TELEVISION

Wednesday, November 29

CHRYSLER PRESENTS A BOB HOPE COMEDY SPECIAL (NBC, 9-10 p.m.).* "U.C.L.A. Has Hope" is the slogan of students counting on this benefit performance by Hope & Co. to replenish the U.C.L.A. Scholarship Fund. Jack Jones, Elke Sommer, The Kids Next Door, and the Look magazine All-America football team go back to school.

Thursday, November 30

THE PERRY COMO HOLIDAY SPECIAL (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Perry's 20th anniversary as a TV headliner is bolstered by the presence of Rowan and Martin, the Jefferson Airplane, Bobbie Gentry, and Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66.

THE DEAN MARTIN SHOW (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). The Andrews Sisters and Lena Horne join Dino in song; Nightclub Comedian Don Rickles tosses wisecracks at an audience of notables, among them Bob Hope, Danny Thomas, Pat Boone, Ernest Borgnine and Polly Bergen.

Friday, December 1

SAME MUD, SAME BLOOD (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). To study the Negro soldier in Viet Nam, Newsman Frank McGee lived for nearly a month in the field with a platoon of the 101st Airborne Division.

Saturday, December 2

N.C.A.A. FOOTBALL (ABC, 1:15 p.m. to conclusion). Army v. Navy at Philadelphia.

WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). Jimmy Ellis takes on Oscar Bonavena in a semifinal round of the elimination tournament to find a heavyweight champion to replace Cassius ("Muhammad Ali") Clay. Live from Lexington, Ky.

Sunday, December 3

LOOK UP AND LIVE (CBS, 10:30-11 a.m.). Adapted from S. Y. Agnon's short story Tehila, The Greatest Poet in Talpiot is a TV play about a character who remembers the past in an Israeli village.

ISSUES AND ANSWERS (ABC, 1:30-2 p.m.). Former Governor George Wallace is guest.

AMERICAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE DOUBLE-HEADER (NBC, 2 p.m. to conclusion). The Buffalo Bills v. the Kansas City Chiefs at Kansas City, followed by the Oakland Raiders v. the San Diego Chargers at San Diego. The NBC News Sunday Report is sandwiched in at half time.

THE TENNESSEE ERNIE FORD SPECIAL (CBS, 9-10 p.m.). For a bit of musicalizing and a lot of laughs, Ernie gets together with Danny Thomas, The Dillards, Andy Griffith, Diana Ross and The Supremes.

SUNDAY NIGHT MOVIE (ABC, 9-11:30 p.m.). George Segal in King Rat (1965).

AMERICA AND AMERICANS (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). From John Steinbeck's recent book of the same title comes this picture essay on the paradoxes of America "complicated, bullheaded, shy, cruel, boisterous, unspeakably dear and very beautiful." Henry Fonda narrates.

Monday, December 4

HALLMARK HALL OF FAME (NBC, 9-11 p.m.). George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan arrives on TV with an international cast headed by French Canadian Actress Genevieve Bujold as Joan of Arc, supported by Theodore Bikel, Maurice Evans, Roddy McDowall, Raymond Massey, Leo Genn and James Donald.

Tuesday, December 5

CBS NEWS HOUR (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). "The 1967 National Drivers Test," a repeat to see how much if at all U.S. drivers have improved since last May.

HOLLYWOOD PALACE (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). Jimmy Durante plays host to Hostman Merv Griffin. Other guests are Ethel Merman and The Grassroots.

Check local listings for these NET specials:

NET PLAYHOUSE. Ireland's famed Abbey Players dramatize five short stories from James Joyce's Dubliners collection in "Dublin One."

NET FESTIVAL. This new weekly series starts with "Glyndebourne Journal 1967," the chronicle of a season at England's annual Glyndebourne Opera Festival in the Sussex hills 50 miles from London.

NET JOURNAL. "The Way It Is" looks unflinchingly at education in one slum school Junior High 57 in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn designated by New York University's Clinic for Learning as a "combat zone" in the struggle against outdated methods of ghetto education. Repeat.

PUBLIC BROADCAST LABORATORY. A $10 million experimental series dedicated to the proposition that noncommercial television can provide a meaningful alternative to commercial TV, PBL will program two hours of cultural and public affairs each Sunday night.

THEATER

On Broadway

THE PROMISE, by Aleksei Arbuzov. Two teen-age boys meet a teen-age girl in a gutted Leningrad flat during the siege of 1942. The girl loves the would-be engineer, but he leaves, and she marries the would-be poet, but he fails. Thirteen years later, the situation is reversed. To compound the confusion, the cast is as incorrigibly British (Eileen Atkins, Ian McKellen, Ian McShane) as the play is Russian. This particular brand of Soviet drama should have been exiled to Siberia.

HALFWAY UP THE TREE. Peter Ustinov, who wrote and directed this comedy, has chosen to view hippiedom as the social dawn of the New Jerusalem. He sees hippies as long-haired Samsons of saintliness leaning against the temple of middleaged, middle-class hypocrisy. Unfortunately, the quality of the humor is as strained as the story of a pukka-sahib general (Anthony Quayle) who out-hips his offspring.

THE LITTLE FOXES. With Director Mike Nichols at the helm, Lincoln Center has launched a revival of Lillian Hellman's 28-year-old saga of a Southern family that snarls and claws its way toward a rich hoard. A galaxy of a cast, including Anne Bancroft, Richard Dysart, E. G. Marshall and George C. Scott, gives gilt-edged performances.

ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD puts a Shakespearean duo in a Pirandellian situation, then confers on them Beckettian angst mixed with Beyond the Fringe humor. British Playwright Tom Stoppard's witty play is well served by the superb acting of Brian Murray and John Wood and the fluid direction of Derek Goldby.

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY, by Harold Pinter, is a celebration of sinister non sequiturs in a reunion between Stanley, a cipher of a man (James Patterson), and two agents of torment (Ed Flanders and Edward Winters). A 1958 play, Party may not have as many lightning bolts of significance as Pinter's later works, but it still crackles with his electric speech.

Off Broadway

THE TRIALS OF BROTHER JERO and THE STRONG BREED. Wole Soyinka, the foremost black African playwright, is being detained in a Nigerian jail, but his two one-acters have traveled well to Manhattan. Brother Jero, played with finesse by Harold Scott, is a delightful spoof of the self-declared prophets who hold ceremonies for their "customers" on the beach. The Strong Breed is more of a myth-play, delving into the realm of tribal taboos with the tale of a stranger who becomes a village's sacrificial scapegoat.

IN CIRCLES. Nothing happens in this 1920 play by Gertrude Stein, but it happens wonderfully well. Bound together by the free-ranging, eclectic music of Al Carmines, guru of the Judson Poet's Theater, In Circles is a word salad in mid-toss.

CINEMA

HOW I WON THE WAR. Richard Lester juxtaposes slapstick with hard slaps at the brutality of battle in his surrealistic film about a platoon (Michael Crawford, Jack MacGowran, John Lennon) of World War II tommies hell-bent on building an officers' cricket field behind enemy lines.

CHAPPAQUA. Conrad Rooks gives his own 82-minute phantasmagoric apologia pro sua dolce vita in which the ex-junkie-alcoholic takes himself into and then out of the world of addiction and related vice.

COOL HAND LUKE. This tough film about a cocky chain-gang prisoner (Paul Newman) who keeps his cool in the face of brutal guards makes excruciating viewing.

MORE THAN A MIRACLE. A flying monk, a gaggle of witches, 3,000 hexed eggs, seven princesses and a dishwashing contest stand between a peasant girl (Sophia Loren) and her prince (Omar Sharif), but only temporarily for this is a fairy tale, and a fanciful delight at that.

THE COMEDIANS. The title belies the inexorably arid and sere setting in which an excellent cast of villains and victims (Richard Burton, Peter Ustinov, Alec Guinness, Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Ford) is touched by a vagrant grace.

CAMELOT. Joshua Logan's re-creation of the never-never land inhabited by King Arthur (Richard Harris), Queen Guinevere (Vanessa Redgrave) and Lancelot (Franco Nero) is about as enchanting as a Hollywood back lot, despite the regal talents and rich voice of the leading lady.

BOOKS

Best Reading

Children's books become more numerous each year, and each year they attract more first-rate authors and illustrators to the market. Some Christmas recommendations for children aged three to six:

FREDERICK by Leo Lionni (Pantheon; $3.50). A twist on the standard story of wise little animals storing away food for the winter ahead. Frederick, a field mouse, sits through the summer, collecting sun rays, colors and words while his friends gather grain. In the middle of winter, when his friends' food is exhausted, Frederick's warm colors and bright words make them forget their hunger. "Frederick," they acknowledge, "you are a poet."

HIGGLETY PIGGLETY POP! by Maurice Sendak (Harper & Row; $4.95). The leading American children's writer has turned out another delightful story this one about Jennie, a discontented terrier who leaves the lap of luxury to become an actress with the World Mother Goose Theater.

SEASHORE STORY by Taro Yashima (Viking; $4.95). An ancient Japanese tale of a fisherman who went away to the bottom of the sea on the back of a turtle and stayed so long that no one remembered him when he returned. Illustrated by the author with beguiling watery pictures.

ISSUN BOSHI, THE INCHLING by Momoko Ishii, illustrated by Fuku Akino (Walker; $3.50). Another old Japanese fable, handsomely illustrated. The hero is no bigger than a man's thumb and is resigned to life as a paperweight for a beautiful princess. But then he slays a dreadful demon, and guess what his reward is? A wish on a magic mallet transforms him into a full-size man and he marries the princess to live happily ever after.

THE MOON PONY by Charlotte Pomerantz, illustrated by Loretta Trezzo (Young Scott Books; $3.95). One of the best of an increasing number of picture books that depart from the usual white, middle-class background. This one is about a Negro child's dream of a ride to the moon on a white pony. It preserves the delicate balance between the real world and the imaginary.

THE HONEYBEES by Franklin Russell, illustrated by Colette Portal (Knopf; $3.95). A factual account of the twelve-month cycle of a honeybee colony. The best of the nonfiction, well told and with excellent illustrations.

BIRDS by Brian Wildsmith (Watts; $4.95). In what is probably the best-illustrated of the year's picture books, Artist Wildsmith offers a series of 14 wonderful paintings of owls, pheasants, herons and other feathered creatures. There is no text, but youngsters and their parents are sure to be intrigued by his picture captions: a "congregation of plover," a "wedge of swans," a "stare of owls."

IF I HAD A LION by Liesel Moak Skorpen, illustrated by Ursula Landshoff (Harper & Row; $2.50). A little girl muses: "I'd invite my lion to share my bed," and eat and play, and go on picnics and "we would be the best of friends ... if I had a lion."

WHEN I HAVE A SON by Charlotte Zolotow, illustrated by Hilary Knight (Harper & Row; $1.95). This small book, highly reminiscent of Mr. Knight's best-known Eloise, will be fun for both child and parent. "My son," says John, speaking for all young boys, "won't have to take piano. He'll never have to go to sleep till he finishes the chapter, and he can have triple malteds just before dinner."

ZERALDA'S OGRE by Tomi Ungerer (Harper & Row; $3.95). This lonely ogre has sharp teeth, a big nose, a bad temper and he sometimes eats little children for breakfast that is, until he meets Zeralda, who is such a good cook that he swiftly switches to pompano, roast chicken and other goodies. Though it may sound scary to adults, it is the kind of story that is invariably amusing to children and the youngsters will love the menacing drawings. Also recommended: Ungerer's Moon Man, a story of the man in the moon's brief visit to earth ($4.50).

MARY ANN'S MUD DAY by Janice May Udry, illustrated by Martha Alexander (Harper & Row; $2.50). This little girl does everything with mud from making simple mud balls to mud mountains and an entire mud village with mud people. She even tries to sell mud. She spends an entire glorious day working with the gunk.

DAY OF THE PAINTER by Duard G. Slattery, illustrated by Sanford McGrail (Lion; $4.50). Taken directly from the 1960 Academy Award-winning short, the book depicts an abstract artist who throws paint on a large canvas, then slices it up for sale. As much fun as the movie.

THE TRUTHFUL HARP by Lloyd Alexander, illustrated by Evaline Ness (Holt; $3.50). A prizewinning team tells a story, with more text than most picture books, about a young king who fulfills his secret wish to wander the countryside as a bard and learns thereby many truths.

ARTHUR'S WORLD by Mischa Richter (Doubleday; $2.95). Arthur one day decides to see the world and proceeds to build an amazing watchtower in order to see over his backyard fence. His world, drawn by The New Yorker cartoonist, is both instructive and delightful.

TIMOTHY'S FLOWER by Jean Van Leeuwen, illustrated by Moneta Barnett (Random House; $3.50). A touching story of a poor boy in New York City who finds and cherishes a single yellow flower.

THE FOOLING OF KING ALEXANDER by Mervyn Skipper, illustrated by Gaynor Chapman (Atheneum; $4.50). A small Chinese boy saves his country by tricking the great conqueror Alexander. First published in 1930, the story is still good, the illustrations excellent.

AN ANTEATER NAMED ARTHUR by Bernard Waber (Houghton Mifflin; $3.25). A most engaging anteater is our Arthur: he doesn't understand his species' name ("The bird is not called a wormeater"), fusses with food, preferring brown ants to red ones, and forgets everything when he goes to school his spelling book, his pencil case, his sneakers.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. The Confessions of Nat Turner, Styron (1 last week)

2. Topaz, Uris (3)

3. The Gabriel Hounds, Stewart (2)

4. The Chosen, Potok (4)

5. The Exhibitionist, Sutton (9)

6. A Night of Watching, Arnold (7)

7. Rosemary's Baby, Levin (6)

8. Christy, Marshall (10)

9. The Arrangement, Kazan (8)

10. Night Falls on the City, Gainham (5)

NONFICTION

1. Our Crowd, Birmingham (1)

2. Nicholas and Alexandra, Massie (2)

3. Rickenbacker, Rickenbacker

4. Twenty Letters to a Friend, Alliluyeva (3)

5. The New Industrial State, Galbraith (4)

6. Anyone Can Make a Million, Shulman (7)

7. A Modern Priest Looks at His Outdated Church, Kavanaugh (5)

8. Incredible Victory, Lord (6)

9. Memoirs: 1925-1950, Kennan

10. The Beautiful People, Bender

*All times E.S.T.

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