Wednesday, April 27

HALLMARK HALL OF FAME (NBC, 7:30-9 p.m.).* "Lamp at Midnight," a dramatized rendering of Galileo Galilei's 17th century argument with the Roman Catholic Church. Galileo (Melvyn Douglas) said the earth was round; the church and its prelates (George Voscovic, David Wayne) said he was wrong and what's more, a heretic. The Inquisition made Galileo take it back. To assure viewers that all is forgiven, Chicago Archbishop John Patrick Cody gives an introduction to the show.

RED CHINA: YEAR OF THE GUN? (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). A report based on recent visits to China by Western newsmen--the Toronto Star's Mark Gayn, Agence France Presse's Jacques Marcuse, Danish Photographer Ole Neesgaard (who shot some of the color footage)--as well as interviews with recently returned Korean War Defector Morris Wills, Authoress Han Suyin and Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

Thursday, April 28

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY SPECIAL (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Orson Welles narrates this report (in color) on the underwater experiments of France's Jacques-Yves Cousteau (The World of Silence), whose Continental Shelf Station III--328 ft. below the surface of the Mediterranean off Cap Ferrat--was the home of six French "oceanauts" for 21 days, 17 hours and 16 minutes, the longest man has ever stayed at such a depth.

THE CBS THURSDAY NIGHT MOVIE (CBS, 9-11 p.m.). Sophia Loren and Cary Grant in Houseboat prove that two real pros can keep just about anything afloat.

Saturday, April 30

ABC'S WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). An Indianapolis-type auto race--the Trenton (N.J.) 150--and the World Pocket Billiards Championship at Manhattan's Commodore Hotel.

Sunday, May 1

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). The 1942 invasion of North Africa and some of the cloak-and-dagger activity that preceded it. Repeat.

MISSISSIPPI: A SELF-PORTRAIT (NBC, 6:30-7:30 p.m.). A news special investigating the opinions and attitudes of white Mississippians including Ku Klux Klan members, sharecroppers, housewives, millionaires, businessmen and political and religious leaders.

THE MAGIC OF BROADCASTING (CBS, 10-p.m.). Arthur Godfrey takes a long and nostalgic look at the early days of radio (he was "Red Godfrey, the Warbling Banjoist" in 1929) and the precocious but troubled babyhood of television. Lucille Ball, Bing Crosby and John Scott Trotter are among the guests. Old film clips and recordings extend the reach back; some current behind-the-scenes footage brings it up to date again.

Tuesday, May 3 CBS NEWS SPECIAL (CBS, 10-11 p.m.).

"Stravinsky, Man of His Age," a portrait of the composer at 83, including his trip last spring to Warsaw, city of his youth, for the performance of Rite of Spring by the Warsaw Opera Ballet and the Firebird Suite by the Warsaw Philharmonic, with the composer conducting.

THEATER On Broadway MARK TWAIN TONIGHT! When Hal Hoibrook shuffles off the stage at the end of his one-man show, it is as if one were bidding good night to the incorrigible Clemens himself. As penetrating in spirit as it is physically uncanny, this performance is an extraordinary dramatic re-creation of one of Americana's keenest humorists.

PHILADELPHIA, HERE I COME! Playwright Brian Friel, recognizing that each man carries within him both his severest critic and most appreciative fan, converts his insight into a striking dramatic device. Two Dublin actors--Patrick Bedford and Donal Donnelly--capture our fancy and sympathy as the public and private selves of a young man forsaking his Irish village for an American metropolis.

SWEET CHARITY is kept aloft by Dancer Gwen Verdon, a one-woman whirlwind propelled by Director Bob Fosse's breezy choreography. Unfortunately, Neil Simon's book about a goodhearted doxy duped by love is woefully becalmed.

CACTUS FLOWER. Like most Gallic romantic comedies, this farce is based on three things: lies, lies, lies. A Don Juanish dentist (Barry Nelson) tells them with aplomb. His gullible mistress (Brenda Vaccaro) accepts them with compassion. And his waspish nurse (Lauren Bacall) uncovers them with delight.

YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU. The gifted APA repertory company puts a new wrapping on a 30-year-old comedy by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. The Sycamore family may not seem hilariously outlandish today, but it is still fondly engaging--a tender nosegay tossed to an earlier age of innocence.

RECORDS

Choral & Song

VERDI: REQUIEM (RCA Victor). The virtues of this new recording are the soloists. Carlo Bergonzi is good enough to make the listener forget Jussi Bjoerling's masterly reading of the Ingemisco. Birgit Nilsson is all fire; Lili Chookasian and Ezio Flagello both have big, warm voices. The difficulties stem from Erich Leins-dorf's conducting of the Boston Symphony. The pace is much too slow. The long, dramatic Otello-like lines enshroud the listener rather than move him. Tullio Serafin's interpretation of the Requiem (Angel) is still the best.

FAURE: LA CHANSON D'EVE, AND FAURE'DEBUSSY: SIX VERLAINE POEMS SUNG BY PHYLLIS CURTIN (Cambridge). In the Song of Eve, Charles van Lerberghe's poetry runs with Eve through paradise on the world's first morning--fresh, vibrant, exulting. Faure's setting is considerably tamer, though it echoes the poet's purity, as does Soprano Curtin. The flip side of this unusual record consists of settings by Faure and Debussy of the same six Verlaine lyrics. It is a tribute to the richness of French songs that both composers do justice to Verlaine's Rousseau-like musings on love: Faure with his faithfulness, Debussy with his flair.

CALDARA: IL GIUOCO DEL QUADRIGLIO (Nonesuch). Quadriglio, perhaps the best-known work of the Venetian composer Antonio Caldara (1670-1736), is a showpiece cantata for four sopranos. It was commissioned by Archduchess Maria Theresa (later Empress of Austria) and performed at court by her and her sisters. The ladies must have minded their singing master to negotiate the runs and trills that ornament this gay, witty music about four bored young damsels desultorily playing cards and wishing that both their hands and their suitors were more exciting. The soloists and orchestra of the Societ`aa Cameristica di Lugano have just the right light touch for this delightful record.

BRAHMS: LIEBESLIEDER WALTZES (RCA Victor). To a world that has waltzed to the elegant confections of the Strauss family, Brahms's Liebeslieder (with lyrics of Georg Daumer) may seem a bit heavy in a distinctly Teutonic way. But they have their own solid, unpretentious virtues: warmth and vigor that suggest Saturday night at a comfortable old Bierstube rather than a glittering ballroom. The performance by the Robert Shaw Chorale is robust, the piano of Claude Frank and Lilian Kallir downright athletic.

VICTORIA DE LOS ANGELES: A WORLD OF SONG (Angel). All these songs are well known, and several are chestnuts. All the more wonder that Soprano de los Angeles has produced a fresh and enlightening record. She gives La Paloma a relaxed performance, full of a sly, feminine humor; her gypsy songs are sung head-on with open, hearty tones. On the other side. Ich Liebe Dich, Brahms's Lullaby and Songs My Mother Taught Me get serene, tender treatment. Many of these songs have been recorded by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (Angel), with whom De los Angeles shares the title of Queen of Song, but their styles are completely different. De los Angeles is intimate and seemingly effortless; Schwarzkopf, even in the simplest lullaby, endlessly subtle.

CINEMA

BORN FREE. Elsa the lioness, tamed and untamed, bounds through a vivid movie re-creation of Joy Adamson's bestseller, superbly photographed in Kenya.

MORGAN! A misfit artist tries to woo back his divorced wife by behaving like King Kong in an offbeat comedy that might easily have run amuck except for polished clowning by David Warner and Vanessa Redgrave, two of Britain's showiest young stars.

HARPER. Private-eye melodrama is revived in lively style by Paul Newman as a gum-chewing gumshoe whose search for a missing millionaire implicates Lauren Bacall, Arthur Hill and Shelley Winters.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW.

The life of Christ in a fresh and fascinating film based wholly on Scripture and played as an act of faith by a nonprofessional cast under Director Pier Paolo Pasolini, an Italian Communist.

SHAKESPEARE WALLAH. U.S. Director James Ivory takes a wry, wistful look at fading British influence in India while ostensibly concerned with a love triangle that disrupts an English Shakespearean troupe on tour.

DEAR JOHN. The urgent biochemistry between a robust sailor (Jarl Kulle) on the make and a girl (Christina Schollin) who probably won't say no is analyzed to near perfection by Swedish Director Lars Magnus Lindgren, a sensitive defender of the thesis that sex sometimes precedes love.

THE GROUP. The Roosevelt era is brought giddily to life by eight delightful young actresses in this entertaining movie version of Mary McCarthy's tattletale bestseller about some of the surprises in store for Vassar's class of '33.

THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET. In a small, poignant masterwork from Czechoslovakia, Nazi terror eventually poisons the friendship between a warmhearted old Jewess (Ida Kaminska) and a decent Aryan nonentity (Josef KrOner) whose courage falters under stress.

BOOKS

Best Reading

PAPA HEMINGWAY, by A. E. Hotchner. An old friend paints a wonderfully perceptive portrait of the writer who was both a symbol and an idol to his generation.

A PASSIONATE PRODIGALITY, by Guy Chapman. This memoir of life and death in the trenches is an authentic classic of World War I, an elegy for a generation, written unsentimentally and unforgettably.

THE LAST BATTLE, by Cornelius Ryan. Historian-Journalist Ryan recounts the fall of Hitler's capital and details the Allied blunders that gave Stalin Berlin.

THE DOUBLE IMAGE, by Helen Maclnnes. Master Spywriter Maclnnes again pits an innocent and firm-chinned hero against a murderous crew of spies, and again the result is a topnotch suspense tale.

A GENEROUS MAN, by Reynolds Price. A North Carolina country boy comes to terms with the joys and responsibilities of manhood in this buoyant, funny novel.

THE FATAL IMPACT, by Alan Moorehead. History becomes moral drama in this engrossing study of the effect of the European Enlightenment on the primitive societies of the Pacific.

TOO FAR TO WALK, by John Hersey. A deft portrayal of the collegiate scene more than compensates for Author Hersey's too-clever tale of a sophomore who sells his soul to the Devil.

ACCIDENT, by Nicholas Mosley. This literary jigsaw puzzle about an Oxford philosophy don has its spellbinding moments, but some of the pieces are missing.

Best Sellers

FICTION 1. The Double Image, Maclnnes (1 last week)

2. Valley of the Dolls, Susann (2)

3. The Adventurers, Robbins (6)

4. The Source, Michener (3)

5. The Embezzler, Auchincloss (4)

6. The Comedians, Greene (7)

7. Those Who Love, Stone (5)

8. Tell No Man, St. Johns (8)

9. The Billion Dollar Brain, Deighton (9)

10. Up the Down Staircase, Kaufman (10)

NONFICTION 1. In Cold Blood, Capote (1)

2. The Last Battle, Ryan (2)

3. The Last 100 Days, Toland (4)

4. The Proud Tower, Tuchman (5)

5. Games People Play, Berne (3)

6. A Thousand Days, Schlesinger (8)

7. Papa Hemingway, Hotchner (6)

8. A Gift of Prophecy, Montgomery (9)

9. Unsafe at Any Speed, Nader (7)

10. The Fatal Impact, Moorehead

* All times E.D.T.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.