Wednesday, May 8

THE BEST ON RECORD (NBC. 9-10 p.m.).* The Grammy Awards show. The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences' presentation of this year's Grammys for outstanding performances on records. Those participating in the show include Bobbie Gentry, Glen Campbell, the Fifth Dimension, the Cannonball Adderly Quintet, Chet Atkins, Lou Rawls, Liza Minelli, Ravi Shankar, Yehudi Menuhin.

Friday, May 10

AMERICAN PROFILE: SOMEHOW IT WORKS (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). In a humorous review of political campaigns past and present, Correspondent Edwin Newman explores the roots of campaign techniques from baby kissing to barbecues.

Saturday, May 11

THE SINGERS: TWO PROFILES (ABC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). A documentary about what it takes to become a successful pop singer, featuring Vocalists Aretha Franklin and Gloria Loring.

Sunday, May 12

ABC SUNDAY NIGHT MOVIE (ABC, 9 p.m.-12:15 a.m.). The Leopard (1963). Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale star in this motion-picture adaptation of Giuseppe di Lampedusa's novel about social turmoil in Italy at the time of Garibaldi.

Tuesday, May 14

BIG CATS, LITTLE CATS (NBC, 8-9 p.m.).

All about cats--their personality, behavior, charm; and their symbolic role in art, superstition, religion and legend. Lome Greene narrates.

Check local listings for dates and times of these NET programs:

NET FESTIVAL. "Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up." Sometime novelist (The Naked and the Dead), would-be journalist ("Armies of the Night") and film director (Wild 90), Norman Mailer is alternately described as the greatest living U.S. writer and as a malcontented egomaniac. NET's cameras attempt a portrait of this man of many different faces and moods with film sequences of him at home, acting and directing, and addressing the October peace rally in Washington.

NET PLAYHOUSE (shown on Fridays).

Trumpets of the Lord. Originally produced off Broadway in 1963, this musical adaptation of God's Trombones, by the late poet James Weldon Johnson, features James Earle Jones, Lex Monson, Jane White and Theresa Merritt.

THEATER

On Broadway

THE EDUCATION OF H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N. Poverty is romantic only from a distance; when seen through the eyes of Leo Rosten's ingratiating immigrant in this breezy musical, it is also amusing.

Tom Bosley is the Yiddishe Yankee.

JOE EGG. Into his unlikely comedy, Peter Nichols throws snatches of tap-dance routines, jazz, and vaudeville turns to leaven the tale of a young British couple (Zena Walker and Donal Donnelly) who camouflage the fragility of their marriage by concentrating their attentions and emotions on their hopelessly spastic daughter.

ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD, winner of the Tony Award for Best Play, takes a chip off the old Bard to construct a neo-Elizabethan existentialist drama. Brian Murray and John Wood are adept as Tom Stoppard's netherheroes of flashing wit but blinking comprehension.

THE APA repertory strikes a range of notes--from the wholesome humor of The Show-Off and the slightly sour satire of Pantagleize through the elegiac tones of The Cherry Orchard and the mournful wail of Exit the King.

PLAZA SUITE. Neil Simon takes a long-term lease on laughter, booking three sets of zany American archetypes into a trio of playlets.

Off Broadway

THE BOYS IN THE BAND. In recent sea sons, homosexuality has surfaced as a dramatic theme, and Mart Crowley's uncompromising drama deals with it coolly and honestly, lancing bitchy merriment with desolating insight. Kenneth Nelson and Leonard Frey play the host and guest of honor at a homosexual birthday party with skill and grace.

JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS. Four talented performers present the Belgian composer's songs of lyrical beauty and startling intuitions.

RECORDS RECORDS

Pop

THE GRADUATE (Columbia). Simon and Garfunkel already had half their work done when they sat down to record this score from The Graduate. As it turns out, it was the better half. Sounds of Silence with its kaleidoscopic imagery was the title tune of their big 1965 album, which also had the gentleness of April Come She Will. Two of the new songs, On the Strip and Mrs. Robinson, are bright and bouncy, but the others, Sun-porch Cha-cha-cha, The Folks and The Singleman Party Foxtrot, don't quite measure up.

THE EYES OF THE BEACON STREET UNION (MGM). Among today's sound-saturated rock groups, The Beacon Street Union is refreshingly rare: it recognizes the existence of twin stereo speakers and utilizes them to separate its music into two compatible components. In the bittersweet My Love Is, soft cymbal brushings flick back and forth between the speakers to tickle the listener's ears. Beautiful Delilah starts with vocals out of the left speaker, then switches to the right, while rhythm and piano ricochet right and left; Sportin' Life, featuring a slow, dusky guitar, is a bluesy sound that moves soulfully from left to right and back again.

ULTIMATE SPINACH (MGM). Out of Boston comes what may be the Jolly Green Giant of pop music. The Ultimate Spinach mind food includes Sacrifice of the Moon, an instrumental that includes gentle wood flute and guitar interplays; Hip Death Goddess, with cool, detached vocals plus many minutes of good heavy electric instrumental; Ego Trip and Funny Freak Parade, like all the other songs, rich in imagery and imagination.

THE WHO SELL OUT (Decca). The sellout, or the put-on, is the theme of this album--with a series of deadpan radio commercials for Charles Atlas, Heinz baked beans, Medac acne salve and Odorono deodorant. Once that's out of the way, the boys get down to music with their hard-rock top seller, I Can See for Miles; I Can't Reach You, a tightly vocalized rock piece with a brisk tambourine; and Armenia City in the Sky, a sprightly mind excursion with soft feedback and subtle imagery. Unfortunately, to get to these pleasantries, the listener has to put up with the put-on.

BEND ME, SHAPE ME (ACTA). It took The American Breed five years to achieve success and the question is: Why did it take so long? They are a pleasant, easygoing group with their feet firmly planted on solid rock and enough jazz, blues and soul overtones to make the insistent Green Light, the confidential Bend Me, Shape Me, and the soul of Something You've Got and the slow rock sounds of Mind-rocker interesting, even hummable.

HORIZONTAL (ATCO). In the vast electronic underbrush in which many musicians operate today, along come the Bee Gees with their crystal-clear voices, sounding as if they were plucked right out of a church rock group. Three of their best numbers: Lemons Never Forget, in which the group displays some nice, tight vocal work; With the Sun in My Eyes, a gentle solo backed by organ; and the poignant Really and Sincerely, which starts with a lone French accordion.

CINEMA

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Director Stanley Kubrick sets out both to define man's past, and describe his future in this stunning film that is at once a dazzling visual experience and a demanding philosophical exercise.

THE ODD COUPLE. Neil Simon's Broadway comedy of an alimony-poor sportswriter (Walter Matthau) and his fussy, divorce-bound buddy (Jack Lemmon) is transformed to the screen virtually unchanged. Actor Matthau more than makes up for the static mise en scene with his comic genius.

BELLE DE JOUR. This bizarre tale of the sexual fantasies of a young wife (Catherine Deneuve) is a fitting capstone to the 40-year career of Spanish Director Luis Buriuel as it ranges from anticlerical homilies to fetishist daydreams.

HOUR OF THE WOLF. Sweden's Ingmar Bergman returns to his favorite themes of spiritual crisis and psychological trauma in this dark parable of the deepening madness of a reclusive artist.

I EVEN MET HAPPY GYPSIES. The anachronistic life styles of the Indians of Europe--the gypsies--are portrayed in this melancholy and sometimes violent Yugoslav film.

NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY. In an adroit blend of black comedy and bloody homicide, a callow New York City cop (George Segal) dogs the elusive tracks of a psyched-up killer (Rod Steiger) with a closetful of disguises.

UP THE JUNCTION. This gritty tour of a Battersea slum is enlivened by the presence of Suzy Kendall, a smashing new blonde bird from Britain.

THE PRODUCERS. For his first film, Writer-Comedian Mel Brooks weaves his gags around two canny Broadway con men who set out to make a fortune by staging a flop. The result, despite its bad moments, is some of the funniest American cinema comedy in years.

BOOKS

Best Reading

COUPLES, by John Updike. Wife swapping is the game, described in living off-color, but soul saving is the real stake in this rich, mazelike and subtly rewarding novel by the crown prince of American letters.

T. H. WHITE, by Sylvia Townsend Warner. A compassionate biography of the tormented English author who re-created the legend of King Arthur in a new form part magic and farce, part fairy tale and epic.

THE DISNEY VERSION, by Richard Schickel. Within a carefully prepared social, cultural and artistic context, Cinema Critic Schickel sees the late creator of Mickey Mouse and Disneyland as embodying the best and worst traits of the hard-charging entrepreneur.

IN THE HEART OF THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY, by William Gass. The author of the highly praised novel, Omensetter's Luck, focuses an intensely physical image of the Midwest with poetic precision.

THE LITTLE DISTURBANCES OF MAN, by Grace Paley. In this reissue of a 1959 collection of stories, ordinary lives become extraordinary when told in the author's artfully supple, salty syntax.

A GUEST FOR THE NIGHT, by S. Y. Agnon. Israel's 1966 Nobel prizewinner spins a searching, unhurried tale about the eternal Wandering Jew, who turns up this time in Eastern Europe just before World War II.

TUNC, by Lawrence Durrell. Lush Mediterranean settings, evocative nature writing and ribald wit are the underpinnings of this exuberant novel about an omniscient computer and its inventor's ambiguous struggles for freedom.

THE SELECTED WORKS OF CESARE PAVESE.

It has been 18 years since Pavese's suicide, and U.S. publication of these four antiromantic novellas gives American readers a chance to see why his work is so highly regarded in his native Italy.

Best Sellers

FICTION 1. Airport, Hailey (1 last week)

2. Couples, Updike (4)

3. Myra Breckinridge, Vidal (2)

4. The Tower of Babel, West (6)

5. Topaz, Uris (5)

6. Vanished, Knebel (3)

7. Tune, Durrell

8. The New Year, Buck (9)

9. The Confessions of Nat Turner, Styron (7)

10. Christy, Marshall (8)

NONFICTION

1. Between Parent and Child, Ginott (2)

2. The Naked Ape, Morris (1)

3. Our Crowd, Birmingham (3)

4. Nicholas and Alexandra, Massie (6)

5. Gipsy Moth Circles the World, Chichester (4)

6. The Double Helix, Watson (5)

7. Kennedy and Johnson, Lincoln (8)

8. The Way Things Work: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Technology (9)

9. The English, Frost and Jay

10. Rickenbacker, Rickenbacker (7)

* All times E.D.T.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.