Wednesday, September 20 CHRYSLER PRESENTS A BOB HOPE COMEDY SPECIAL (NBC, 9-10 p.m.).* Jimmy Durante, Phyllis Diller, Kaye Stevens and Jack Jones join Old Ski Nose for his first show of the season.

HE & SHE (CBS, 9:30-10 p.m.). Happiness is not being a New York landlord, as Paula Prentiss and Dick Benjamin discover in the latest chapter of this marital situation comedy.

DUNDEE AND THE CULHANE (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). As if one fight weren't enough, in the midst of an Indian raid, Dundee (John Mills) stages a retrial of a lost case with the trapped Indian fighters as gallery in "Dead Man's Brief."

Thursday, September 21 IRONSIDE (NBC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). In "The Leaf in the Forest," Raymond Burr as Robert T. Ironside ensnares a psychopathic strangler who preys on lonely old women. Eve Whitfield, disguised as a 70-year-old spinster, acts as foil.

CBS THURSDAY NIGHT MOVIES (CBS, 9-11:30 p.m.). 1960's Academy Award winner, The Apartment, with Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine and Fred MacMurray.

GOOD COMPANY (ABC, 10-10:30 p.m.). Attorney F. Lee Bailey casts his cross-examiner's eye on the living habits of Playboy Prince Hugh Hefner at home in his 48-room Chicago pad.

Friday, September 22

OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD (ABC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Filmed at the Umfolozi Game Reserve in South Africa, "Rhino" recounts the capture of two rare white rhinos and other veld-roaming wild beasts in danger of extinction. Harry Guardino, Shirley Eaton and Robert Gulp star.

CBS FRIDAY NIGHT MOVIES (CBS, 9-11 p.m.). John Ford's classic western, Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), with James Stewart, John Wayne, Lee Marvin and Vera Miles.

BELL TELEPHONE HOUR (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). In "The Many Faces of Romeo and Juliet," four pairs of stars from four performing arts interpret the famous balcony scene: Jason Robards and Claire Bloom (theater), Sandor Konya and Anna Moffo (opera), Erik Bruhn and Carla Fracci (ballet), Larry Kert and Carol Lawrence (American musical theater).

Saturday, September 23 MANNIX (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). In "Skid Marks on a Dry Run," a politician hires Mannix (Mike Connors) to do a "dry run" investigation on him, anticipating that his political opponent might try to discredit him. Instead of vindicating the politician, Mannix discovers that he is Mafia-connected.

Sunday, September 24

AMERICAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE DOUBLEHEADER (NBC, 2 p.m. to conclusion). The Boston Patriots v. the Buffalo Bills in Buffalo, and the New York Jets v. the Den ver Broncos in Denver.

THE 21st CENTURY (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.).

Part I of a two-part series about the impact of "The Computer Revolution" on today's society. This segment looks at an air-traffic-control center, computerized steel mill and typesetting machines.

HOLIDAY ON ICE (ABC, 7-8 p.m.). Jonathan Winters hosts the ice-travaganza featuring such figure-skating champions as The Netherlands' Sjoukje Dijkstra and Germany's Marika Kilius and Hans-Jurgen Baumler. From Frankfurt's Festhalle.

MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (ABC, 8-11:30 p.m.). Marlon Brando as Mr. Christian, with Trevor Howard, Richard Harris and Hugh Griffith (1962).

Monday, September 25 THE DANNY THOMAS HOUR (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). Geraldine Chaplin, Robert Stack and Michael J. Pollard make "The Scene" in a hippie-v. square-generation drama involving acid and psychedelia.

Tuesday, September 26 AFRICA (ABC, 9:30-10:30 a.m.). Repeat of the second hour from the recent four-hour special, highlighting tribalism and the many problems of Ghana.

CBS REPORTS (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). "The Germans," a study of the land and its people as represented by the citizens of Nuernberg: how they feel about Nazism, democracy, minorities, education, traditions.

RECORDS

Operatic, Choral & Recital

PUCCINI: TOSCA (2 LPs; London). Birgit Nilsson's voice is purest gold, and it takes men of equal quality to sing against her. She has found ideal antagonists in this recording: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as Tosca's brutally intelligent tormentor and Franco Corelli as her devoted lover are almost overwhelming in their dynamic and masculine artistry. Yet Birgit summons all the fire in her Swedish soul and emulates, if not exactly incarnates, the Latin passions of Tosca, daring anyone to typecast her as merely a Wagnerian soprano. With Conductor Lorin Maazel whipping his orchestra along in unrelenting fury, the album becomes a musical Fort Knox.

ALBAN BERG: WOZZECK (2 LPs; CBS Masterworks). To many students of music, Berg's masterpiece represents an enduring statement about human nature and musical revolution. To others, it is nothing but a stumble through an atonal desert. This recording will be appreciated by Berg's admirers, for Pierre Boulez's conducting is impeccable, and so is the courage of Walter Berry, who convincingly sings his way to murder and death through the cactus-like orchestration.

PUCCINI: LA RONDINE (2 LPs; RCA Victor). Magda, Puccini's sad "swallow," is close kin to Verdi's Violetta, the "wayward one." Puccini's little courtesan also leads a gay, cynical life in Paris until she meets her one true love, with whom she flees to the peace of a country villa. Then, to the strains of a rending melody, she leaves her lover when she realizes that her scarlet past would shock his proper parents. Anna Moffo illuminates the most lyrical and substantial elements in her poignant role, and her characterization is nicely set off by Tenors Daniele Barioni and Piero de Palma.

DONIZETTI: L'ELISIR D'AMORE (2 LPs; Angel). The Elixir of Love is an 1832 comic opera that is a delightful collection of bouncy silliness couched in florid melody. Mirella Freni and Nicolai Gedda reproduce their entrancing Metropolitan Opera performances of two seasons ago, and they are complemented by the astonishing bass of Renato Capecchi, who combines unbelievable agility with mahogany-like richness in the role of a quack selling a love potion.

STRAVINSKY CONDUCTS CANTATA, MASS and IN MEMORIAM DYLAN THOMAS (Columbia). In 1952, Stravinsky worked a near miracle by writing a cantata based on four dirges by anonymous Elizabethan poets. The poems were to be sung at wakes, but they are essentially joyful, expressing a happy vision of death as "a place eternally to sing." Stravinsky's Mass is less successful, partly because it was written in reaction against what he called the "rococo-operatic sweets-of-sin" in Mozart's masses. Most musical tastes will find it dry and detached, though others will find this characteristic a virtue. Dylan Thomas died just before he was able to write a proposed libretto for Stravinsky; the composer set "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" to uncompromisingly sad music in honor of his friend.

A RICHARD STRAUSS SONG RECITAL: MONTSERRAT CABALLE (RCA Victor). This album offers little opportunity for either Caballe or Strauss fans to cheer. Caballe's forte is the Spanish and the bel canto repertory, where she can spin out her show-stopping pianissimos. However interesting it is to hear Strauss's songs, he was more compelling in the composition of his horror-ridden yet beautiful grand operas.

CINEMA

CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS. In this story of a young man beginning life as a train dispatcher, Czech Director Jiri Menzel mixes the real and the surreal, ribaldry and pathos, comedy and tragedy, yet keeps the film on the track all the way.

THE THIEF OF PARIS. Jean-Paul Belmondo plays a burglar in turn-of-the-century France, manages only to steal the picture, which, because of its disjointedness, just misses being worth the effort.

THE BIG CITY. Director Satyajit Ray expertly dissects a slice of Indian life and shows how a young Bengali couple copes with Calcutta's modern realities while bound to an ancient morality.

UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE. Sandy Dennis is expert, as always. But it is the kids themselves (recruited from the New York City streets) who give the ring of truth to this glossy rendering of Bel Kaufman's novel about a teacher's problems in a slum-area high school.

THE BIRDS, THE BEES AND THE ITALIANS. Adultery--Italian style, by Divorce--Italian Style Director Pietro Germi. Virna Lisi supplies the sugar and spice. Really quite nice.

BOOKS Best Reading

RANDALL JARRELL, 1914-1965, edited by Robert Lowell, Peter Taylor and Robert Penn Warren. A posthumous appreciation of a minor poet and major critic written by his friends, most of them eminent writers whom he served as unofficial custodian of artistic conscience.

CHARLOTTE BRONTE: THE EVOLUTION OF GENIUS, by Winifred Gerin. This biography of the most prolific and active of the Bronte sisters plumbs the sources of

Charlotte's strength (her realism) and her weakness (sentimental romanticism).

THE COLD WAR AS HISTORY, by Louis J. Halle. A clear, compelling study of U.S. and Russian maneuvers from 1945 to 1962 by a former State Department aide who strips away the participants' emotions to observe the heart of one of history's most significant conflicts.

A HALL OF MIRRORS, by Robert Stone. A first novelist writing about low life in New Orleans shows a particular gift for well-developed characters and dialogue.

NEW AMERICAN REVIEW: NUMBER 1, New American Library. A lively blend of the best contemporary avant-garde fiction, nonfiction, poetry and criticism collected in a commendable effort to sell quality in quantity in the paperback market.

GOG, by Andrew Sinclair. A bizarre fable--or parable--about an amnesic giant who makes a bewildering pilgrimage through history in quest of himself.

DUBLIN: A PORTRAIT, by V. S. Pritchett, with photographs by Evelyn Hofer. Poetic photography adds luster to a distinguished prose picture of Dublin's streets and people.

STAUFFENBERG, by Joachim Kramarz. A German historian tells the story of the aristocratic colonel whose attempt to assassinate Hitler with a planted bomb was foiled by freakish chance.

AN OPERATIONAL NECESSITY, by Gwyn Griffin. A fast-paced World War II sea yarn that dramatizes the futility of applying humane law to war.

NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA, by Robert K. Massie. The events that led to the Kerensky revolution and the Bolshevik coup d'etat are told in terms of the two royal Romanovs, seen as neither ogres nor icons but as tragic simpletons.

RIVERS OF BLOOD, YEARS OF DARKNESS, by Robert Conot. Through the inchoate words and deeds of the Watts rioters, a Los Angeles newsman evokes the agonies of the big-city ghetto.

INCREDIBLE VICTORY, by Walter Lord. By rebalancing the Pacific campaign on the fulcrum of the Battle of Midway, a noted teller of sea stories (A Night to Remember, Day of Infamy) shows why Japan lost World War II.

Best Sellers

FICTION 1. The Arrangement, Kazan (1 last week)

2. The Chosen, Potok (4)

3. The Plot, Wallace (3)

4. A Night of Watching, Arnold (6)

5. Rosemary's Baby, Levin (8)

6. Washington, D.C., Vidal (7)

7. The Eighth Day, Wilder (5)

8. Night Falls on the City, Gainham (2)

9. An Operational Necessity, Griffin (9)

10. All the Little Live Things, Stegner

NONFICTION

1. The New Industrial State, Galbraith (1)

2. A Modern Priest Looks at His Outdated Church, Kavanaugh (2)

3. Our Crowd, Birmingham (3)

4. Anyone Can Make a Million, Shulman (8)

5. At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends, Eisenhower (4)

6. Incredible Victory, Lord (7)

7. The Lawyers, Mayer (10)

8. Nicholas and Alexandra, Massie (9)

9. Everything But Money, Levenson (5)

10. Edgar Cayce: The Sleeping Prophet, Steam (6)

* All times E.D.T.

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