men with a maid into a film that is charming, sick, hilarious, depressing, wise and, most of the time, quite wonderful.
The Counterfeit Traitor. In this superior spy thriller, Allied Espionage Agent William Holden outwits some believable Nazi monsters.
Five Finger Exercise probes the hurts in a blighted family that has risen from rags to wretchedness.
Sweet Bird of Youth. A bottom-drawer Tennessee Williams play has been made into good Hollywood fare with a nice scenic feel for the Gulf Coast, and rock-solid performances by Geraldine Page as a has-been star and Paul Newman as her kept male.
I Like Money. Peter Sellers in a new film version of Marcel Pagnol's Topaze--a little slow, but fey and funny.
Joan of the Angels? The question mark is a salve to any who might be offended by this excellent Polish film about demons of eroticism loose in an Ursuline convent.
Through a Glass Darkly. A brilliant analysis of four lives--a father, his son, daughter and son-in-law--by Sweden's Ingmar Bergman.
TELEVISION
Wed.. June 20
Howard K. Smith: News and Comment (ABC, 7:30-8 p.m.).*; Summary of the week's most important items, with analysis.
Westinghouse Presents (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Mildred Dunnock, Nancy Wickwire, Margaret Leighton, Roy Poole, Ralph Bellamy and Kevin McCarthy in a drama about a woman's readjustment to life after her discharge from a mental hospital.
David Brinkley's Journal (NBC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Brinkley visits Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba. Color.
Fri., June 22 Breakthrough (NBC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.).
John Chancellor interviews psychiatrists and medical researchers who are seeking new ways of dealing with mental illness.
Sun., June 24 Meet the Professor (ABC, 2:30-3 p.m.).
Dr. Jonas Salk will discuss new developments in the field of polio vaccines and his new institute for advanced biological studies.
Issues and Answers (ABC, 4-4:30 p.m.). Secretary of State Dean Rusk analyzes the outlook for war and peace in Europe and Southeast Asia.
Meet the Press (NBC, 6-6:30 p.m.). Guest is Dr. Edward R. Annis, official spokesman of the American Medical Association. Color.
The Ed Sullivan Show (CBS, 8-9 p.m.). The Great Stone Face celebrates his 14th anniversary on television with Steve Allen, Jack Benny, Red Buttons, Jerry Lewis, Phil Silvers and Kate Smith as guests.
TV Guide Award Show (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). Dave Garroway as host, with Art Carney and Judy Holliday in sketches lampooning life with TV. Color.
Face to Face (CBS, 9:30-10 p.m.). Warren Hull is host on a behind-the-news personality program coming from Hollywood.
Show of the Week (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). That indestructible melodramatic farce, Seven Keys to Baldpate.
Tues., June 26
The Garry Moore Show (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). The show bows off for the season, and marks the last appearance of Carol Burnett as a regular. Guests: Alan King and Carol Haney.
THEATER
On Broadway
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Initially conceived by Plautus and cunningly performed by Zero Mostel, his fellow clowns and six delectable houris, this zany burlesquerie is good for high, low, and furrowed brows.
A Thousand Clowns, by Herb Gardner. Playwriting about nonconformism is the conformist thing to do these days. Fortunately, Herb Gardner brings verve, humor, and a freshly observant eye to the subject, and his cast, headed by Jason Robards Jr., could scarcely be improved upon.
The Night of the Iguana, by Tennessee Williams. Four people work out their tormented destinies on a Mexican veranda in this New York Drama Critics Circle prize play. For sustained dramatic power, tension and beauty, the second-act scenes between Margaret Leighton and Patrick O'Neal are unequaled on the current Broadway stage.
A Man for All Seasons, by Robert Bolt. This New York Drama Critics Circle prize foreign play might have taken its theme from Shakespeare's line, "Every subject's duty is the King's, but every subject's soul is his own." Paul Scofield matchlessly exemplifies the subject, Sir Thomas More.
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying slyly paints a mustache on the corporate image. Robert Morse powers this musical with his ebullient portrayal of an Org Man rocketing to the top.
Off Broadway
Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad,
by Arthur Kopit. An evening of surrealistic foolery on the topic of why Mom is a witch. Goofy, oomphy Barbara Harris is the Lolita of off Broadway.
Brecht on Brecht. This revue-styled evening of aphorisms, songs, scenes and poems is a generally exciting introduction to a master of 20th century theater.
BOOKS
Best Reading
Letting Go, by Philip Roth. The talented satirist of Goodbye, Columbus has produced a long novel on the troubles of the university young; page by page, it is a delight of flawless dialogue and sour wit, but taken in sum it is another solemn novel about a young man lured by the sirens of Meaninglessness.
Death of a Highbrow, by Frank Swin-nerton. The surviving member of a pair of old literary feudists is led, by his antagonist's death, to some uncomfortable conclusions about his own life. One of the best novels of a writer whose work is too little appreciated.
Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov. A brilliantly clever arrangement of mirrors, trap doors and hidden staircases bamboozles readers, critics and perhaps characters in this thoroughly eccentric novel, most of which is in the form of a windy gloss of an old poet's last work, by an academic woodenhead who may or may not be the deposed, homosexual ex-king of a land called Zembla.
The Reivers, by William Faulkner. In a marvelously comic book, the sage of Yoknapatawpha County matches Mark Twain as a teller of tall stories.
An Unofficial Rose, by Iris Murdoch. Should old Hugh Peronett sell the Tintoretto and take up with his ex-mistress? In this intriguing novel of upper-class amorousness, the answer leads to further questions, some of them philosophic.
Saint Francis, by Nikos Kazantzakis. The late great Greek novelist restores agony of soul to a saint too often portrayed as sickly sweet.
The Wax Boom, by George Mandel. A complex, absorbing narrative about a hard-driven infantry company in combat.
Ship of Fools, by Katherine Anne Porter. A brilliant, uncompromising portrait of human folly afloat and ashore.
Shut Up, He Explained, selections from Ring Lardner edited by Babette Rosmond and Henry Morgan. A justly famous U.S. satiric wit happily revisited.
Patriotic Gore, by Edmund Wilson. A searching study of Northern and Southern writers as they reacted to the brutalities of the Civil War.
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. Ship of Fools, Porter (1, last week)
2. Youngblood Hawke, Wouk (4)
3. Franny and Zooey, Salinger (2)
4. The Bull from the Sea, Renault (5)
5. The Fox in the Attic, Hughes (6)
6. Devil Water, Seton (8)
7. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Stone (3)
8. The Big Laugh, O'Hara
9. A Prologue to Love, Caldwell (7) 10. Chairman of the Bored, Streeter
NONFICTION
1. The Rothschilds, Morton (1)
2. My Life in Court, Nizer (2)
3. Calories Don't Count, Taller (3)
4. The Guns of August, Tuchman (6)
5. Conversations with Stalin, Djilas (10)
6. In the Clearing, Frost (4)
7. Six Crises, Nixon (5)
8. Scott Fitzgerald, Turnbull (8)
9. The Last Plantagenets, Costain
10. The Making of the President 1960, White
* All times E.D.T.
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.