Straw Hat
TELEVISION
Wednesday, August 21
ABC WEDNESDAY NIGHT MOVIE (ABC, 9-11 p.m.).* Joshua Logan's screen adaptation of William Inge's Bus Stop (1956), with Marilyn Monroe and Don Murray.
Thursday, August 22
DEAN MARTIN PRESENTS THE GOLDDIGGERS (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Frank Sinatra Jr. and Joey Heatherton are among those joining in a salute to the songs of the Thirties.
Friday, August 23
UP WITH PEOPLE (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). At Felt Forum in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden, in Washington Square Park and on the streets of East Harlem, 150 amateur singers raise their voices in praise of American virtues.
Saturday, August 24
ABC'S WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). The 22nd annual Little League Baseball World Series, from Williamsport, Pa. Jimmy Piersall, onetime Boston Red Sox star, is the commentator.
THE PARIS COLLECTIONS: FALL FASHION PREVIEW (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Hostess Lauren Bacall chats informally with Yves St. Laurent, Pierre Cardin, Manuel Ungaro and Marc Bohan, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the flutter behind the fashions.
PRECONVENTION SPECIAL OF DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION (ABC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). This first convention warm-up session features commentaries by William F. Buckley Jr., Gore Vidal, Howard K. Smith and William H. Lawrence.
NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE (CBS, 9:30 p.m. to conclusion). Green Bay Packers v. Dallas Cowboys in a preseason exhibition game. Jack Buck and Pat Summerall provide the commentary.
Sunday, August 25
DISCOVERY '68 (ABC, 11 a.m.-noon). Preserving America's "Vanishing Wilderness," including an interview with the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy and his family as they prepared for a trip down the Colorado River in July 1967. Repeat.
FACE THE NATION (CBS, 12:30-1 p.m.). Senator Eugene McCarthy will answer questions.
THE CAMPAIGN AND THE CANDIDATES (NBC, 6:30-7:30 p.m.). Chet Huntley and David Brinkley are anchormen for Floor Reporters Frank McGee, Sander Vanocur, John Chancellor and Edwin Newman in this convention preview from Chicago's International Amphitheater.
CAMPAIGN '68 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION PREVIEW (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). CBS's preview has Walter Cronkite as anchorman, Roger Mudd and Eric Sevareid as analysts and Mike Wallace leading a team of six reporters. Harry Reasoner covers the podium.
Monday, August 26 Opening sessions of the Democratic National Convention from Chicago. NBC will colorcast the convention proceedings from start to finish with Huntley, Brinkley, McGee, Vanocur, Chancellor and Newman reporting; CBS will do the same, with Cronkite leading Analysts Mudd and Sevareid, Reporters Wallace and Reasoner. Smith and Lawrence will report on ABC's nightly 9:30-11 roundup, with Buckley and Vidal commenting.
THEATER
Some Broadway hits on view this week far from the Great White Way:
KENNEBUNKPORT, ME., Playhouse. Robert Horton arouses passions of love and hate when he unexpectedly appears in a small town in William Inge's Picnic.
OGUNQUIT, ME., Playhouse. A spinsterish dental nurse turns bewitching temptress in Abe Burrows' Cactus Flower.
COHASSET, MASS., South Shore Music Circus. Love blossoms amid big-city racial tensions to the music of Leonard Bernstein in West Side Story.
FALMOUTH, MASS., Playhouse revives The Desk Set with Shirley Booth in her original role as a fact-packed researcher threatened by an electronic brain.
NEW FAIRFIELD, CONN., Candlewood Theater maintains that On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.
BELLPORT, L.I., Red Barn Theater. All the joys and woes of Fanny Brice, America's sweetheart of the 1920s, are put to music in Funny Girl.
WOODSTOCK, N.Y., Playhouse returns to the insane asylum in The Persecution and Assassination of Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.
CLIO, MICH., Musical Tent. Frances Wyatt yodels and waltzes through The Sound of Music.
INDIANAPOLIS, IND., Starlight Musicals. Ann Blyth sings her way through Siam in the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic The King and I.
ALEXANDRIA, MINN., Theatre L'Homme Dieu revives Tennessee Williams' drama, The Rose Tattoo.
CENTRAL CITY, COLO., Opera House. A spritely sparring match between Don Ameche and Betsy von Furstenberg in There's a Girl in My Soup.
RECORDS
Jazz
DUKE ELLINGTON: "AND HIS MOTHER CALLED HIM BILL" (RCA Victor). The Ellington band plays an affectionate tribute to Billy Strayhorn, who was the Duke's alter ego and musical collaborator for 29 years before his death last year. Among the dozen fine Strayhorn selections are some mellow successes from the '40s, such as After All, Rain Check and Day-Dream. Three new songs composed just before his death make most admirable vehicles for the band: locomotive-paced The Intimacy of the Blues, which perfectly brings out its elegant, insinuating sound; Charpoy, a perking bounce; and Blood Count, a sinuous, sensitive ballad, with a Johnny Hodges alto solo, in the same vein as Passion Flower. Duke pays his respects with a pensive, if plush, rendition of Lotus Blossom, Strayhorn's own favorite.
WES MONTGOMERY: DOWN HERE ON THE GROUND (A & M). One more in a series of well-planned, well-played and welcome albums that has brought the late guitarist to the crest of his popularity. With splendid backing, and complementary arrangements by Don Sebesky and Eumir Deodato, Wes plucks another musical honor for himself. His double-octave runs and honest, single-note phrases illuminate such tunes as the rockish Wind Song, The Other Man's Grass Is Always Greener, Coin' On to Detroit, and convey an especially sweet sadness in Georgia On My Mind.
ANDREW HILL ANDREW!!! (Blue Note). Pianist Hill has his own very definite views of modern jazz piano. His music is filled with gently dissonant surgings, expressive rippling lines that are as romantic as they are atonal, and intuitive, crosshatched rhythms that emerge and then break off. Helping him project this engaging moodiness are John Gilmore's thin-edged tenor sax, Bobby Hutcherson's delicate vibes, the attentive probings of Bassist Richard Davis and the irregular cymbals of Drummer Joe Chambers. The group's finest moments come in The Groits, which, despite its ugly name, consists of lovely integrated weavings of Hill's almost Monkish chords, Hutcherson's melodic accents and Davis' bass designs.
CHICK COREA: TONES FOR JOAN'S BONES (Vortex). There is a brilliant clarity, like tumbling diamonds, to the tones Pianist Corea polishes off here. His touch is firm and percussive, his ear tuned toward a definite, stirring pulse. In Litha he strings together quick, imaginative melodic fragments that are the mark of the alert modernist. When backing the other soloists (Joe Farrell, tenor; Woody Shaw Jr., trumpet), he spreads sprays of dazzling notes that support and enhance the horns' flights. In Tones for Joan's Bones, he displays a more reflective gleam by smoothly rolling the melody over Steve Swallow's loping bass and Joe Chambers' agile brushwork.
INTRODUCING DUKE PEARSON'S BIG BAND (Blue Note). Pianist-Arranger Pearson, whose previous records featured smaller groups, has gathered 15 solid players in order to amplify his musical ideas. Straight Up and Down is a tidy blend of high-flying exuberance and smooth delivery (note the trumpet's sassy quote of Sweet Georgia Brown and the baritone sax's sly paraphrase of Once I Had a Secret Love). While Mississippi Dip is a blues to be taken lithely, A Taste of Honey switches tempos faster than the foot can follow, building to heated ensemble crescendos behind Frank Foster's tenor and Jerry Dodgion's flute solos. New Girl, composed by Pearson, has a graceful flair and a nifty construction.
KEITH JARRETT: LIFE BETWEEN THE EXIT SIGNS (Vortex). Pianist Jarrett has been one of the keys to success of the Charles Lloyd Quartet, but here he emerges for the first time with his own trio, as well as his own compositions. His skill extends to the inside as well as the outside of the piano. In Love No. 2, he riffles the strings, producing a wiry thring that scrolls around Charlie Haden's bass. With more songful tunes, such as Everything I Love and Margot, he applies his agile touch to the keyboard and produces some lyrical, tender moments reminiscent of Bill Evans' playing.
ClNEMA
ISABEL. French Canadian Actress Genevieve Bujold and her writer-director husband Paul Almond click with their first professional collaboration, creating a shocker that manages to be both heartwarming and spine-chilling.
THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER. By reverse alchemy, Carson McCullers' novel is turned into dross, but two outstanding performances almost redeem the project: Alan Arkin as a poignant deaf-mute and Cicely Tyson as the embodiment of the slogan "Black is beautiful."
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Director Stanley Kubrick dazzles the eye and bends the mind in this space-age parable of the meaning of life.
INADMISSIBLE EVIDENCE. Nicol William son is John Osborne's 39-year-old London solicitor to the life, possessed by the terrifying realization that he is mediocrity itself and that what lies ahead for him is meaningless.
THE BRIDE WORE BLACK. Revenge is sweet, bitter, salty and sour in Francois Truffaut's poetic evocation of an idee fixe. Jeanne Moreau is the woman with the idee, and the men who killed her husband are the ones who get fixed in a series of alternately comic and eerie murders.
ROSEMARY'S BABY. In this chilling adaptation of Ira Levin's bestselling thriller of witchery at work in a Manhattan apartment building, Mia Farrow, as the beleaguered wife, gives a memorable portrayal of innocence and vulnerability.
BOOKS
Best Reading
THE VIOLENT PEACE, by Carl and Shelley Mydans. Two veteran combat correspondents combine memorable war pictures and eyewitness accounts of 44 TIME-LIFE correspondents to examine the changing face of war in the nuclear age. 1897 SEARS ROEBUCK CATALOGUE, introductions by S. J. Perelman and Richard Rovere. A dazzling trove for both serious and lighthearted students of Americana, this hardcover facsimile of a popular mailorder catalogue mirrors the manners, morals and appetites of the Gay Nineties.
BRING LARKS AND HEROES, by Thomas Keneally. A mythic tale of an Irish soldier in the garrison of a penal colony vividly evokes the brutality, courage and grace of 18th century Australia.
THE SPLENDID PAUPER, by Allen Andrews. The biography of Moreton Frewen, Winston Churchill's froward uncle and a born loser who went from one financial debacle to another with style, imagination and diligence.
THE LESSONS OF HISTORY, by Will and Ariel Durant. At a time when nostalgia and/or despair is intellectually fashionable, the Durants argue that the best is probably yet to come, in a witty and perceptive program note to their monumental ten-volume Story of Civilization.
HAROLD NICOLSON: THE LATER YEARS, 1945-1962, VOL. Ill OF DIARIES AND LETTERS, edited by Nigel Nicolson. This third and final installment of Author-Politician Nicolson's sprightly and candid reminiscences clinches his position as the brightest British diarist since Pepys.
THE FRENCH, by Francois Nourissier; THE AMERICAN CHALLENGE, by J.J. Servan-Schreiber. France's cultural achievements and sophisticated tastes, say these two candid Frenchmen, mask crumbling institutions and outdated attitudes that must be changed if the country is to avert disaster.
HENRY VIII, by J. J. Scarisbrick. The cunning and flamboyant 16th century monarch is examined from some unflattering angles in this extensive biography by a British historian.
THE SECOND REBELLION, by James Mc-Cague. About 1,200 people die and many square blocks of Manhattan are leveled by fire, in this briskly detailed re-creation of the 1863 antidraft riots.
Best Sellers
FICTION 1. Airport, Hailey (1 last week)
2. Couples, Updike (2)
3. The Testimony of Two Men, Caldwell (3)
4. True Grit, Portis (4)
5. Topaz, Uris (6)
6. Vanished, Knebel (10)
7. Red Sky at Morning, Bradford (8)
8. The Queen's Confession, Holt (9)
9. Myra Breckinridge, Vidal (5) 10. Heaven Help Us, Tarr (7)
NONFICTION 1. The Money Game, 'Adam Smith' (1)
2. Between Parent and Child, Ginott (5)
3. Iberia, Michener (3)
4. The Rich and the Super-Rich, Lundberg (2)
5. The American Challenge, Servan-Schreiber (7)
6. The Right People, Birmingham (6)
7. The Naked Ape, Morris (4)
8. Or I'll Dress You in Mourning, Collins and Lapierre (8)
9. The Doctor's Quick Weight Loss Diet, Stillman and Baker (9)
10. The Center, Alsop
* All times E.D.T.
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