Wednesday, November 18

CBS NEWS SPECIAL (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.).* A memorial tribute to the late President Kennedy, retracing the main events of his Administration. The many off-screen narrators include Adlai Stevenson, McGeorge Bundy, Hubert Humphrey, Allen Dulles and Theodore Sorensen.

WEDNESDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 9-11 p.m.). The second of two original Hollywood-produced films to be aired on TV this season. The Hanged Man stars Edmond O'Brien, Vera Miles and Robert Gulp, is a suspense story involving a man's attempt to avenge the death of a friend believed murdered by a union boss. Color. THE DINAH SHORE SPECIAL (ABC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). Dinah and Guests Polly Bergen, Hugh O'Brian and Buddy Ebsen take off on the average American home.

Thursday, November 19

AN HOUR WITH ROBERT GOULET (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Robert Goulet faces up to his first TV special with the aid of Leslie Caron and Terry-Thomas.

Friday, November 20

THE BOB HOPE COMEDY SPECIAL (NBC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Bob Hope's guests are Trini Lopez, Donald O'Connor, Stella Stevens and Richard Chamberlain.

Sunday, November 22

DISCOVERY (ABC, 11:30 a.m.-12 noon). A look at Greek and Roman mythology. WILD KINGDOM (NBC, 5-5:30 p.m.). Life of a leopard family and cub. Color. JOHN F. KENNEDY MEMORIALS (NBC and ABC, 6:30-7:30 p.m.). NBC News correspondents recall the late President's White House years by use of film clips. ABC looks at the personal life as well as the political career of John F. Kennedy, features a seventh-grade teacher, a Choate schoolmate and Close Friends Lord Harlech (Sir David Ormsby Gore) and Kenneth Galbraith.

Tuesday, November 24

WORLD WAR I (CBS, 8-8:30 p.m.). Life in the trenches and the biggest battle of all--the 1916 battle of the Somme.

THE BELL TELEPHONE HOUR (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Dancers Patricia McBride and Edward Villella, Pianist Andre Previn, and the Brothers Four. Color.

THEATER

On Broadway A SEVERED HEAD, by Iris Murdoch and J. B. Priestley, is a most unusual play to encounter on Broadway. It is a sex farce adapted from a novel by an Oxford University professor of philosophy (Miss Murdoch), and its true subject is the nature of reality. Acted with uncommon skill, it is a delectable repast of fun and thought.

OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR. Period songs, sketches, gauze-clad music-hall girls and blown-up film stills have the cumulative impact of an artillery barrage in Joan Littlewood's biting satire on World War I.

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF. Zero Mostel seems to expand physically to fill the stage with yeasty joy, pain and mystery in this musical based on Sholom Aleichem's tales of a poor Jewish dairyman, his family and friends in 1905 Russia.

ABSENCE OF A CELLO is a bright, laugh-every-other-minute comedy demonstrating that a free-spirited scientist cannot be stamped into a cog-sized mold.

Off Broadway

THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY has been boldly extrapolated from the celebrated James Thurber story. The young adaptors have not been cowed by the sanctity of the master, and the clever lyrics, melodically oriented songs, and infectious joie de vivre of the cast make this a thoroughly pleasant musical evening.

CAMBRIDGE CIRCUS. A rock-'n'-roll number, I Wanna Hold Your Handel, spoofing the composer and the Beatles, is one of the highlights of this revue imported from the campus on the Cam. The fun flows as seven manic but unassuming Britons set out to tickle a rib rather than wash a brain.

RECORDS

Ballads & Broadway Hits

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF (RCA Victor), recorded by the Broadway cast, has warm, old-fashioned songs by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick. Zero Mostel, as Sholom Aleichem's earthy innocent, Tevye the Dairyman, brightens whatever he sings--the reverent Sabbath Prayer, the nostalgic Sunrise, Sunset, and the wonderful intoxicated gibberish of If I Were a Rich Man.

BARBRA STREISAND: PEOPLE (Columbia). Streisand has so much zest that when she sings the blues (Supper Time), they sound strictly temporary. Her special forte is in kindling the first flying sparks of an affair (People) and feeding the quickening flames with tenderness (I'm All Smiles) or wit (When in Rome, Love Is a Bore).

MY FAIR LADY (Columbia). The sculptor Pygmalion stopped after producing one fair lady, but Columbia Records has no quota. There is a Fair Lady to swing to (by Andre Previn), another to sway to (by Sammy Kaye), one to weep by (Andy Williams), and one to sleep by (Percy Faith). There is also the new movie soundtrack, which has Rex Harrison in fine, fierce fettle. But Soprano Marni Nixon, dubbing in the voice of Eliza for Audrey Hepburn, sings with more finish than fire. Lovers of Broadway's fair lady, Julie Andrews, will insist on the original-cast recording, which has sold 5,000,000 copies.

THE VERY BEST OF COLE PORTER (MGM) is one of a seven-disk series that includes "the very best of" Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, Kern, Romberg, Lerner and Loewe, and Berlin. The records have too many humdrum instrumental numbers, but occasionally are brightened by the voices of singers worth listening for: Lena Home, Judy Garland, Mel Torme, Rosemary Clooney, Helen Traubel, Kate Smith and Maurice Chevalier. The Porter, for instance, has Louis Armstrong (You're the Top), Eartha Kitt (Always True to You in My Fashion) and Margaret Whiting (Just One of Those Things).

ANTHONY NEWLEY: IN MY SOLITUDE (RCA Victor). British Actor Anthony Newley has a rare knack: he sings about love without sounding either slick or lovesick. His diction is equal to his conviction, and he may well corner the more sophisticated heart market. Even tired songs (I See Your Face Before Me, For All We Know, The Party's Over) sound fresh.

THE DEFINITIVE PIAF (Capitol; 2 LPs) consists of 22 fine performances, including La Vie en Rose and La Goualante de Pauvre Jean. Piaf celebrates the joys of love in a voice already pregnant with sorrow and then suffers gallantly the heartbreak she knew was coming. After all, "without a lover, one is nothing."

CINEMA

THE PUMPKIN EATER. Anne Bancroft portrays with dazzling perception a well-kept British matron who endures three husbands, a swarm of children, and a nervous collapse before she realizes that all's not well in her pumpkin shell.

SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON. Guided by voices from Beyond, a demented medium (Kim Stanley) and her timorous mate (Richard Attenborough) plot a kidnaping in this throat-drying English thriller that casts a spell nearly all the way.

MY FAIR LADY. The movie version of the Lerner-Loewe musical classic is big, bountiful, and beautiful as ever, with Rex Harrison repeating his Shavian tour de force opposite Audrey Hepburn, who is a passable flower girl and a Lady second to none.

A WOMAN IS A WOMAN. France's Jean-Luc Godard glorifies the offbeat amours of a Parisian stripteaser (Anna Karina) with some gay, giddy improvisations inspired by New Wave esprit and a handful of old Hollywood musicals.

WOMAN IN THE DUNES. A man and a woman trapped in a sand pit get down to the gritty substance of Everyman's fate in this luminous, violent allegory by Japanese Director Hiroshi Teshigahara.

TOPKAPI. Men, money and emeralds send Melina Mercouri on a merry chase through Istanbul in Director Jules Dassin's fastest, funniest caper since Rififi.

THE LUCK OF GINGER COFFEY. Robert Shaw is superb as a big, genial Irishman who swamps his life and his wife (Mary Ure) in a torrent of blarney.

MARY POPPINS. A magical London nanny (Julie Andrews) whips up some diverting fun in one of those candied, clever neverlands that Walt Disney delights in.

SEDUCED AND ABANDONED. Youthful indiscretions set off a sunny Sicilian nightmare in this tragicomedy by Pietro Germi (Divorce--Italian Style).

A HARD DAY'S NIGHT. In an often hilarious comedy, John, Paul, George and Ringo demonstrate that Beatlemania, taken as they take it--with a grain of salt--can be quite a tolerable affliction.

THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA. At a sunny resort for shady people, Ava Gardner, Richard Burton and Deborah Kerr reach the ends of their ropes while untangling some of Tennessee Williams' best lines.

BOOKS

Best Reading

A LITTLE LEARNING, by Evelyn Waugh. In the first volume of his autobiography, the great English satirist looks back on his sunny, comfortable childhood. If he does not quite pin down how he gained his mastery of prose and satire, he gives a lively account of the whims and excesses of his Oxford years and the remarkable companions who were to turn up in his novels.

A MAN IN THE WHEATFIELD, by Robert Laxalt. This spare, original novel about a man who tames snakes and alarms the villagers by his powers becomes an allegory of man's ways of confronting dread.

COLD FRIDAY, by Whittaker Chambers. Looking back on his earnest years at Columbia and the ideologies that shaped his life, Chambers shows warmth and detachment missing from Witness. In particular, the intellectual zeal of the '30s, which demanded that an idea become conviction and that conviction turn into action, comes alive through Chambers' reconsideration of his motives and acts.

SHADOW AND ACT, by Ralph Ellison. The author of The Invisible Man turns his attention to the situation of the Negro in America, but is wise enough to reject easy solutions or histrionic demands.

OF POETRY AND POWER, edited by Edwin Glikes and Paul Schaber. A collection of poems inspired by the death of President Kennedy. The contributors and their feelings range from religious poetry through existential stoicism to beat anger.

MARKINGS, by Dag Hammarskjold. The late U.N. diplomat kept constant counsel with himself throughout his demanding life by recording the outlines of his mind and soul in these journals. It is an astonishing and often eloquent testament of a God-obsessed Christian who measured his actions against his creed.

FOR THE UNION DEAD, by Robert Lowell. These very personal poems reflect Lowell's old preoccupations--madness, genius, love --but the despair of his anguished early work has been replaced by a balance that adds a new dimension to Lowell's already considerable power.

THE BRIGADIER AND THE GOLF WIDOW, by John Cheever. In these short stories, the author keeps a tight grip on his own creatures of exurbia: the proletariat of vice presidents, the charming, irrelevant aristocracy and the winning eccentrics who compose a swimming-pool society.

HERZOG, by Saul Bellow. A complex, demanding novel about divorce, a custody case, and a gentle man's slow recovery from the brutalization of both. Bellow's writing is consistently brilliant, but his extended reveries slow the pace and keep the novel from being a unified work.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. Herzog, Bellow (1 last week)

2. Candy, Southern and Hoffenberg (3)

3. The Rector of Justin, Auchincloss (2)

4. The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, Le Carre (4)

5. Julian, Vidal (6)

6. This Rough Magic, Stewart (5)

7. Armageddon, Uris (7)

8. You Only Live Twice, Fleming (8)

9. The Man, Wallace (9)

10. The Lost City, Gunther (10)

NONFICTION

1. Reminiscences, MacArthur (1)

2. My Autobiography, Chaplin (2)

3. Markings, Hammarskjold (8)

4. The Italians, Barzini (3)

5. The Warren Commission Report (6)

6. The Kennedy Wit, Adler (5)

7. A Tribute to John F. Kennedy, Salinger and Vanocur (4)

8. Future of Man, De Chardin

9. A Moveable Feast, Hemingway (9)

10. Four Days, U.P.I, and American Heritage (10)

*All times E.S.T.

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