Programs devoted to the Republican National Convention dominate television this week, with leftover time filled by repeats. The highlights:

Wednesday, July 8

GREAT CONVENTIONS (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.).* A study of the patterns of Republican politics, as reflected in conventions from 1920 to 1948.

ON BROADWAY TONIGHT (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Premiere of a variety show introducing young talent. Rudy Vallee is host, Paul Anka celebrity guest. Performers include Comic Rich Little and Singer Kitty Lester.

THE CAMPAIGN AND THE CANDIDATES (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). Preliminary assessment of the convention.

POLITICS '64 (ABC, 11:15-11:30 p.m.). First of a series of pre-convention programs highlighting the important events of the day.

Thursday, July 9

KRAFT SUSPENSE THEATER (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Four scientists and a security guard trapped by an underground explosion calculate there is only enough oxygen left for four and proceed to conduct a death lottery. Color. Repeat.

POLITICS '64 (ABC. 10:30-11 p.m.). What happens to San Francisco at convention time.

Friday, July 10

THE JACK PAAR PROGRAM (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Repeat of Attorney General Robert Kennedy's guest appearance discussing the humorous side of his late brother, President Kennedy. Color.

Saturday, July 11

ABC'S WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). The British Open Golf championship from St. Andrews, Scotland.

THE WOMAN'S TOUCH IN POLITICS (ABC, 7:30-8 p.m.). Reporter Lisa Howard discusses women's contributions to politics with Senator Margaret Chase Smith and the Republican candidates' wives.

Sunday, July 12

LOOK UP AND LIVE (CBS, 10:30-11 a.m.). First of an eight-part series on the "Images of Man," including highlights from Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light and the recent off-Broadway adaptation of Friedrich Nietzsche's parable The Madman.

DISCOVERY (ABC, 1-1:30 p.m.). From his home in Gettysburg, former President Eisenhower discusses the role of conventions in the U.S. democratic process in a program aimed at explaining the proceedings to youngsters.

CBS SPORTS SPECTACULAR (CBS, 5-5:30 p.m.). The National Professional Grass Court Tennis championships, videotaped from the Longwood Cricket Club in Chestnut Hill, Mass.

MEET THE PRESS (NBC, 5:30-6:30 p.m.). Originating from convention headquarters, Meet The Press reporters will interview Governor William Scranton and other leading candidates.

Monday, July 13

TODAY (NBC, 7-9 a.m.). The show originates all week from San Francisco and features interviews with leading candidates and delegates.

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION (ABC, 1-3:30 p.m. and 8 to midnight; NBC^ 1-4 p.m. and 7-11 p.m.; CBS, 1-3:30 p.m. and 7:30 to 11 p.m.). Coverage from the convention floor. Appearing as cub reporters for ABC will be Dwight Eisenhower and James Hagerty.

Tuesday, July 14

ABC, NBC and CBS will continue to devote their evenings to live coverage of the convention.

THEATER

Straw Hat

The plays that summer theater rolls on are mostly retreads, but each year there are a few brand-new tires being tested to see if they're puncture-proof enough for Broadway. Some of the most promising and their scheduled stops:

DAYS OF DANCING, with Shelley Winters and Robert Walker fils, a new play by TV Writer James Bridges (Alfred Hitchcock Show), is about a fortuneteller (Winters) in Venice, Calif., who tries to teach the local rock-'n'-roll set (including Walker) the meaning of love. Milburn, N.J.; Mineola, L.I.

THURSDAY IS A GOOD NIGHT, with Tom Ewell and Sheree North and directed by George Abbott's daughter Judy, is by Broadway Propman Abe Einhorn and Freelance Writer Donald Segall. It's about a Manhattan bookie whose hotel room is invaded by a mixed bag of girls, Russian spies, FBI men, a crusading journalist, a nosy bellhop and a Chinese waiter. Paramus, N.J.; Corning, N.Y.; Mountainhome, Pa.; Dennis, Mass.; Toronto; East Rochester; Westport, Conn.; Latham, N.Y.

THE WAYWARD STORK, with Hal March and Marjorie Lord, is a comedy by TV Writer Harry Tugend (Jack Benny Show) about a childless couple who, in pursuit of parenthood, consult a doctor, get involved in a misconception. Falmouth, Mass.; Southfield, Mich.; Ivoryton, Conn.; Westport; Laconia, N.H.; Fitchburg, Mass.; and Charlotte, N.C.

A GIRL COULD GET LUCKY, with Betty Garrett and Pat Hingle, is a two-character play by Playwright Don Appell (Milk and Honey) about a secretary and a cab driver and the adjustments their courtship demands of them. Opens next week in Westport, then on to two-week stands in Milburn and Mineola.

WATCH THE BIRDIE, with Joan Blondell, Peggy Ann Garner and Alan (son of Robert) Alda, is a comedy by Norman Krasna about a divorce lawyer's secretary (Garner) who needs money to go to Europe and starts moonlighting by taking over for her boss's regular co-respondent (Blondell). Opens next week at Miami's Cocoanut Grove, then to Falmouth, Fayetteville, N.Y., and Paramus.

MATING DANCE, with Joan Hackett, Anthony George and John Conte, is a romantic comedy by Magazine Freelancer Eleanor Harris and Movie Actress Helen Mack. Joan Hackett plays a career girl whose romance with a TV personality (Conte) already married to a lady U.S.

Senator requires legal aid (George) beyond the scope of the Committee on Interior Affairs. Opens next week in Vineland, Ont., then plays Syracuse, Falmouth, and Skowhegan, Maine.

HEART'S DELIGHT, with Michael Rennie, Nan Marten and Hiram Sherman, a mystery by Broadway Playwright Charles Robinson (Sailor Beware), is about a college English professor (Rennie) who murders his wife because she won't abandon her garden to accompany him on his sabbatical. Opens early next month in Westport, then goes to Mineola and Milburn.

Only a fraction of the summer tryouts survive blowouts and make it to Broadway. But the smell of old rubber, however roadworthy, hangs so heavily over the straw-hat trail that the risk of seeing a new one go pfft seems worth taking.

CINEMA

THAT MAN FROM RIO. Poisoned darts and snappish Brazilian crocodiles are among the dangers faced by Jean-Paul Belmondo in Director Philippe de Broca's hilarious spoof of all the next-earthquake-please action pictures ever made.

NOTHING BUT THE BEST. Playing stylish, often mordantly funny variations on Room at the Top, this cheeky British comedy studies a roguish climber (Alan Bates) who hires an upper-crust crumb to teach him the niceties of Establishment snobbery.

THE ORGANIZER. Director Mario Monicelli's vividly dramatic portrait of 19th century Italy has warmth, humor, and a superb performance by Marcello Mastroianni as a socialist Savonarola who leads a strike of textile workers in Turin.

YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW. Mastroianni again, teamed with Sophia Loren in three frolicsome tales celebrating the game of love as though Italians had invented it out of pure mischief.

THE NIGHT WATCH. Using their jail cell as a base for excavations, five French losers dig up enough walloping suspense and bitter insight to make this prison thriller one of the best of its kind.

BECKET. This pungent, stunningly filmed spectacle dramatizes the church-state conflict that becomes a death struggle between England's 12th century Archbishop of Canterbury (Richard Burton) and King Henry II (Peter O'Toole).

THE SERVANT. Dirk Bogarde deftly combines good manners with menace in Director Joseph Losey's class-conscious melodrama about an evil London valet who attends mainly to his master's vice.

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE. In exotic Istanbul, Secret Agent 007, alias James Bond, alias Actor Sean Connery, sticks to a gourmet diet of sex, violence and other yeasty nonsense derived from Ian Fleming's fiction.

THE SILENCE. Two women and a child travel to a seemingly godforsaken city that is the geographical center of this dark allegory directed with breathtaking virtuosity by Ingmar Bergman.

BOOKS

Best Reading

TWO NOVELS, by Brigid Brophy. These short novels contain glittering prose, a variety of verbal tricks, and almost too many tours de force to digest at one reading. Already known as the most tart-tongued of British critics. Author Brophy has now hit a fictional stride that should place her well up in the ranks of Britain's formidable array of lady novelists.

TO AN EARLY GRAVE, by Wallace Markfield. A funny, unpretentious novel about a small clutch of men who make their living in Greenwich Village by being "intellectual." Author Markfield has clearly read his Joyce very closely, but his style is lighter and his wit strictly 1964.

THE SCARPERER, by Brendan Behan. To "scarper" in Gaelic is to escape, and Behan runs off with some Dublin weirdos glorifying their past and dreaming their future. This short novel is vintage Behan (1953), when that bibulous writer wrote his most ebullient prose.

THE INCONGRUOUS SPY, by John Le Carre. A reissue of the author's first two books in one volume. Admirers of The Spy Who Came In from the Cold will be especially drawn to A Murder for Quality, which has its own suspenseful plot, but at the same time reads like a first draft for Spy --characters. Cold and all.

A MOVEABLE FEAST, by Ernest Hemingway. This memoir of Paris, which the author suggested should be read as fiction, has a ghostly quality; it reads as if the author had written in the '20s what, in fact, he wrote in the '50s. All the famous writers are there; James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, the Fitzgeralds, characterized memorably, if sometimes nastily, in Hemingway style.

RAINER MARIA RILKE, THE YEARS IN SWITZERLAND, by J. R. von Salis. This biography covers Rilke's last seven years, when he wrote his greatest poetry--including most of his masterpiece, The Duino Elegies. Von Salis, who knew Rilke, conveys well Rilke's temperament, but he lacks perspective on his genius.

JULIAN, by Gore Vidal. In his fleeting reign as Emperor of Rome (A.D. 361-363), Julian crammed enough wars and grandiose plans almost to make Alexander the Great seem inert and unimaginative, Gore Vidal's novel records, with elegance and flourish, every last adventure, including the notorious attempt to abolish Christianity, but he does not quite capture his elusive subject.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Le Carre (1 last week)

2. Convention, Knebel and Bailey (2)

3. Candy, Southern and Hoffenberg (4)

4. The Night in Lisbon, Remarque (3)

5. The Group, McCarthy (5)

6. Armageddon, Uris (6)

7. The Spire, Golding (7)

8. Julian, Vidal (9)

9. The Wapshot Scandal, Cheever

10. Von Ryan's Express, Westheimer (8)

NONFICTION

1. A Moveable Feast, Hemingway (1)

2. Four Days, U.P.I. and American Heritage (2)

3. The Invisible Government, Wise and Ross

4. Diplomat Among Warriors, Murphy (3)

5. A Day in the Life of President Kennedy, Bishop (4)

6. The Naked Society, Packard (6)

7. A Tribute to John F. Kennedy, Salinger and Vanocur (5)

8. The Green Felt Jungle, Reid and Demaris (9)

9. Profiles in Courage, Kennedy (10)

10. My Years with General Motors, Sloan (8)

*All times E.D.T.

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