Jumbo. Broadway's elephantasy of 1935, pumped full of Metrocolor, comes to the screen as a "pulchatoobinous pachadoim" of a picture--anyway, that's the way Jimmy Durante says it, and in this picture Jimmy is 100% right. Martha Raye is 99% right. And Doris Day is Doris Day.

No Exit. A competent cinemadaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre's celebrated attempt to demonstrate the existentialist tenet that hell is other people.

Gay Purree. A full-length, somewhat overanimated cattoon about a pretty French pussy named Mewsette who falls in with a sinister allee cat but is rescued by a hair-trigger mouser.

The Legend of Lobo. Walt Disney, who thinks that wolves are really nicer than people, tries to prove it by telling the story of a 150-lb. monster who terrorized New Mexico in the 1890s. Disney is sort of crying sheep, but the kids won't care.

The Reluctant Saint. Maximilian Schell attains new histrionic heights in the amusing, amazing story of San Giuseppe of Cupertino (1603-63), a saint who could literally fly.

Two for the Seesaw. Shirley MacLaine is pretty funny in a pretty funny film version of William Gibson's Broadway comedy. Robert Mitchum is not.

The Long Absence. A man who doesn't know who he is and a woman who thinks he is her husband suffer their strange dilemma in a strange but affecting French film, thoughtfully directed by Henri Colpi.

Mutiny on the Bounty. Trevor Howard, as Captain Bligh, is all man and a yardarm wide in MGM's $18.5 million reconstruction of The Bounty, but Marlon Brando has chosen to play Fletcher Christian as a sort of hard-alee Hamlet.

Billy Budd. An exciting and disturbing study of good and evil, based on Herman Melville's moralistic novel; Peter Ustinov directed the picture with style, and plays one of the principal roles with skill.

Long Day's Journey into Night. Eugene O'Neill's play, one of the greatest of the century, is brought to the screen without significant changes and with a better than competent cast: Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards Jr. and Dean Stockwell.

TELEVISION

Wed., Dec. 26

Years of Crisis (CBS, 7:30-9 p.m.).* CBS correspondents from all over gather in New York to assess the major news events of 1962.

The United States Steel Hour (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Patty Duke as a hotelkeeper's daughter who charms celebrated guests.

Fri., Dec. 28

I'm Dickens . . . He's Fenster (ABC, 9-9:30 p.m.). TV's best new comedy series --about a couple of slapsticky carpenters.

Eyewitness (CBS, 10:30-11 p.m.). The top news story of the week.

Sat., Dec. 29

East-West Football Game (NBC, 4:45-7:30 p.m.). From San Francisco.

Sun., Dec. 30

Lamp Unto My Feet (CBS, 10-10:30 a.m.). An interview with Dr. Geoffrey Fisher, former Archbishop of Canterbury.

National Football League Championship Game (NBC, 1:45 p.m. to conclusion). From Yankee Stadium.

Issues and Answers (ABC, 3-3:30 p.m.). Guest: Walter Heller, chairman of President Kennedy's Economic Council.

1962: A Television Album (CBS, 3:30-5 p.m.). Highlights of the news of 1962.

This Is NBC News (NBC. 4:30-5 p.m.). Survey of the outstanding news events of the previous week.

Update (NBC, 5-5:30 p.m.). Robert Abernethy's news program for teenagers.

The Voice of Firestone (ABC, 10-10:30 p.m.). Guests: Leontyne Price and Robert Merrill.

Howard K. Smith (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Angles into the news.

Mon., Dec. 31

The Match Game (NBC. 4-4:45 p.m.). A new parlor game. Premiere.

David Brinkley's Journal (NBC, 10-10:30 p.m.). A study in oratorical openings, noting how different men begin speeches, including clips of Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Everett Dirksen and Charles Halleck.

Tues., Jan. 1

Orange Bowl (ABC, 12:30 p.m. to end). Alabama v. Oklahoma.

Sugar Bowl (NBC, 1:45 p.m. to end). Mississippi v. Arkansas.

Cotton Bowl (CBS, 2:30 p.m. to end). L.S.U. v. the University of Texas.

Rose Bowl (NBC, 4:45 p.m. to end). U.S.C. v. Wisconsin in what should be the best college football contest of the concluding season.

The New Year and the Nation (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). The old year's news in review.

Chet Huntley Reporting (NBC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Egypt's new program of Arab Socialism.

THEATER

On Broadway

Never Too Late, by Sumner Arthur Long, is pulverizingly funny about a piffling subject--belated fatherhood. The men who drive this comic troika are Actors Paul Ford and Orson Bean and that genius of slapstick farce, Director George Abbott.

Little Me. Sid Caesar is the laugh-combustion engine of this musical comedy. Neil Simon's tart script, Bob Fosse's inventive dances and Virginia Martin's dingdong Belle Poitrine help to keep the evening chugging merrily along.

Beyond the Fringe offers the lucid and lunatic drolleries of four young English antiEstablishmentarians. God, Shakespeare, nuclear defense--name it, they slam it, right in the funny bone.

Tchin-Tchin is a cheery drink-up expression, but all the hero and heroine of this play have to swallow is the lees of abandonment by their mutually unfaithful spouses. As the pair of wistful rejects, Margaret Leighton and Anthony Quinn perform with sorcery.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? leaves welts on a playgoer's mind with its savage wit and marital horrors. In this brilliantly virulent struggle of man and wife, Arthur Hill plays cobra to Uta Hagen's mongoose.

Off Broadway

The Dumbwaiter and The Collection,

by Harold Pinter, are strange, funny, terrifying one-acters that enigmatically glimpse the contortions, evasions, and inarticulateness of human beings groping for contact with one another.

A Man's a Man by Bertolt Brecht. The term brainwashing did not exist in 1926 when the late great German playwright fashioned this marvelously exciting play on the subject. Since then, nature has copied art.

BOOKS

Best Reading

Stern, by Bruce Jay Friedman. This touching, low-key novel about being Jewish in a lawn-proud U.S. suburb artfully blends fact with fantasy, rue with mirth.

Franz Kafka, Parable and Paradox, by Heinz Politzer. The most trenchant study to date of the strange writer in whose nightmarish parables of human alienation 20th century man has found a chilling portrait of himself.

The Conquest of London and The Middle Years, Vols. II and III of Henry James, by Leon Edel. A graceful and massive work (it will run to four volumes) clearly destined to be the definitive biography.

The Cape Cod Lighter, by John O'Hara.

America's most celebrated short story writer at work again in his old provincial stamping grounds--small-town New Jersey and Gibbsville, Pa.

The Community of Scholars and Drawing the Line, by Paul Goodman. The U.S.

college scene and the U.S. scenario for the cold war are peppered with scorn and assaulted with wit by an uneven and provocative critic.

Renoir, My Father, by Jean Renoir.

Fond impressions of life with the great impressionist, by his gifted son.

The Letters of Oscar Wilde, edited by Rupert Hart-Davis. This first complete collection reveals the witty playwright not as the foppish caricature he seemed, but as the sad and profound fellow he was.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. Fail-Safe, Burdick and Wheeler (3, last week) 2. A Shade of Difference, Drury (1) 3. Seven Days in May,. Knebel and Bailey (2) 4. Ship of Fools, Porter (4) 5. Genius, Dennis (6) 6. $100 Misunderstanding, Gover 7. The Prize, Wallace (9) 8. We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Jackson 9. Dearly Beloved, Lindbergh (8) 10. Where Love Has Gone, Robbins (5)

NONFICTION

1. Travels with Charley, Steinbeck (2) 2. Silent Spring, Carson (1) 3. O Ye Jigs & Juleps!, Hudson (3) 4. Final Verdict, St. Johns (6) 5. My Life in Court, Nizer (4) 6. The Points of My Compass, White (8) 7. Letters from the Earth, Twain (7) 8. The Rothschilds, Morton (5) 9. The Blue Nile, Moorehead (9) 10. The Pyramid Climbers, Packard

* All times E.S.T.

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