Television

Wednesday, August 7

Final sessions of the Republican National Convention from Miami Beach, Fla. CBS continues its gavel-to-gavel coverage today and tomorrow, from 7:30 p.m.* to conclusion. NBC will interrupt regularly scheduled programming with live coverage as the news breaks. ABC will have a 90-minute summary of each day's events from 9:30-11 p.m.

Saturday, August 10

ABC'S WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). National A.A.U. Men's and Women's Swimming and Diving championships, from Lincoln, Neb.

Sunday, August 11

PRESEASON N.F.L. (CBS, 3-6 p.m.). Football is back. Detroit Lions v. Philadelphia Eagles in the first of the National Football League's preseason exhibitions. Live, from Aztec Stadium, Mexico City.

AMERICAN GOLF CLASSIC (ABC, 4-6 p.m.). The last four holes of the final round of the $125,000 tournament. Live, from Firestone Country Club, Akron.

A CASE OF LIBEL (ABC, 9-11 p.m.). An adaptation of Henry Denker's 1963 courtroom drama based on Louis Nizer's account (My Life in Court) of the case of Quentin Reynolds v. Westbrook Pegler. Starring Van Heflin, Lloyd Bridges, Angie Dickinson. Jose Ferrer and E. G. Marshall. Repeat.

Monday, August 12

NBC COMEDY PLAYHOUSE (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). The Seven Little Foys. The story of the vaudeville family, starring Eddie Foy Jr. as Eddie Foy Sr. and Mickey Rooney as George M. Cohan. Repeat.

Tuesday, August 13

TUESDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 8:30-11 p.m.). Saratoga Trunk (1945). Hollywood's version of Edna Ferber's 1941 bestseller about the romance between a roving gambler (Gary Cooper) and an exotic Creole (Ingrid Bergman). Repeat.

CBS NEWS HOUR (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). "Of Black America." An examination of slavery and its effect on contemporary racial attitudes. George Foster reports. This continues the special summer series.

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

NET FESTIVAL. Bela Bartok's one-act opera Bluebeard's Castle sung by Soprano Ana Raquel-Satre and Baritone Norman Foster with the Zagreb Philharmonica.

NET JOURNAL. "Freedom and Famine." A searching examination of India's attempt to function as a democracy, and how difficult that can be in places like the state of Bihar, ridden with drought and disease.

THEATER

Some of the performers appearing in straw-hat productions this week:

MILLBURN, N.J., Paper Mill Playhouse.

Paul Ford plays against an invisible rabbit called Harvey.

NYACK, N.Y., Tappan Zee Playhouse.

George Gobel and Mike Kellin play two men who thought they couldn't live with their wives--until they tried living with each other as a very Odd Couple.

NEW FAIRFIELD, CONN., Candlewood Theater. Sherry Britton does the bumps and grinds in Gems of Burlesque.

FALMOUTH, MASS., Playhouse. Chester Morris and Barbara Britton look at their children and ask What Did We Do Wrong?

CLIO, MICH., Musical Tent. Karen Shepard flings across the Highlands of Scotland in Brigadoon.

WARREN, OHIO, Kenley Players. Van Johnson and Sheila MacRae portray a pair of vaudeville performers, The Great Sebastians.

DENVER, COLO., Elitch Theater. Robert Cummings plays a Midwest adman who prides himself on being a swinger but finds that life styles are mostly a matter of Generation when he pays a visit to his daughter's Greenwich Village loft.

HOUSTON, TEXAS, Music Theater. Robert Q. Lewis and Sandra O'Neill star in Never on Sunday, a musical with the moral that even practitioners of the world's oldest profession must have one day off.

RECORDS

Orchestral

DEBUSSY: LA MER, L'APRES-MIDI D'UN FAUNE, JEUX (CBS). Claude Debussy is the father of modern music, and Pierre Boulez is one of France's leading musical experimenters. To hear how Boulez handles these familiar works is to be reminded of how radical they are. "Debussy inaugurated a new and extremely personal type of sonorous universe, new in color as well as in mobility," says Boulez. By simply trusting the new sounds instead of trying to force them into old melodic patterns, he has made his own revolution in the interpretation of Debussy. An important record.

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: SYMPHONY NO. 6, THE LARK ASCENDING (Angel). Because it was completed in 1947, this brilliant, troubling work is usually thought to be about World War II. The composer denied it, but the first three movements make up a harrowing musical storm that subsides at last into a serene speculation for strings inspired by Shakespeare's The Tempest: "We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep." The Lark Ascending is a delicate, attenuated tone poem for violin, played by Hugh Bean with proper lyricism. Conducting the New Philharmonia Orchestra, Sir Adrian Boult certainly lives up to his reputation as Vaughan Williams' foremost interpreter.

ELGAR: SYMPHONY NO. 1 (Seraphim). The symphony opens with a marchlike tune that charms the listener with its opulence and nostalgia. Unfortunately, the same theme crops up throughout the rest of the work, and though Elgar's variations are inventive, the work lacks variety. The Philharmonia, however, never sounded better. Conductor Sir John Barbirolli gives coherence to Elgar's romantic flights while retaining a special sympathy for their almost Kiplingesque quality.

CHAUSSON: SYMPHONY IN B FLAT MAJOR; FRANCK: LES EOLIDES (London). Ernest Chausson was a slow, self-doubting composer who shunned large undertakings, and is best known for his minor songs. The symphony form, he complained, caused him endless anxiety: "It is lively but not very much so, being somber and weighty too." His B Flat Major displays none of these characteristics. It is instead a pleasant, supple work, replete with gracefully phrased suggestions and intuitions, rather like prettified Wagner. Ernst Ansermet leads the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in an appropriately understated performance. Chausson was one of Cesar Franck's many dedicated disciples, and Les Bolides, a brief symphonic poem, shows that Franck is easily the more fluent composer.

SCHOENBERG: VERKLAeRTE NACHT; WAGNER:

A SIEGFRIED IDYLL; HINDEMITH: TRAUERMUSIK (Angel). This is an intimate and unpretentious performance, largely due to the warmth that Daniel Barenboim elicits from the English Chamber Orchestra. The Siegfried Idyll sounds like what it was meant to be: a lullaby. The Schoenberg piece, one of the composer's very early works, and Hindemith's mourning music for viola and strings, have great spirit. Barenboim's first recording of modern works augurs well for the future.

WAGNER: OVERTURES TO THE FLYING DUTCHMAN, TANNHAUSER, TRISTAN AND ISOLDE, DIE MEISTERSINGER (RCA Victor). These preludes are classics, available in many different interpretations. Here Erich Leinsdorf leads the Boston Symphony with intelligence and vigor. A formidable protege of Toscanini's, Leinsdorf lacks the master's soul, and admirers of the more reflective Wagnerian school may find his performance somewhat grating. Yet those who like their Wagner with discipline and drive will enjoy the record.

CINEMA

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Director Stanley Kubrick deploys all the dazzling devices of the space age in a cosmic parable of the history and future of man.

INADMISSIBLE EVIDENCE. In this transposition of John Osborne's bitterly impassioned play, Nicol Williamson sears the screen as a middle-aged London solicitor who awakes one morning to the frightening realization that he has grown middle-aged and that his life is meaningless.

THE BRIDE WORE BLACK. Franc,ois Truffaut pays a loving and witty tribute to Alfred Hitchcock as he spins the sardonic story of a widow (Jeanne Moreau) bent on wreaking bloody vengeance on her husband's killers.

PETULIA. A thick-skinned doctor (George C. Scott) and a flipped-out wife (Julie Christie) make an odd pair of lovers in Director Richard Lester's portrait of a decidedly modern romance.

ROSEMARY'S BABY. Writer-Director Roman Polanski (Knife in the Water, Repulsion) has left both dialogue and chills virtually intact in the movie adaptation of Ira Levin's bestseller about a devilish pregnancy. Mia Farrow's performance as the beleaguered wife adds an extra dimension of shuddery reality.

BOOKS

Best Reading

THE BURNING GLASS, by S. N. Behrman. Set in Salzburg, New York and Hollywood during the '30s, the celebrated playwright's first novel tells of the shifting fortunes of a group of intellectuals and socialites who make very agreeable company.

HENRY VIII, by J. J. Scarisbrick. In this massive but rewarding study by a British historian, the shrewd, boisterous, contradictory monarch is portrayed in all his vainglorious heroics, but rarely as a hero.

THE SPLENDID PAUPER, by Allen Andrews. The zany life and beguiling times of Moreton Frewen, Winston Churchill's scapegrace uncle, who was born to lose with charm, grace and class.

THE SECOND REBELLION, by James McCague. A vivid account of how at least 1,200 people died and blocks of Manhattan were burned in the 1863 antidraft riots by Irish immigrants who refused to fight in the Civil War.

ALDOUS HUXLEY, by John Atkins; THE HUXLEYS, by Ronald W. Clark. Human being or controlled experiment? Guru or walking encyclopaedia? The often contradictory legend left by this brilliant member of a renowned intellectual family is examined by two biographers who almost find the missing link.

THE FRENCH, by Franc,ois Nourissier, THE AMERICAN CHALLENGE, by J.J. Servan-Schreiber. Two perceptive and plain-spoken Frenchmen examine ailing France and the cantankerous French spirit and reach the same conclusion: unless attitudes change and institutions are revitalized, a debacle is certain.

THE UNIVERSAL BASEBALL ASSOCIATION, INC., J. HENRY WAUGH, PROP., by Robert Coover. A 56-year-old accountant who sees the cosmos as an intricate baseball game records the hits, runs and many errors in his tragicomic efforts to be God's scorekeeper.

DARK AS THE GRAVE WHEREIN MY FRIEND IS LAID, by Malcolm Lowry. Containing all the excitement of a metaphysical cliffhanger, these collected fragments of unfinished poems, stories and novels help to illuminate the dark journey of the late tormented writer.

ENDERBY, by Anthony Burgess. In this retouching of an earlier portrait of the artist as a middle-aged gasbag, the gifted English novelist combines the elements of entertainment and enlightenment with uncommon artistry.

TRUE GRIT, by Charles Portis. An uproarious period piece about a 14-year-old girl who turns the wild frontier topsy-turvy while avenging the murder of her pa.

Best Sellers

FICTION 1. Airport, Hailey (1 last week)

2. Couples, Updike (2)

3. Testimony of Two Men, Caldwell (3)

4. True Grit, Portis (5)

5. Myra Breckinridge, Vidal (6)

6. Topaz, Uris (4)

7. The Queen's Confession, Holt (10)

8. Heaven Help Us, Tarr (7)

9. Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, Baldwin

10. Vanished, Knebel (9)

NON FICTION

1. The Money Game, 'Adam Smith' (1)

2. Iberia, Michener (2)

3. The Rich and the Super-Rich, Lundberg (7)

4. The Naked Ape, Morris (4)

5. Or I'll Dress You in Mourning, Collins and Lapierre (3)

6. Between Parent and Child, Ginott (5)

7. The Right People, Birmingham (6)

8. The American Challenge, Servan-Schreiber (8)

9. The Doctor's Quick Weight Loss Diet, Stillman and Baker (9)

10. Nicholas and Alexandra, Massie

*All times E.D.T.

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