Wednesday, August 28 The Democratic National Convention from Chicago. CBS and NBC continue their gavel-to-gavel coverage today and tomorrow, starting times to be announced. ABC will have a 90-minute summary of each day's events from 9:30 p.m. to 11 p.m.* The network will also cut into regular programming for live coverage of the balloting.

Friday, August 30

CBS FRIDAY NIGHT MOVIES (CBS, 9-11:30 p.m.). The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1965). A 1930-model Phantom II Rolls serves as plot, theme, star and principal setting of this elegant, old-fashioned movie about roadside sex. Rex Harrison, Shirley MacLaine, Omar Sharif, Ingrid Bergman, George C. Scott, Jeanne Moreau and Alain Delon test the big car's serviceability for back-seat amours. Repeat.

Saturday, August 31

U.S. MEN'S AMATEUR GOLF TOURNAMENT (ABC, 3:30-5 p.m.). A field of 150 amateurs compete for top honors and the right to play in the World Cup Matches in Australia this November. Last three holes live from Scioto Country Club, Columbus, Ohio.

ABC'S WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). A preview of the October Olympic Games with the U.S. Olympic Women's Swimming Trials from Los Angeles. The Mojave Desert Motorcycle Race provides cross-country excitement on the rest of the bill.

Sunday, September 1

THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW (CBS, 8-9 p.m.). Ed's guests include Pop Singer Johnny Mathis, Comedian Jack E. Leonard, Actor Melvyn Douglas and New York City Ballet Dancers Edward Villella and Patricia McBride. Repeat.

N.F.L FOOTBALL (CBS, 9 p.m. to conclusion). Minnesota Vikings v. St. Louis Cardinals in a preseason game from Busch Civic Stadium, St. Louis.

THE ABC SUNDAY NIGHT MOVIE (ABC. 9-11:30 p.m.). Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1965). Bette Davis plays a bittersweet Charlotte in this tale of murder, madness and revenge. Joseph Gotten and Olivia de Havilland also star. Repeat.

Monday, September 2

OF BLACK AMERICA (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). "A Portrait in Black and White" completes the series with three prominent Negro psychiatrists interpreting the opinions of 1,500 blacks and whites questioned at length about racial sentiment and resentment.

Tuesday, September 3 WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHY (CBS, 10-10:30 p.m.). "On the Road with Charles Kuralt." Highlights of Kuralt's eleven-month journey along the highways and byways of America, including reports on the last run of the legendary Wabash Cannonball, sponge fishing off the coast of Florida, an 87-year-old Otterbein College professor turned janitor and a roadside poet in Illinois.

THEATER

On Broadway

ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD. If the Bard and Beckett had ever collaborated on a play about what went on behind the scenes at Elsinore, this wry existential comedy might have been the result. John Wood and Brian Murray are marvelously adept as Tom Stoppard's confused duo.

PLAZA SUITE. Neil Simon comes to bat again with three short hits. George C. Scott and Maureen Stapleton are either hilarious or sentimental as they portray middle-aged couples in sometimes awkward, always amusing predicaments.

THE PRICE. Among the many dusty relics of the past in a family attic, the two brothers who are Arthur Miller's characters find living memories and smoldering emotions.

Off Broadway

A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN, one of Eugene O'Neill's last plays, laments a loveless trio. W. B. Bydon, Salome Jens and Mitchell Ryan give poignant portrayals of three emotional cripples hiding their numerous afflictions beneath much blather and rant. Theodore Mann directs a lightly tuned production at the Circle in the Square.

THE BOYS IN THE BAND. Playwright Mart Crowley's characters are first of all wonderfully human. Secondarily, they are homosexual. Kenneth Nelson, Leonard Frey and Cliff Gorman lead a sharply honed cast through dialogue of lacerating wit and excruciating humor.

JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS, and meanwhile, in Manhattan, four performers render his songs with both passion and compassion.

THE NEGRO ENSEMBLE COMPANY alternates Peter Weiss's Song of the Lusitanian Bogey with Daddy Goodness, by Richard Wright and Louis Sapin.

YOUR OWN THING slides Shakespeare's Twelfth Night into the 20th century with rock music and the unisex look of the with-it generation. Leland Palmer lends rag-doll insouciance to a perpetual-motion Viola.

SCUBA DUBA. Bruce Jay Friedman's tense comedy makes a mockery of the sacred cows and shibboleths of an illiberal liberal. Jerry Orbach is the manic hero run amuck on a Riviera holiday.

RECORDS

SATIE: PIANO MUSIC, VOL. 3 (Angel). Debussy called Erik Satie "a sweet medieval musician who wandered into this century." He made a living playing the piano in the bars of Montmartre, drank with Duchamp, Man Ray and the other Dadaists, and wrote breezy little avant-garde compositions. With their whimsical titles (The War Song of the King of the Beans, Waltz of the Chocolate with Almonds) and seemingly random harmonies, they are surprisingly fresh after 50 years. Much of the credit for the exuberant mood of this record goes to Aldo Ciccolini, who plays with such easy mastery that the listener may not realize the technical skill Satie demands.

CHOPIN: ETUDES OPUSES 10 AND 25 (Deutsche Grammophon). Hungarian Pianist Tamas Vasary, 35, continues to build a formidable reputation as a Chopin specialist. This is his twelfth recording of the great Romantic composer, and he compares favorably with the late Dinu Li-patti, particularly in the slower etudes. Vasary seems to have absorbed Chopin's dreamy melancholy. He etches long, unhurried lines of somber melody, but when the music calls for it, he can be a rousing bravura player as well. Opuses 10 and 25 contain some of Chopin's most familiar writing, but in Vasary's hands, one never hears the quotation marks around the tunes.

BRAHMS: FIVE PIANO PIECES; STRAVINSKY: THREE MOVEMENTS FROM PETROUCHKA (RCA Victor). Misha Dichter, 22, is another young pianist of great promise and considerable accomplishment. The Brahms is simple music that demands color and tone from the interpreter, which Dichter supplies confidently; Petrouchka has brought him ovations in recital. The three movements are a showcase for a virtuoso technique, and Dichter cuts loose with a fury of sound. Fortunately, he also reveals a calmer temperament in the balancing poetic passages.

MENUHIN AND SHANKAR: WEST MEETS EAST, VOL. 2 (Angel). More improvisations with Ravi Shankar on the sitar and Yehudi Menuhin on the violin. Though these ragas are obviously Indian music, it is easy to understand Menuhin's empathy for them. To the Western ear they sound remarkably like the gypsy fiddling of the violinist's beloved Rumania. Whatever the reason, the raga brings out the wild man in Menuhin. "Real art is always of the moment--of improvisation," he likes to say. "I play with clearheaded abandon."

MOZART: SONATAS FOR PIANO, NOS. 330, 333 AND 336 (Westminster). This is a composed, almost complacent performance in the Romantic vein by the youthful Daniel Barenboim. Though never insipid, Barenboim is so careful to avoid excess drama that he sacrifices some excitement in the process. Recent recordings of the sonatas by Glenn Gould and Lili Kraus are more radical and compelling, but many Mozart lovers may prefer Barenboim's intelligent, less egotistical approach.

CINEMA

ISABEL. Directed by her husband Paul Almond, Genevieve Bujold plays a young girl passing unsteadily into womanhood. For background there is the chilling, often bleak landscape of Quebec's Gaspe" Peninsula.

INADMISSIBLE EVIDENCE. Nicol Williamson 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.

ROSEMARY'S BABY. Roman Polanski transforms Ira Levin's bestselling chiller about the powers of darkness at work in a Manhattan apartment into a bewitching film that demonstrates the impressive acting ability of Mia Farrow.

THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER. Poetry always suffers in translation, and Carson McCullers' poetic novel is no exception to the rule. Yet the film has some worth while aspects: Alan Arkin's portrayal of a mute whose silence is deafening, and Sondra Locke as a poignant antiheroine.

THE BRIDE WORE BLACK. In his homage to Hitchcock, Francois Truffaut tells the story of a vengeful bride in a manner that mirrors the old master's style as

Jeanne Moreau tracks down a handful of murderers. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. Director Stanley Kubrick attempts to create a new language to describe the future on the screen. His grammar is faultless, his pronunciation beautiful, his message obscure.

BOOKS

Best Reading

THE CASE AGAINST CONGRESS, by Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson. Under the rolled logs and pork barrels, the political columnists find plenty of muck and a depressing number of congressional rakes.

THE DANCE OF GENGHIS COHN, by Romain Gary. A mordantly funny allegory about the ghost of an exterminated Jew who haunts an ex-Nazi.

HAROLD NICOLSON: THE LATER YEARS, 1945-1962. The concluding volume of reminiscences of the late British writer-politician reveals a man of deep sentiment and candor, and one of the century's finest memoirists.

THE AMERICAN CHALLENGE, by J.J. Servan-Schreiber. One of France's best-known journalists warns that his nation must institute sweeping educational, technological and managerial changes if it hopes to be influential in the modern world.

THE VIOLENT PEACE, by Carl and Shelley Mydans. Two veteran war reporters combine the pictures and eyewitness accounts of 44 TIME-LIFE correspondents in an examination of the changing face of combat in the nuclear age.

1897 SEARS ROEBUCK CATALOGUE, introductions by S. J. Perelman and Richard Rovere. A rich trove for both serious and lighthearted students of Americana, this hard-cover facsimile of a popular mailorder catalogue mirrors the manners, morals and appetites of the Gay Nineties.

HENRY VIM, 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.

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.

Best Sellers

FICTION 1. Airport, Hailey (1 last week)

2. True Grit, Portis (4)

3. Couples, Updike (2)

4. Testimony of Two Men, Caldwell (3)

5. Myra Breckinridge, Vidal (9)

6. Red Sky at Morning, Bradford (7)

7. Topaz, Uris (5)

8. Heaven Help Us, Tarr (10)

9. Vanished, Knebel (6)

10. The Queen's Confession, Holt (8)

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

2. Iberia, Michener (3)

3. The Rich and the Super-Rich, Lundberg (4)

4. Between Parent and Child, Ginott (2)

5. Or I'll Dress You in Mourning, Collins and Lapierre (8)

6. The American Challenge, Servan-Schreiber (5)

7. The Right People, Birmingham (6)

8. The Naked Ape, Morris (7)

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

10. The French Chef Cookbook, Child

* All times E.D.T.

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