Sail a Crooked Ship. The last movie made by the late Ernie Kovacs is a sort of shaggy seadog story in which Comedian Kovacs plays "a unsussessful crinimal" with a big cigar and a tiny brain.
Lover Come Back. Stanley Shapiro, one of Hollywood's more competent make-'em-laugh-till-they-gag men, has served up a grand old turkey of a plot--the mistaken-identity bit--and has stuffed it with plenty of giggles. Dessert: a couple of cream puffs called Rock Hudson and Doris Day.
Light in the Piazza. Question: Should a wealthy American mother (Olivia de Havilland) permit her beautiful daughter (Yvette Mimieux) to marry a charming young Italian (George Hamilton) who does not realize that the daughter is mentally retarded? Answer: Florence in Metrocolor is worth seeing anyway.
Tender Is the Night. F. Scott Fitzgerald's graceful, transparently self-descriptive story of a gifted young psychiatrist who gives up his career to get married makes a melancholy and affecting movie. Jason Robards Jr. plays the hero.
A View from the Bridge. Adapted from Arthur Miller's play, the film postures as Greek tragedy in cold-water Flatbush, but as a modern drama of moral incest, it has considerable merit, thanks largely to Raf Vallone's muscular performance as the troubled stevedore.
One, Two, Three. Director Billy Wilder's Coca-Colonial comedy of bad manners is set in Berlin and relentlessly maintains the pace that refreshes.
A Midsummer Night's Dream. The best puppet picture ever made: a feature-length version of Shakespeare's play put together by Czechoslovakia's Jiri Trnka, the Walt Disney of the Communist bloc.
Murder, She Said. Margaret Rutherford, the British comedienne, comes on strong as a lady gumshoe in this adaptation of an Agatha Christie chiller.
The Innocents. This psychiatric chiller, based on The Turn of the Screw, owes as much to Sigmund Freud as it does to Henry James, but the photography is wonderfully spooky and the heroine (Deborah Kerr) exquisitely kooky.
TELEVISION
Wed., Feb. 21 Howard K. Smith (ABC, 7:30-8 p.m.).*Analytical report on the news of the week.
David Brinkley's Journal (NBC, 10:30-11 p.m.). A look at deep-sea fishermen.
Thurs., Feb. 22 CBS Reports (CBS, 10-11 p.m.).
"Thunder on the Right," a special on U.S. right-wing conservatives, with John Birch Society Founder Robert H. Welch, Senator Barry Goldwater, Frederick C. Schwarz, founder of the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade.
Fri., Feb. 23 Winter Carnival at Sun Valley (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). A blend of sports and show business, with Louis Armstrong, Roberta Peters, Skater Dick Button and Skiers Stein Eriksen and Anderl Molterer.
Sat., Feb. 24 Accent (CBS, 1:30-2 p.m.). Third Grade members of East Memorial School, Farmingdale, N.Y., read to Poet John Ciardi poems they have written themselves.
Sun., Feb. 25
NBC Opera Company (NBC, 3-5 p.m.). The Love of Three Kings, by Montemezzi.
Directions '62 (ABC, 3-3:30 p.m.). Last in a series on the origins of church music, featuring gospel singing this week.
Twentieth Century (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). Part 1 of "The Age of Anxiety," a study on psychiatry in the U.S. as seen through the eyes of Drs. Karl and William Menninger.
The Judy Garland Show (CBS, 9-10 p.m.). Judy's first TV special in six years will include Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Kay Thompson.
NBC White Paper (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Rare film footage on Red China and interviews with travelers behind the Bamboo Curtain. Chet Huntley narrates.
Golden Showcase (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Maxwell Anderson's 1927 Broadway success, Saturday's Children, stars Ralph Bellamy, Inger Stevens and Cliff Robertson.
Tues., Feb. 27
The World of Sophia Loren (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). A TV portrait of the volatile actress filmed in France and Italy.
Alcoa Premiere (ABC, 10-10:30 p.m.). Richard Kiley stars as a doctor who is the target of a $100,000 malpractice suit. Fred Astaire is host and narrator.
THEATER
On Broadway
The Night of the Iguana, by Tennessee Williams. In a play of nocturnal mood and meaning, Williams assembles a defrocked minister, a spinster, a sensual spitfire and a nonagenarian poet on a Mexican hotel veranda, where their defeated dreams converge in an elegiac pattern of destiny.
Ross, by Terence Rattigan, speculates about T. E. Lawrence. Actor John Mills performs with a purity of anguish that irradiates the hero without resolving his tantalizing mystery.
A Man for All Seasons, by Robert Bolt, throws its varicolored light on the theme of public duty v. private conscience. As '.Sir Thomas More, British Actor Paul Scofield is faultless.
Gideon, by Paddy Chayefsky, treats the relationship of God and man with more humor than awe, but the acting of Fredric March and Douglas Campbell supplies the necessary power and glory.
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying is as enjoyable as its title is long. Rising from window washer to chairman of the board, Robert Morse is a comic marvel of apple-cheeked guile and flaming self-adoration.
The Caretaker, by Harold Pinter. In a junk-filled London room, two odd brothers and a tramp illuminate the perennial questions of man's isolation from, his need for, and his quirky rejection of, his fellow man.
Among Broadway's long-run tenants, Mary, Mary incites full houses to laugh along with Playwright Jean Kerr; Camelot's Round Table is becoming as durable as King Arthur's; Carnival! yields nothing to its Hollywood model Lili in poignance and charm--and there is always the grande dame of Manhattan's musicals, My Fair Lady.
Off Broadway
Who'll Save the Plowboy?, by Frank D. Gilroy, slices close to the center of three lives that war, marriage and illusions have haphazardly drawn together.
BOOKS
Best Reading
The Fox in the Attic, by Richard Hughes. A trenchant parable of Europe's sickness between two World Wars, contrasting a victorious England in need of no new God with a defeated Germany in search of the sinister old warrior-deities.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey. Set inside a mental hospital, this brilliant first novel is a roaring protest against middlebrow society's rules.
The Guns of August, by Barbara W.
Tuchman. The fateful first month of World War I as a drama in which every actor had rehearsed his part for years and yet everything turned into a shambles.
The Quarry, by Friedrich Duerrenmatt.
A sick old detective trapped in a sanitarium run by an arch sadist--each of them the other's quarry--provides the author of The Visit with a new set of grotesque mouthpieces for his macabre view of life.
Writers on the Left, by Daniel Aaron.
Some of the best writers in the U.S. fell for or got bullied into Communism during the Depression '30s; a look at who they were, what they said and wrote, how they fellow-traveled through ideology and disillusionment.
The End of the Battle, by Evelyn Waugh. Part 3 of a trilogy about Britain in Waughtime, how an upper-class way of living and dying turned grey when the Russians became Britain's allies.
Sylva, by Vercors. A fox turns into a young lady, thereby giving her keeper and Vercors much opportunity for ironical analysis of what little girls are made of.
But Not in Shame, by John Toland. A gifted historian reconstructs how the U.S.
staggered through the first six months of World War II.
Best Sellers FICTION 1. Franny and Zooey, Salinger (1, last week)
2. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Stone (2)
3. A Prologue to Love, Caldwell (5)
4. Daughter of Silence, West (4)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee (3)
6. Captain Newman, M.D., Rosten (8)
7. Chairman of the Bored, Streeter (6)
8. Little Me, Dennis (7)
9. The Ivy Tree, Stewart (9)
10. The Carpetbaggers, Robbins (10)
NONFICTION
1. My Life in Court, Nizer (1)
2. Calories Don't Count, Taller (2)
3. The Making of the President 1960, White (3)
4. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer (5)
5. The New English Bible (8)
6. My Saber Is Bent, Paar (9)
7. Living Free, Adamson (4)
8. A Nation of Sheep, Lederer (7)
9. The Last of the Plantagenets, Costain 10. The Guns of August, Tuchman
* All times E.S.T.
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