Wednesday, January 4 ABC STAGE 67 (ABC. 10-11 p.m.).* "The Trap of Solid Gold" explores the familiar paradox of the executive who can't live on his income. Starring those newlyweds, Cliff Robertson and Dina Merrill.
Thursday, January 5 LAOS: THE FORGOTTEN WAR (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). The second of three shows called "The Battle for Asia," this one documents the war in Laos and the life of the Meo tribesmen, who are doing most of the fighting against the Communists.
THE CBS THURSDAY NIGHT MOVIES (CBS, 9-11 p.m.). Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke (1961), with Geraldine Page and Laurence Harvey.
PRO FOOTBALL'S SHOTGUN MARRIAGE:
SONNY, MONEY AND MERGER (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). The merger of the National and American Football Leagues, with special emphasis on Sonny Werblin, owner of the A.F.L.'s New York Jets, the fellow who started the courtship in 1962.
Friday, January 6 THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (NBC. 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Guest Star Victor Borge plays a scientist who takes his cue from Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes and sets his secrets to music to keep them from evil hands.
Saturday, January 7 SHELL'S WONDERFUL WORLD OF GOLF (NBC, 5-6 p.m.). Gene Sarazen and Jimmy Demaret host a new series of matches between various pros on the world's most famous courses. This week it's Tommy Jacobs v. Bruce Devlin at the Golf Club of Rome.
WORLD PREMIERE (NBC, 9-11 p.m.). Another in the series of full-length movies released first on TV. How I Spent My Summer Vacation, with Robert Wagner, Peter Lawford, Lola Albright. Walter Pidgeon and Jill St. John.
THE HOLLYWOOD PALACE (ABC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). Ray Bolger plays host to Diahann Carroll, Audrey Meadows, The King Family and Paul Revere and the Raiders.
Sunday, January 8 DISCOVERY '67 (ABC, 11:30 a.m. to noon). Exploring "The Age of Mechanical Marvels" with a visit to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich., to see the Model Ts and such other turn-of-the-century wonders as the charcoal-heated iron and the gasoline-heated bathtub.
THE CATHOLIC HOUR (NBC, 1:30-2 p.m.).
The first in a four-part series on "The Church and War" that traces the major historical developments in the church's teaching on war and peace.
Monday, January 9 MR. TERRIFIC (CBS, 8-8:30 p.m.). Stanley Beamish (Stephen Strimpell) is a meek service-station operator until he takes a "power pill" developed by the Government's Bureau of Secret Projects. Premiere.
CAPTAIN NICE (NBC, 8:30-9 p.m.). More of the same--only now it's a Milquetoast police-department chemist named Carter Nash (William Daniels), who turns into a superhuman crime fighter after drinking a secret formula. Premiere.
Tuesday, January 10 THE INVADERS (ABC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.).
A young architect (Roy Thinnes) spots a flying saucer landing and--guess what?--nobody believes him. Premiere.
CBS REPORTS: THE FARTHEST FRONTIER (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Charles Kuralt reports on the promise and problems involved in the use of the new drugs that twist and untwist minds.
THEATER
On Broadway
THE STAR-SPANGLED GIRL, by Neil Simon, makes The Odd Couple a threesome. A pair of post-Ivy League rebels (Anthony Perkins and Richard Benjamin) publish a protest magazine with virtuously impoverished zeal until a girl (Connie Stevens) who looks like a whipped-cream frappe shows up to curdle their joy. The gags come in two varieties: Simon-pure and simple Simon.
I DO! I DO! Whipped cream and frosting may a wedding cake make--but not a marriage. Only the shimmering talents of two superstars, Mary Martin and Robert Preston, and the agile hand of Director Gower Champion, make this confectionery adaptation of The Fourposter palatable.
WALKING HAPPY--singing brightly, dancing spritely, clapping loudly. A sort of My Fair Laddie, with British Beguiler Norman Wisdom as a Lancashire bootmaker who starts out so far below the stairs that he arrives onstage via a trap door.
CABARET. The prevailing mood winds in the Berlin of 1930 were blowing toward Nazism and war--not exactly the bubbly stuff of which a heady musical is made. In its re-creation of the vulgarity of the era, this musical is a success of style. But its book, based on Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin, is an intrusion.
THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL was Richard Sheridan's bastion of busybodies, and is today a classroom of high comedy and a showcase for the A PA repertory company.
RIGHT YOU ARE, like Scandal, centers on a group of gossipers, but in Luigi Pirandello's philosophical drama, its effects are tragic and destructive. A handsome production by the APA.
Off Broadway
EH? If Pinter and the Marx Brothers collaborated on a play, and dread and menace were laughing matters, Eh? might be the result. Dustin Hoffman is properly sinister and silly as Henry Livings' pop protagonist.
AMERICA HURRAH. Three brilliant playlets by Jean-Claude van Itallie refract and reflect some of the dominant hues in mid-20th century American life.
RECORDS
Jazz ALFIE (Impulse). Tenor Saxophonist Sonny Rollins, best-known from his hard-bop days for a coarse tone and wild, harsh harmonies, has turned urbane and eloquent as composer of his first film score. This record is a series of new arrangements on the original sound track by Oliver Nelson, played by eleven good jazzmen, including Sonny. Alfie's Theme is a little long and ultimately empty, but then, that's Alfie.
A FLAT, G FLAT AND C (Impulse). The featured player is Yusef Lateef, who used to be plain William Evans, tenor saxophonist with Dizzy Gillespie. In the '50s, Evans changed his name, his faith (from Christian to Mohammedan), and the nature of his jazz, turning to such Middle Eastern instruments as the rebab and the arghool. Now he's headed farther east with The Chuen Blues, played on a three-stringed Chinese lute, and Kyoto Blues, on a Taiwan bamboo flute.
PETER AND THE WOLF (Verve). Bach has been the take-off point for many a jazz exploration. Why not Prokofiev, too? Arranger Oliver Nelson has appropriated the Soviet composer's famous symphonic fairy tale and begins with a straightforward statement of the familiar themes: bird, duck, cat, wolf and Peter. But then a high-spirited jabberwocky takes over as Nelson's two dozen men come on strong, paced by Jimmy Smith at the organ.
FORTY-SECOND STREET (RCA Victor). The Rod Levitt octet exhibits some of the pop-touches that one expects from the Radio City Music Hall Orchestra--plus occasional flashes of joyous jazz, a la Dizzy Gillespie's band. Trombonist Levitt is an alumnus of both groups, and he has emerged as a successful and rather humorous arranger. In this, his fourth album, he devotes himself to the songs of the '30s--which is a fine idea, except when he produces parodies (About a Quarter to Nine, Lulu's Back in Town).
INTERMODULATION (Verve). In his last album, Bill Evans was almost swallowed alive by a symphony orchestra, but fortunately the subtle pianist has reappeared safe and sound to try another experiment --trading off his introspective musings on the keyboard with Jim Hall's quiet explorations on guitar. The contrast between plucked and hammered strings is delicate but piquant, and the songs (I've Got You Under My Skin, Jazz Samba) arc on the quiet side, each a pastel, pointillist canvas.
TIME IN (Columbia) takes time out to celebrate the 15th anniversary of that durable commodity, the Dave Brubeck Quartet. As in the past, Pianist Brubeck often plays second fiddle to his alto saxman, Paul Desmond, and both are buoyed up by Joe Morello's drums and Eugene Wright's bass. Cassandra and Travellin' Blues are civilized but swinging, as is 40 Days, an excerpt from a new 30-minute liturgical work by Brubeck.
CINEMA
FUNERAL IN BERLIN picks up the trail of Harry Palmer (Michael Caine), that scruffy, insubordinate British agent whom audiences first met in The Ipcress File, and follows his movements from crisis to crisis in Berlin. Though the script is a bit muddled, the action is engrossing, the dialogue pert, and the suspense enlivened by honest good humor.
A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. The collaboration of Director Fred Zinnemann, Screenwriter Robert Bolt and Actor Paul Scofield has produced one of the year's best films. The heart of the drama is a conflict of conscience, as Sir Thomas More, Chancellor of England, tries to find a way to serve both his King and his God.
GOAL! There are enough kicks for everybody in this film about the world series of soccer held in England last summer. With 16 of the world's top teams competing, it will command the empathy of any spectator sportsman who admires the aspect of men in intricate and aggressive movement.
THE PROFESSIONALS. Director Richard Brooks pumps this fast-moving western full of high-caliber performances, flaming arrows and hot lead. The action starts when, for $10,000 apiece, Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Woody Strode and Robert Ryan set out to return a kidnaped wife (Claudia Cardinale) to her husband.
THE FORTUNE COOKIE. Offering the season's lushest crop of crass, Walter Matthau leers, sneers and swaggers as an ambulance-chasing lawyer who cons his brother-in-law (Jack Lemmon) into faking an insurance claim in Director Billy Wilder's latest jab at American mores.
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM. Unhappily, Director Richard Lester sells his mirthright for a mess of footage in his version of this comedy of erotic errors. But Zero Mostel still manages to be funny skipping around in his fingertip-length tunic.
BOOKS
Best Reading SATORI IN PARIS, by Jack Kerouac. An account of a beat writer's ribald search for some noble French ancestors, told with gusto and amusing dropout grammar.
WINSTON S. CHURCHILL, by Randolph Churchill. An only son's pious but pointed biography of his famous father's painful Victorian upbringing. First of five volumes.
LETTERS OF JAMES JOYCE, edited by Rich ard Ellmann. The furies and compulsions that generated Joyce's work are set down in a literary electrocardiogram of a genius.
VESSEL OF WRATH, by Robert Lewis Taylor. A whimsical tour of the trail that hatchet-swinging Carry Nation blazed through the hogsheads and saloons of her time.
LA CHAMADE, by Francoise Sagan. A conventional romantic novel about a love affair -- skillful enough to show just how satisfying wise romantic novels can be.
THE BEST TIMES, by John Dos Passes.
An engaging memoir in which the novelist writes with affectionate candor about the legendary names of the Lost Generation.
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. The Secret of Santa Vittoria, Crichton (1 last week)
2. Capable of Honor, Drury (3)
3. Valley of the Dolls, Susann (2)
4. The Mask of Apollo, Renault (4)
5. The Birds Fall Down, West (5)
6. All in the Family, O'Connor (6)
7. The Fixer, Malamud (8)
8. The Adventurers, Robbins (9)
9. Tai-Pan, Clavell (7)
10. A Dream of Kings, Petrakis (10)
NONFICTION
1. Everything But Money, Levenson (3)
2. The Boston Strangler, Frank (2)
3. Rush to Judgment, Lane (1)
4. With Kennedy, Salinger (5)
5. Games People Play, Berne (10)
6. Random House Dictionary of the English Language (8)
7. The Search for Amelia Earhart, Goerner (9)
8. The Jury Returns, Nizer (4)
9. How to Avoid Probate, Dacey (6)
10. The Pleasure of His Company, Fay
* All times E.S.T.
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