TELEVISION
Wednesday, December 22
MICHELANGELO: THE LAST GIANT (NBC, 9-10 p.m.).* The first of two programs tracing Michelangelo's life through his painting, sculpture, architecture and writing. Color.
Thursday, December 23
CBS THURSDAY NIGHT MOVIE (CBS, 9-11 p.m.). Sunrise at Campobello. Ralph Bellamy plays F.D.R. Color.
Friday, December 24
CHRISTMAS EVE SERVICES. Handel's Messiah, by the congregation of Dallas' First Baptist Church (ABC, 11:30 p.m.-12:30 a.m.); Baptist services from the Myers Park Baptist Church, Charlotte, N.C. (CBS, midnight1 a.m.); Mass from Manhattan's St. Patrick's Cathedral (NBC, midnight-1:30 a.m.).
Saturday, December 25
CBS GOLF CLASSIC (CBS, 3-4 p.m.). Third annual tournament, with 32 leading professional golfers competing for $166,000 at La Costa Country Club, Carlsbad, Calif.
NORTH-SOUTH ALL-STAR SHRINE FOOTBALL GAME (ABC, 4:30-7:30 p.m.). From the Orange Bowl in Miami.
Sunday, December 26
PROJECTION '66 (NBC, 2-4 p.m.). Eleven NBC news correspondents from the Far East, Europe, Africa, South America and Washington appear before members of the Foreign Policy Association in New York to discuss the year's events. Color.
AMERICAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP GAME (NBC, 4 p.m.). Contending teams to be announced.
THEATER
On Broadway
CACTUS FLOWER is a French farce seasoned to U.S. tastes by Adapter-Director Abe Burrows and served with unerring timing by a well-chosen cast. Lauren Bacall is drolly dry as a spinsterish nurse with a voice that would intimidate gangrene, and Barry Nelson is convincingly mock-innocent as a dentist with a master's degree in bachelorhood.
INADMISSIBLE EVIDENCE is a compulsively fascinating dramatic typhoon in which John Osborne's voice--splenetic, grieving, raging--is heard with more furious personal intensity than at any time since Look Back in Anger. As a defeated solicitor for whom life in the modern world has be come a playing field of pain, Nicol Williamson, 28, gives a bravura perform ance of epic dimensions and phenomenal resourcefulness.
YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU. The screwball humor of George Kaufman and Moss Hart today seems brushed with tender nostalgia in a superb revival of the 29-year-old comedy by the APA repertory company. A new generation of theater goers is introduced to the slightly zany and entirely winning Sycamore family.
THE ROYAL HUNT OF THE SUN. Tired philosophy and an undocumented personal interpretation of the relationship between Conquistador Pizarro and Inca Ruler Atahuallpa are injected into a historical spectacle that pleases visually but fails to satisfy dramatically.
GENERATION. A Chicago advertising man (Henry Fonda) sends his daughter to finishing school, and she ends up in a Greenwich Village loft with the kind of kooky husband who wears blue beads because he likes the way they catch the light. Fonda's graphic consternation provides the entertainment.
HALF A SIXPENCE. Tommy Steele is a most happy fella. His grin is honest, his toes are nimble, and as a consummate entertainer he gives value for money.
THE ODD COUPLE. One man's wife left him because he is a slob, the other man's because he's a nit-picking neatnik. The jilted men are surefire flops as roommates but roaring successes on Broadway.
LUV. Playwright Murray Schisgal writes loudly and Director Mike Nichols carries a slapstick in a spoof of a society that out-Freuds Sigmund and out-Friedans Betty.
CINEMA
LAUREL AND HARDY'S LAUGHING 20'S. From one- and two-reel silent comedies made before 1930, Cinema Anthologist Robert Youngson distills the best drollery of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.
KING RAT. James Clavell's novel about the morality of survival in a Japanese prison camp is an unforgettable screen drama, strongly played by James Fox, Tom Courtenay and George Segal--the last as a G.I. wheeler-dealer who cashes in on the misery of his fellow inmates.
JULIET OF THE SPIRITS. Eye-filling fantasies created by Director Federico Fellini (La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2) wholly dominate the tale of a placid bourgeoise matron (Giulietta Masina) with a faithless husband, among other things, on her mind.
REPULSION. A deranged French manicurist (Catherine Deneuve) gives her London suitors a bloody bad time of it in Writer-Director Roman Polanski's shocker.
THE LEATHER BOYS. Rita Tushingham, Colin Campbell and Dudley Sutton lend exuberance to Director Sidney J. Furie's sharply observed British drama about a pair of motorcycling newlyweds whose marriage is threatened by the boy-husband's homosexual pal.
TO DIE IN MADRID. Rare vintage newsreels recall the tragedy of Spain's disastrous civil war (1936-1939) in Producer-Director Frederic Rossif's masterly compilation, narrated most movingly by John Gielgud and Irene Worth.
THE HILL. Sean Connery stands out among the good guys taking their punishment at a British army stockade, ruled, in fine style, by Harry Andrews as a sadistic sergeant-major.
DARLING. This mordant satire of a play-girl's progress from obscurity to celebrity owes much to Julie Christie's dazzling presence in the leading role.
THE MOMENT OF TRUTH. A rigorous but eloquent ritual drama about the short, tragic life of a great bullfighter, played by Spanish Matador Miguel Mateo.
BOOKS
Best Reading
A THOUSAND DAYS: JOHN F. KENNEDY IN THE WHITE HOUSE, by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Harvard Historian-New Frontiersman Schlesinger's admiration for the late President is often obvious, but this is nevertheless by far the most perceptive, the most vivid, and the best-balanced assessment of the Kennedy years that has yet appeared.
THE PEACEMAKERS, by Richard B. Morris. In an impressive account of the political maneuvering that led to the Peace of Paris (1783), Historian Morris holds that, far from being a loyal friend, royalist France would have scuttled the newly founded U.S. except for the canniness of Jay, Franklin and Adams.
THE LOCKWOOD CONCERN, by John O'Hara. The "concern" is that of the tough, grasping Lockwoods of eastern Pennsylvania, who want to turn themselves into gentlemen but don't want to give up the morals of the coal patch. The period detail is meticulous, but the book as a whole, like most of the author's long novels, will be useful principally to the reader who wants to commit O'Hara-kiri.
THE LITTLE SAINT, by Georges Simenon. In his 500th novel, give or take a dozen or two, the great French whodunist has made a serious and nonviolent attempt to describe the life of an artist, "a perfectly serene character, in immediate contact with nature and life." The extraordinary thing about the book is that it succeeds.
WITHOUT FEAR OR FAVOR, by Walker Lewis. A beguiling if biased biography of U.S. Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, an uncompromising constitutionalist whose decision in the Dred Scott case and steadfast opposition to the Lincoln Administration's wartime measures made him one of the most unpopular men of his time.
THE MAIAS, by Ec,a de Queiroz. In this major novel written in a minor language, Portugal's most important 19th century novelist delineates the degeneration of the aristocracy that ruled and mined his country as the century closed.
AT PLAY IN THE FIELDS OF THE LORD, by Peter Matthiessen. An educated North American Indian, who for years has fought a losing fight with the white man's values, goes native again among the South American Indians, and in the green womb of the Amazon finds a spiritual rebirth.
THE MAN WHO ROBBED THE ROBBER BARONS, by Andy Logan. The shoddy story of Colonel William d'Alton Mann, who looked like Santa Claus but carried a sackful of hush money, is told with skill and glee in this brisk biography.
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. The Source, Michener (1 last week)
2. Those Who Love, Stone (2)
3. Up the Down Staircase, Kaufman (4)
4. Airs Above the Ground, Stewart (3)
5. Hotel, Hailey (5)
6. The Green Berets, Moore (8)
7. The Lockwood Concern, O'Hara (10)
8. Thomas, Mydans (7)
9. The Honey Badger, Ruark (6)
10. The Man with the Golden Gun, Fleming (9)
NONFICTION
1. Kennedy, Sorensen (1)
2. A Thousand Days, Schlesinger (3)
3. A Gift of Prophecy, Montgomery (4)
4. Games People Play, Berne (2)
5. The Making of the President, 1964, White (8)
6. A Gift of Joy, Hayes (7)
7. The Penkovskiy Papers, Penkovskiy (6)
8. Yes I Can, Davis and Boyar (5)
9. Intern, Doctor X (9)
10. Is Paris Burning? Collins and Lapierre
* All times E.S.T.
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