TELEVISION Wednesday, September 25 HERE COME THE BRIDES (ABC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.).* Comedy series about a pack of sex-starved lumberjacks working in Seattle after the Civil War. Premiere.
THE GOOD GUYS (CBS, 8:30-9 p.m.). Another comedy show. Bob Denver and Herb Edelman star as a glib cabbie and the gullible owner of a diner. Premiere.
CHRYSLER PRESENTS A BOB HOPE COMEDY SPECIAL (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). First of Hope's nine appearances this season. His guests are Vikki Carr, Cyd Charisse, Janet Leigh and Jill St. John.
Thursday, September 26 BLONDIE (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Chic Young's 38-year-old comic strip returns to television after ten years. Patricia Harty is Blondie, Will Hutchins is Dagwood. and Jim Backus (Mister Magoo) is J. C. Dithers. Premiere.
JOURNEY TO THE UNKNOWN (ABC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). "Eve," John Collier's eerie story, is all about a young department store window dresser who falls in love with a mannequin. First in a series of suspense thrillers. Premiere.
Friday, September 27 THE DON RICKLES SHOW (ABC, 9-9:30 p.m.). "Mr. Warmth" plays the insulting court jester in a variation of his nightclub and talk-show routine. Premiere.
Saturday, September 28 ABC'S WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). U.S. Olympic men's and women's gymnastic trials from Long Beach and Los Angeles, Calif., and the roaring Southern 500 Stock Car Championship from Darlington, S.C.
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 9-11:45 p.m.). The Train (1965). Burt Lancaster plays a French Resistance leader who tries to keep a trainload of art treasures from being shipped to Germany.
Sunday, September 29 AMERICAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE GAME (NBC, 1:30 p.m. to conclusion). New York Jets v. Buffalo Bills from Buffalo, followed by Oakland Raiders v. Houston Oilers from Houston.
THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS COMEDY HOUR (CBS, 9-10 p.m.). Harry Belafonte and Cass Elliott join Tom and Dick in their first show of the new season.
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE (CBS, 10-11 p.m.).
Barbara Bain poses as a blind Balkan heiress as the Impossible Missions Force thwarts the ambitions of a sinister regent. Third season. Premiere.
Monday, September 30 ROWAN & MARTIN LAUGH-IN (NBC, 8-9 p.m.). Topical sketches and a multitude of zany one-liners, performed by the most irreverent but relevant troupe on TV.
THEATER
On Broadway
ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD. In Tom Stoppard's arresting drama, the Wittenberg Wunderkinder wander around Elsinore like two extras to whom no roles have been assigned, and who cannot even decide whether they are part of a comedy or a tragedy.
PLAZA SUITE. Neil Simon makes three bids to provide amusement and, ably assisted by Director Mike Nichols and Actors Maureen Stapleton and E. G. Marshall, makes a grand slam.
Off Broadway
A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN. The ghost of the past haunts every serious Eugene O'Neill drama, upsetting the appetite of anyone who hopes to partake of the feast of life. In this play, three emotionally starved characters hunger for a love that is denied them.
JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS while his bold songs are sung nightly in Manhattan. Furious at life yet madly in love with it, Brel challenges it with bold imagery, sighs over it in sad verse, embellishes it with melodic observations of sly humor.
THE BOYS IN THE BAND. Mart Crowley's uncompromising drama deals coolly and honestly with homosexuality, lancing bitchy merriment with desolating insight. Kenneth Nelson and Leonard Frey play the host and guest of honor at a homosexual's birthday party with skill and grace.
YOUR OWN THING. Shakespeare again proves himself to be a most congenial coauthor as Twelfth Night provides the plot and cast of characters for an inventive rock musical about confusion of the sexes.
SCUBA DUBA is a flagellatingly funny first play by Novelist Bruce Jay Friedman about an American screwball whose wife runs off with a Negro during a Riviera holiday. The playwright sprays comic vitriol at countless pet hates.
RECORDS
Opera
RIGOLETTO (Angel; 3 LPs). Rigoletto, the hunchbacked jester, is frequently overshadowed by Gilda and the Duke of Mantua with their respective arias--Coronome and La donna e mobile. Not so here. Cornell MacNeil is a consummate actor, and the opera belongs wholly to him; each line is subtly molded and colored by his rich baritone. Reri Grist as Gilda is vocally excellent and traverses the high passages with ease. Nicolai Gedda as the Duke is robust and sure. Conductor Molinari-Pradelli allowed no "concert version" of the opera, with singers crowding the microphones. Instead, they moved about the studio as in a stage production, making the most of stereo recording techniques.
DAS RHEINGOLD (Deutsche Grammophon; 3 LPs). The second part of Conductor Herbert von Karajan's proposed Ring cycle faithfully continues his individual and highly esthetic interpretation set down in the initial Die Walkure recording. His approach to Wagner's music is lyric, avoiding the solemn weightiness of many other conductors. Instead of striving for volume, he emphasizes nuance. The casting of the opera is also unique. Since the orchestral sound is on a smaller than usual scale, the less than Wagnerian voices of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Josephine Veasey can portray Wotan and Fricka with unusual beauty and subtlety. But those who want their Wagner larger than life will fall back on Conductor Georg Solti's dynamic Das Rheingold (London), whose Wotan and Fricka are the monumental-voiced George London and Kirsten Flagstad.
DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NUeRNBERG (Seraphim; 5 LPs). Seraphim, the budget label of Angel recordings, has brought back a very special package that has been off the shelves for more than a decade. This performance of Die Meistersinger took place at the Bayreuth Festival in 1951. It offers Herbert von Karajan as conductor, plus an outstanding cast that includes Otto Edelmann, Erich Kunz, Hans Hopf and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf at her lyric, full-throated best. The recording faithfully captures the spontaneous onstage interplay and excitement that is rarely achieved in a studio.
THE ROYAL FAMILY OF OPERA (London; 3 LPs). In this magnificently royal family, who really rules? It might easily be stars Birgit Nilsson as Bruennhilde, Joan Sutherland as Semiramide, Kirsten Flagstad as Elsa, Renata Tebaldi as Adriana Lecouvreur, or Regine Crespin as La Gioconda. Newer members of the royal family are Soprano Elena Suliotis, Mezzo Marilyn Home. Soprano Felicia Weathers, Baritone Tom Krause and Tenor Bruno Prevedi. The glittering assemblage of 37 singers perform arias, duets and trios culled from 30 operas.
CINEMA 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. A cosmic parable of the history and future of man, directed by Stanley Kubrick. The visually magnificent scenes of space travel are out of this world.
THE SEVENTH CONTINENT. Director Dusan Vukotic tells a sometimes ingenuous but often ingenious fairy story of two children who drift off to a magical, adult-free paradise.
HUNGER. This grim Swedish-made tale of a writer on the skids in a big city is given depth and resonance by the powerful performances of Per Oscarsson and Gunnel Lindblom.
RACHEL, RACHEL. Puzzled by the present, plagued by the past, a 35-year-old schoolteacher struggles to break out of her bleak existence. Directed by Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward (Mrs. Newman) brings transcendent strength to the role of Rachel.
THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER. Alan Arkin gives a subtle, probing performance as a deaf-mute in this prosaic adaptation of Carson McCullers' novel.
ISABEL. Canada's Genevieve Bujold generates an air of adolescent terror in this chilling tale of a young girl growing rapidly to womanhood while tormented by the memories of another life.
ROSEMARY'S BABY. Ira Levin's bestselling tale of devil worship in Manhattan proves, in this film version, that Mia Farrow is not just a singer's exwife. Her performance is at the Oscar level.
THE BRIDE WORE BLACK. Director Franc,ois Truffaut pays unabashed homage to Alfred Hitchcock in this sly and tautly acted thriller about a homicidal widow (Jeanne Moreau) who sets out to avenge the murder of her husband.
BOOKS
Best Reading
THE BLACKING FACTORY AND PENNSYLVANIA GOTHIC, by Wilfrid Sheed. Funny, feverish and very finely wrought accounts--worked out in a short novel and a long story--of two adolescents whose futures are staked out by their fantasies about the past.
ANTONIO IN LOVE, by Giuseppe Berto.
This is a simple story of boy meets girl, Italian style, given significance and deep resonance by the author's elaborate prose and sense of irony.
WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE, by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. A collection of short stories and essays in which the author, posing as a mod scientist at the controls of a literary time machine, explores the inner and outer spaces of the man-against-machine perplex.
THE BEAUTYFUL ONES ARE NOT YET BORN, by Ayi Kwei Armah. A Ghanaian novelist's parable about man's struggle for liberty and dignity, staged in post-revolutionary West Africa.
FRAGMENTS OF A JOURNAL, by Eugene Ionesco. The private jottings and night thoughts of one of the leading playwrights of the theater of the absurd.
THE PUMP HOUSE GANG and THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST, by Tom Wolfe. America's foremost and wittiest pop journalist presents a swinging mixed-media word show of articles about life styles and a nonfictional novel about the peregrinations of Novelist Ken Kesey and his acid-generation Pranksters.
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.
BRING LARKS AND HEROES, by Thomas Keneally. The love, rebellion and death of a young soldier garrisoned at an 18th century Australian penal colony.
THE CASE AGAINST CONGRESS, by Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson. Misfeasance, malfeasance and other assorted knaveries by federal legislators are uncovered by the team of political columnists.
THE DANCE OF GENGHIS COHN, by Romain Gary. The classic Jewish gambit--finding macabre humor in extreme tribulation--is used with uncommon originality in this allegorical novel of genocide and national guilt.
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. Airport, Hailey (1 last week) 2. True Grit, Portis (3) 3. Couples, Updike (2) 4. Testimony of Two Men, Caldwell (4) 5. Heaven Help Us, Tarr (7) 6. Red Sky at Morning, Bradford (6) 7. Topaz, Uris (5) 8. The Queen's Confession, Holt (10) 9. The Senator, Pearson (9) 10. Vanished, Knebel
NONFICTION
1. The Rich and the Super-Rich, Lundberg (1) 2. The Money Game, 'Adam Smith' (2) 3. The American Challenge, Servan-Schreiber (4) 4. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Wolfe (3) 5. Iberia, Michener (5) 6. The Case Against Congress, Pearson and Anderson 7. Between Parent and Child, Ginott (6) 8. The Doctor's Quick Weight Loss Diet, Stillman and Baker (8) 9. Soul on Ice, Cleaver (7) 10. The Naked Ape, Morris (10)
* All times E.D.T.
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