Television
Thursday, March 16
PROJECT 20 (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.).* "End of the Trail," the last stand of the Great Plains Indians against the white man's encroaching civilization in the 1870s. Spliced together from historic photographs and current films of the Crow Indian reservation in Montana. Walter Brennan does the narration.
RINGLING BROS. AND BARNUM & BAILEY CIRCUS (NBC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). The 1967 edition, with Dale Evans and Roy Rogers in center ring.
Friday, March 17
HALLMARK HALL OF FAME (NBC, 9:30-11 p.m.). In Anastasia, Lynn Fontanne, Julie Harris, Robert Burr and Paul Roebling dramatize the still unanswered question of whether a young amnesia victim was really the daughter of Russia's Czar Nicholas II, executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918.
Saturday, March 18
N.I.T. BASKETBALL (CBS, 2-4 p.m.). Finals of the 30th annual National Invitation Tournament, college basketball's oldest postseason event, from Madison Square Garden.
ABC'S WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). The American International Alpine Skiing Championship, from Vail, Colo.
AMERICA'S JUNIOR MISS PAGEANT (NBC, 8-9 p.m.). Fifty "ideal" high school seniors compete for a total of $45,000 in scholarships and the Junior Miss title, broadcast live from Mobile, Ala.
Sunday, March 19
CAMERA THREE (CBS, 11-11:30 a.m.). "This Was Toscanini." Photographs of the conductor rehearsing, excerpts from his recorded music, and reminiscences by a member of his orchestra commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Maestro's birth.
DISCOVERY 67 (ABC, 11:30 a.m.-noon). ABC Science Editor Jules Bergman and Bill Owen discuss "Our Next Step in Outer Space"--the Apollo moon mission--with the help of models and animated drawings.
THIS IS MARSHALL MCLUHAN: THE MEDIUM IS THE MASSAGE (NBC, 4-5 p.m.). The massage is administered via the proper medium, in an attempt to give McLuhan's controversial ideas the visual life they are all about.
THE CHILDREN'S FILM FESTIVAL (CBS, 4-5 p.m.). White Mane, the warmhearted story of a French boy in the Camargue and the wild stallion he captured and tamed with love.
THE 21 ST CENTURY (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). Walter Cronkite leads his fans into the research lab, up to the observatory and through the radio telescope for a peek at "Mars and Beyond."
NBC NEWS INQUIRY (NBC, 6:30-7:30 p.m.). "Whose Right to Bear Arms?" A good question posed by NBC correspond ents to legislators, firearms experts and the man in the street.
ANNIE GET YOUR GUN (NBC, 8:30-10 p.m.). Twenty-one years after the original show hit the boards, sharpshooting Annie Oakley (Ethel Merman) is still doing what comes naturally--this time on TV, supported by the cast of last year's Broadway revival.
Tuesday, March 21
OUR TIME IN HELL (ABC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Lee Marvin narrates the U.S. Marine Corps' World War II Pacific campaign, from Guadalcanal to Okinawa.
THEATER
On Broadway
BLACK COMEDY. British Playwright Peter Shaffer looses eight characters on a stage that is supposed to be in total darkness. Director John Dexter manipulates them in a fracturingly funny people jam, with Michael Crawford, Geraldine Page and Lynn Redgrave leading the acrobatics.
THE HOMECOMING, by Harold Pinter, pits the strength of five men v. the power of one woman. Who conquers and exploits whom is the question. The answer depends on each man's interpretation. The Royal Shakespeare Company's production, directed by Peter Hall, is properly tense and intense.
THE WILD DUCK. Although he was dedicated to candor in human relations, Playwright Henrik Ibsen recognized all too clearly that it is kinder to consider what men wish they could be than to deal with them as they are. In its revival of this 1884 play, the APA troupe performs with more precision than passion.
AT THE DROP OF ANOTHER HAT. Sound a bellow with a whisper, match a maharajah with a mouse, mix wit with whimsy, and you have the combination for an evening of charming entertainment by Flanders and Swann.
Off Broadway
THE RIMERS OF ELDRITCH is both evocative and entertaining, as Lanford Wilson re-creates the mood and the milieu of a ghost mining town in the Midwest. Fluidly paced by Director Michael Kahn, Rimers is a collection of vignettes that might have come from Winesburg, Ohio, set in the dramatic form of Under Milk Wood.
EH? In Cervantes' classic, a Spanish "knight" fights a windmill--and loses. In Henry Livings' farce, a British nit challenges a boiler--and the boiler loses.
AMERICA HURRAH. Jean-Claude van Itallie melds pop art and the theater of cruelty as he leads his audience through a modern Inferno of cocktail parties, urban herds, politics, psychoanalytic jargon and motels.
RECORDS
Chamber Music
HAYDN: THREE QUARTETS, OPUS 54 (Epic). The Juilliard String Quartet once again displays its unsurpassed exactness of intonation and joint attack as it makes each quartet a finely chiseled gem--all without sacrificing warmth or passion, as in the C Major Adagio, with its deep-voiced Hungarian lament under the dancing arabesques of the violin.
LEOS JANACEK: CONCERTINO FOR PIANO (Crossroads). Among the latest additions to the fast-growing U.S. catalogue of Janaacek's works is this four-movement suite for piano with six instruments, which enter by ones and twos to sass the piano and one another. Not top-drawer Janacek, but nonetheless vigorous and jazzy with its insistent themes, bold fistfuls of chords and thumping rhythms. Josef Palenicek is the pianist.
MOZART: THE SIX QUINTETS FOR STRING QUARTET AND VIOLA (3 LPs; Columbia). In his later years, Mozart liked to play the viola; so he added a darker color to the string quartet by doubling the viola's voice. The five late quintets contain, besides the expected felicitous melodies, melting modulations and sprightly symmetries, some rich polyphony and dramatic interchanges. Walter Trampler brings his viola to the Budapest String Quartet, which is constantly updating its repertory to take advantage of improved recording techniques. This is their third recording of the quintets; they can stop now.
TCHAIKOVSKY: "SOUVENIR DE FLORENCE" (RCA Victor). Tchaikovsky added an extra cello to Mozart's quintet, but the effect in his rambunctious opening movement is more like 60 strings than six. With its robust peasant dances, twining lines of song and sudden hushes and crescendos, Tchaikovsky's tribute to Florence is theatrical and Slavic. The new Guarneri Quartet, joined by half the Budapest Quartet, manages an almost symphonic treatment of the composer's work.
BEETHOVEN: CELLO SONATAS NOS. 3 and 5 (Angel). From the beauty of tone and sensitivity of interpretation, listeners would scarcely suspect that the cellist is only 22, the pianist 27. Jacqueline du Pre, a child prodigy in England and recent student of the Russian virtuoso Mstislav Rostropovitch, handles her cello as gloriously as any master three times her age; Los Angeles-born Stephen Bishop, former student of Myra Hess, makes an impressive partner.
THE BOSTON SYMPHONY CHAMBER PLAYERS (3 LPs; RCA Victor) have recorded with zest and polish an evening of music ranging in time from Mozart's sunny, transparent Quartet in D for Flute and Strings to the late Irving Fine's romantic and unsettling Fantasia for String Trio (1957). Most fetching of the four contemporary works is Elliott Carter's Woodwind Quintet, with its light melodic fragments breezily tossed and tangled like crepe-paper streamers.
CINEMA
THE PERSECUTION AND ASSASSINATION OF JEAN-PAUL MARAT AS PERFORMED BY THE INMATES OF THE ASYLUM OF CHARENTON UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE. Under the direction of Peter Brook, Britain's Royal Shakespeare Company has transformed Peter Weiss's play into a cinematic rowdydow no less frazzle-dazzling than it was on the stage.
DUTCHMAN. Another shocking play effectively turned into a film--this time LeRoi Jones's one-act polemic on race hate. Shirley Knight and Al Freeman Jr. enact a brief, brutal encounter on a subway train that builds danger with the insistence of steel wheels screeching around a curve.
BLOWUP. Actor David Hemmings comes into sharp focus as a pop photog who happens to take a picture of a murder (committed by Vanessa Redgrave) that he blows up, and which in turn blows up his whole mod scene.
LA GUERRE EST FINIE. Yves Montand's performance as an unrepentant, unforgiving Spanish Civil War veteran is part of the melancholy strength of this Alain Resnais (Hiroshima Mon Amour) study in desperation.
A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. Playwright Robert Bolt's literate theater work on the martyrdom of Sir Thomas More makes every bit as good a movie--with Paul Scofield as Sir Thomas.
BOOKS
Best Reading
BLACK IS BEST, by Jack Olsen. A formidable biography that disassembles Heavyweight Champion Cassius Clay and then carefully spreads the many pieces on the gym floor.
THE THORN TREES, by John Mclntosh. Set in a fictional counterpart of Bechuanaland, the novel tells with special horror how white civilization can fail in the face of the white man's degeneracy and corruption.
A SHORTER FINNEGANS WAKE, by James Joyce, edited by Anthony Burgess. Joyce's dream-ridden masterpiece was 17 years in the writing and could easily have been 17 more in the reading until Novelist Burgess (A Clockwork Orange) came to the rescue by cutting it by two-thirds. Joyce's ecstasy of verbal sound and association remains intact.
THE MAN WHO KNEW KENNEDY, by Vance Bourjaily. The first effort to capture the triumph and tragedy of the Kennedy era in fiction. Bourjaily's flashback-filled book is a sometimes brilliant and often evocative account of how the generation closest to Kennedy in age and aspirations reacted to his death.
THE LAST ONE LEFT, by John MacDonald. A busy, well-populated story of skulduggery at sea, tersely told by the current Big Daddy (53 books) of murder-suspense thrillers.
THE SOLDIER'S ART, by Anthony Powell. The eighth novel in a brilliantly executed marathon series depicting life in Britain between and during the two big wars carries Narrator-Hero Nick Jenkins into the second year of World War II.
PAPER LION, by George Plimpton. The last long football season gave Americans the Super Bowl and the super book on the pro game. Plimpton's prose is worth a dozen coffee-table volumes filled with full-color pictures of golden boys in muddy pants.
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. The Secret of Santa Vittoria, Crichton (1 last week)
2. Capable of Honor, Drury (2)
3. The Arrangement, Kazan (3)
4. The Captain, De Hartog (5)
5. The Mask of Apollo, Renault (6)
6. Valley of the Dolls, Susann (4)
7. The Birds Fall Down, West (7)
8. Tai-Pan, Clavell (10)
9. The Fixer, Malamud
10. All in the Family, O'Connor (8)
NON FICTION
1. Madame Sarah, Skinner (1)
2. Everything But Money, Levenson (2)
3. Paper Lion, Plimpton (3)
4. The Jury Returns, Nizer (4)
5. Games People Play, Berne (5)
6. Edgar Cayce: The Sleeping Prophet, Stearn (6)
7. Inside South America, Gunther (10)
8. Rush to Judgment, Lane (7)
9. The Boston Strangler, Frank (8)
10. The Arrogance of Power, Fulbright
* All times E.S.T.
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