Wednesday, October 26
I SPY (NBC, 10-11 p.m.).* In "Sparrow-hawk," the naive young ruler of a foreign country visits Las Vegas, where his holiday becomes a headache for Agents Robinson and Scott, assigned to protect him.
SINGER PRESENTS TONY BENNETT (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). Tony Bennett, with eight top musicians as guest accompanists; Drummer Buddy Rich, Trumpeter Bobby Hackett, the Paul Home Quintet and Bongo Artist Candido.
Thursday, October 27
IT'S THE GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN (CBS, 8:30-9 p.m.). Everybody out to the pumpkin patch to join Linus in his annual wait for the arrival of the Great Pumpkin. Also starring in this animated cartoon special; Lucy, Snoopy and Charlie Brown.
BEWITCHED (ABC, 9-9:30 p.m.). When Endora (Agnes Moorehead) gives a Halloween party, wild doings are the order of the evening in "Twitch or Treat." Paul Lynde and Baseball's Willie Mays turn up among her guests.
THE CBS THURSDAY NIGHT MOVIES (CBS, 9-11 p.m.). Henry Fonda as the President in the 1964 film version of Burdick and Wheeler's bestseller, Fail Safe.
THE DEAN MARTIN SHOW (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Papa proudly presents his singing doll, 20-year-old Gail Martin, for the first time on TV. The welcoming committee includes John Wayne, Bill Cosby, Joey Heatherton, Rowan and Martin.
Saturday, October 29
ABC'S WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). Still smarting from their World Series defeat by the Baltimore Orioles, the Los Angeles Dodgers fly across the Pacific hoping to find consolation in an exhibition game against the Yomiuri Giants in Tokyo.
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 9-11:30 p.m.). The Buccaneer (1959), featuring Charlton Heston as General Andrew Jackson and Yul Brynner as Pirate Jean Lafitte in a tale of derring-do set in New Orleans during the War of 1812.
Sunday, October 30
FACE THE NATION (CBS, 12:30-1 p.m.). California's G.O.P. Gubernatorial Candidate Ronald Reagan faces the cameras this week with his opponent, Incumbent Democrat Pat Brown, getting equal time next week.
MEET THE PRESS (NBC, 1-1:30 p.m.). Vice President Hubert Humphrey on the firing line.
THE CAMPAIGN AND THE CANDIDATES (NBC, 6:30-7:30 p.m.). The first of two special programs focusing on the personalities and issues in the major races of the 1966 election. The spotlight for the first show is on the gubernatorial races in California, New York, Michigan, Alabama, Arkansas and Georgia. Edwin Newman is moderator.
THE SUNDAY NIGHT MOVIE (ABC, 9-11 p.m.). Paul Newman, Elke Sommer and Edward G. Robinson in The Prize (1963).
THE ANDY WILLIAMS SHOW (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Andy hosts a sing-along with Bing Crosby, Kate Smith, Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Young Americans.
Monday, October 31
THE LUCY SHOW (CBS, 8:30-9 p.m.). Lucy advertises for "quiet, dignified companion" and a librarian (Carol Burnett) answers, in the first of a two-parter. When Carol arrives, she turns out to be anything but a mousy bookworm, and her real high-living, high-decibel self is exposed.
THEATER
On Broadway
THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE, by Frank Marcus, is an abrasive English comedy of cruelty about the games lesbians play. Beryl Reid, Eileen Atkins and Lally Bowers are expert and subtle as three witches, and their vivid interpretations of the foolish and servile, the vain and the vile, stir up a cauldron of laughter.
MAME is an all-out, smash-bang, pull-out-the-stops musical extravaganza that makes up in show-biz slickness what it lacks in artistic originality. Angela Lansbury turns in a fast-paced performance as Patrick Dennis' high-fashion, high-living aunt. But Jerry Herman's score seems to imitate his own past successes; the title song might be called Hello, Again, Dolly!
PHILADELPHIA, HERE I COME!, by Brian Friel, is the battle cry of a young man who finds that he must first defeat his past in a small Irish village before setting off to conquer the future in America.
SWEET CHARITY. In old-fashioned romances, the pure hero pursued the shy heroine until he won her. In this modern fable, the soiled heroine (Gwen Verdon) chases the effete hero until she loses him. Despite its melancholy theme, the musical is electric entertainment.
CACTUS FLOWER is a sex comedy from France that asks whether a Don Juanish dentist (Barry Nelson) should ask his adoring assistant (Lauren Bacall) to be his accomplice in a plot against his mistress. Would Samson ask Delilah to trim his hair?
WAIT A MINIM! It is not often that Broadway is serenaded by the sounds of the mbira, timbila, kalimba and tampura drone. But they are part of this musical revue from South Africa amusing and soothing the ears of theatergoers.
RECORDS
Jazz
THE JAZZ PIANO (RCA Victor). Half a dozen pianists take the stage at the Pittsburgh Jazz Festival to give a fine, festive survey of their art. The course starts with Contrary Motion, played by Willie "The Lion" Smith, professor emeritus of the bouncing left-hand "stride" piano, which Duke Ellington gracefully imitates in his impressionistic Second Portrait of the Lion. Starting out ever so simply in Somehow, Earl "Fatha" Hines soon fills all the spaces with increasingly intricate trills and runs. Most emotionally eloquent of the lot, Mary Lou Williams plays 45DEG Angle and Joycie with declarative force and powerful swing.
TEQUILA (Verve) is the title song but not the flavor of the album. Though Wes Montgomery, the fine self-taught guitarist, can hold his own with the driving, jabbing jazzmen of today, for the moment he turns relaxed and romantic. In such songs as Little Child (Daddy Dear) and Midnight Mood his big warm tone holds a strong melodic line that is echoed by a dozen violins and cellos, almost like a Roger Williams showpiece.
ADDITIONS TO FURTHER DEFINITIONS (Impulse!). Jazz, even in its short history, already has a crowded pantheon of dead or moribund "Greats" who can be heard only on 78s or reissues. Not so Benny Carter who, as a Chocolate Dandy in 1929, was one of the pioneers of the alto saxophone. Busy with Hollywood-arranging assignments, Carter seldom plays today; but this new recording finds him as fluent as ever, brightening his own up-tempo compositions (Doozy, Come on Back) with four other ebullient saxophonists at his side.
EL SONIDO NUEVO (Verve) is not a new sound at all but old-fashioned Latin dance music played by Vibraphonist Cal Tjader (Soul Sauce), along with half a dozen softspoken, hypnotic percussionists and a trio of growling, pulsating trombonists. What lifts the album to the top groove is the piano of Eddie Palmieri, whose syncopated rhythmic sallies are a quiet contrast to Tjader's smoothly bubbling vibes.
THE DISSECTION AND RECONSTRUCTION OF MUSIC FROM THE PAST AS PERFORMED BY THE INMATES OF LALO SCHIFRIN'S DEMENTED ENSEMBLE AS A TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE (Verve). The title is a tortured joke, but the music is airy and inventive, if a bit dry. It consists of jazz improvisations on classical, Renaissance and medieval styles of music. Several ensembles, one predominantly strings (Beneath a Weeping Willow Shade), one heavy on the horns (Blues for Johann Sebastian), are led by Schifrin, who also plays an ornamental harpsichord.
ELUES ETUDE (Limelight). Oscar Peterson is still a topflight jazz pianist--a suave swinger with impeccable technique--crisp, fast and featherlight. But half these tracks catch him with a new drummer and bassist, and at times the trio seems merely to be making polite conversation. Oscar softly grunts and moans, rather surprising accompaniments for urbane offerings like Let's Fall in Love and The Shadow of Your Smile.
CINEMA
GEORGY GIRL. The rags-to-riches story of a butler's dumpy daughter is like a thousand eccentric English comedies, but it boasts one sterling asset in Georgy herself, played with vibrant good humor by 23-year-old Lynn Redgrave, daughter of Sir Michael and sister of Vanessa.
LOVES OF A BLONDE, the outstanding hit of this year's New York Film Festival, is a delightful Czech comedy written and directed by 34-year-old Milos Forman. Slight but abrim with humorous insights, Blonde observes what happens when a pudding-faced pretty from a small town succumbs to a callow young piano player and follows him to his home in Prague.
THE SHAMELESS OLD LADY. An old woman, having spent long years in servitude as daughter, wife and mother, wins a new lease on life when her husband dies. She outrages her family by becoming the liveliest widow in Marseille. Played to perfection by the veteran star of the Paris stage, Sylvie (like many other French performers, she uses only one name).
CRAZY QUILT. Director John Korty fashions a modern fable about a marriage between a realist (Tom Rosqui) and a romantic (Ina Mela), who learn to accept their differences after ten years of mutual misunderstanding.
THE WRONG BOX. Bryan Forbes has a high old time directing Michael Caine, Ralph Richardson, John Mills and Peter Sellers in a Victorian spoof of such varied subjects as vast fortunes, star-struck lovers, Bournemouth stranglers, venal doctors, missing bodies and orphaned cousins.
BOOKS
Best Reading
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, by Jean Guehenno. The character and egocentric doctrine of the erratic Rousseau, in many ways the first modern man, are brilliantly displayed in an excellent translation from the French.
THE FIXER, by Bernard Malamud. This fictional version of the Russian equivalent of the Dreyfus case--the Beiliss trial--becomes a vehicle for Malamud's probing analysis of the modern individual beleaguered by orthodoxies.
THE SECRET SURRENDER, by Allen Dulles. The organized surrender of 1,000,000 German and Italian troops a week before V-E day is ably recounted by former CIA Chief Dulles, who was its chief engineer and certainly knows a good spy story.
THE BIRDS FALL DOWN, by Rebecca West. This long novel about a Russian double agent explores the recesses of the Slavic mind without explaining much about Dame Rebecca's chosen specialty, the meaning of treason.
TREMOR OF INTENT, by Anthony Burgess. The unfailing Burgess wit, craftsmanship and intellectual curiosity combine to bring off a first-rate eschatological spy novel.
THE SUN KING, by Nancy Mitford. As an ornithologist studying the noble birds at Louis XIV's Court of Versailles, Author Mitford is more interested in song and plumage than ecology, but her illustrated portrait of that resplendent monarch is a tidy job of dissection.
GILES GOAT-BOY, by John Barth. A huge surrealistic puzzler--or possibly a parable--about goatish activities on a far-out college campus that represents the modern world.
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. Valley of the Dolls, Susann (1 last week)
2. The Secret of Santa Vittoria, Crichton (2)
3. The Adventurers, Robbins (5)
4. Capable of Honor, Drury (4)
5. Tai-Pan, Clavell (3)
6. The Fixer, Malamud (7)
7. Giles Goat-Boy, Barth (6)
8. The Detective, Thorp
9. All In The Family, O'Connor (9)
10. The Source, Michener (8)
NONFICTION
1. How to Avoid Probate, Dacey (1)
2. Rush to Judgment, Lane (2)
3. Everything But Money, Levenson (3)
4. Human Sexual Response, Masters and Johnson (5)
5. With Kennedy, Salinger (6)
6. Flying Saucers--Serious Business, Edwards (7)
7. Games People Play, Berne (4)
8. The Search for Amelia Earhart, Goerner (9)
9. Papa Hemingway, Hotchner (8)
10. The Pleasure of His Company, Fay
* All times E.D.T. through Oct. 29, E.S.T. from then on.
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