CINEMA

The Miracle Worker. On film as on Broadway, the story of the child Helen Keller's release from the condition of a blind deaf-mute becomes an almost unbearably moving performance.

I Like Money. Peter Sellers in a new film version of Marcel Pagnol's Topaze--a little slow, but fey and funny.

Joan of the Angels? The question mark is a salve to any who might be offended by this excellent Polish film about demons of eroticism loose in an Ursuline convent.

A Taste of Honey. Playwright Shelagh Delaney's story of a wise child in Lancashire slums, who knows her own mother and is fearlessly determined to know herself. Rita Tushingham makes the heroine a kind of Oliver Twist in a maternity dress.

Jutes and Jim. Director Franc,ois Truffaut's story of three young people in Paris is so spontaneous, sincere, generous, naive and natural that a spectator who sits down to watch it feeling old and dry may rise up feeling young and green.

The Counterfeit Traitor. An expert spy thriller about an Allied agent in Sweden during World War II.

State Fair. This remake of a remake of a remake may not win any Oscars, but durned if it don't take the blue ribbon for country corn.

Five Finger Exercise. A study in family life, concluding that all too often home is where the hurt is.

Bell' Antonio. A serious and discreet discussion of a case of impotence.

Sweet Bird of Youth. This sleazy affair between a Hollywood beach bum (Paul Newman) and an aging cinemama (Geraldine Page) makes a good movie melodrama out of a tiresome Tennessee Williams play.

Through a Glass Darkly. A brilliant analysis of four lives--a father, his son, daughter and son-in-law--by Sweden's Ingmar Bergman.

Last Year at Marienbad. Past, present and future are lumped together, rolled out, and cut into new and confusing pieces in what may be a new milestone--or millstone--in the history of experimental films.

TELEVISION

Wed., June 6

Howard K. Smith: News and Comment (ABC, 7:30-8 p.m.).* Summary of the week's most important items, with analysis.

David Brinkley's Journal (NBC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Brinkley examines the phenomenon of the Miss America contest and chats with former Misses America. (Color).

Thurs., June 7

Accent (CBS, 7:30-8 p.m.). Painter Thomas Hart Benton talks to Host John Ciardi about his Missouri boyhood.

CBS Reports (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Walter Lippmann comments on the cold war and talks about significant personalities on the international scene.

Fri., June 8

Breakthrough (NBC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). John Chancellor reports on the progress that has lately been made in the field of cancer research.

Sat., June 9

The Belmont Stakes (CBS, 4:30-5 p.m.). The 94th running of this $125,000 added racing classic.

Sun., June 10

Cabeza de Vaca (CBS, 10-11 a.m.). World premiere of the last work of the late U.S. composer, George Antheil. Based on the travels of the 16th century Spanish explorer Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, the performance is by the CBS Symphony Orchestra and the Amor Artis chorus.

Issues and Answers (ABC, 4-4:30 p.m.). Dr. Walter Heller, chairman, Council of Economic Advisers to President Kennedy, discusses the future of the U.S. economy and the current stock market situation.

Wide World of Sports (ABC, 5:30-8:30 p.m.). Three hours of auto racing in the Grand Prix de Monaco.

Mon., June 11

Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett lampoon visiting Russian singing-dancing groups, Swiss family folk singers, and the hearty entertainers of the American West.

Tues., June 12

Bell & Howell Close-Up (ABC, 10:30-11 p.m.). Funnymen Dick Gregory, Mort Sahl, Al Capp and Jules Feiffer join the Second City group from Chicago and the Uniquecorns from Washington in a program about satire in the U.S., with comments by Dr. Bergen Evans.

THEATER

On Broadway

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. This musical marriage of vaudeville and burlesque has been lewdly adapted from Plautus; the girls owe their best lines to nature; and Zero Mostel is master of the hilarious revels.

A Thousand Clowns, by Herb Gardner. A fine fresh comedy on a tired subject, nonconformism. As the arch-nonconformist, Jason Robards Jr. is beset by a captivating set of plodballs and an irresistible sweetie named Sandy Dennis.

The Night of the Iguana, by Tennessee Williams. Around four frayed lives on a Mexican veranda, Williams has fashioned an unself-pitying play of self-transcendence. Margaret Leighton's performance is a touchstone of the acting art.

A Man for All Seasons, by Robert Bolt. This New York Drama Critics Circle prize foreign play focuses on a man who would rather lose his life than his soul. Paul Scofield seems to body forth all the virtues of Sir Thomas More.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying is a tongue-in-cheek musical-comedy satire of corporationland. Its honors are longer than its title, since it now holds the Pulitzer, Tony, and New York Drama Critics Circle awards.

Off Broadway

Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad, by Arthur Kopit. An evening of surrealistic foolery on the topic of why Mom is a witch. Goofy, oomphy Barbara Harris is the Lolita of off Broadway.

Brecht on Brecht. An oasis for parched minds where the playgoer may sip the aphorisms, songs, scenes and poems of a powerful master of 20th century theater.

BOOKS

Best Reading

Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov. A monstrous, witty work of often bewildering verbal agility, in which a respected old poet is annotated to death by a lunatic scholar--or is he an exiled king?

Saint Francis, by Nikos Kazantzakis. The late great Greek novelist restores agony of soul to a saint too often portrayed as sickly sweet.

An Unofficial Rose, by Iris Murdoch. The romantic lower depths of Britain's upper classes intricately explored by an artful philosopher-novelist.

Jenny Lind, The Swedish Nightingale, by Gladys Denny Schultz. Though the author oversentimentalizes her heroine and all but drowns her out with petty detail, this account of the cold, superbly gifted soprano who became P. T. Barnum's greatest exhibit is absorbing for its large store of remarkable anecdotes.

The Wax Boom, by George Mandel. The strange story of an infantry company that longed compulsively for light in the darkness of combat.

Shut Up, He Explained, selections from Ring Lardner edited by Babette Rosmond and Henry Morgan. A justly famous U.S. satiric wit happily revisited.

Patriotic Gore, by Edmund Wilson. A searching study of Northern and Southern writers as they reacted to the brutalities of the Civil War.

The Collected Letters of D. H. Lawrence, edited by Harry T. Moore. Insight into the changing, always tempestuous moods of a prickly and tender novelist.

George, by Emlyn Williams. The playwright warmly recaptures his Welsh boyhood in an autobiography that makes writing seem like singing.

Ship of Fools, by Katherine Anne Porter. A brilliant disenchanted voyage freighted with human folly.

Scott Fitzgerald, by Andrew Turnbull. A lovingly exhaustive biography of a writer whose life was a far from tender nightmare.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. Ship of Fools, Porter (1, last week)

2. Franny and Zooey, Salinger (3)

3. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Stone (4)

4. The Bull from the Sea, Renault (2)

5. The Fox in the Attic, Hughes (6)

6. A Prologue to Love, Caldwell (7)

7. Youngblood Hawke, Wouk

8. Devil Water, Seton (5)

9. Hornstein's Boy, Traver (9)

10. Chairman of the Bored, Streeter

NONFICTION

1. The Rothschilds, Morton (1)

2. Calories Don't Count, Taller (3)

3. My Life in Court, Nizer (2)

4. The Guns of August, Tuchman (4)

5. Six Crises, Nixon (5)

6. In the Clearing, Frost (6)

7. The Last Plantagenets, Costain (10)

8. Scott Fitzgerald, Turnbull (7)

9. The New English Bible (9)

10. O'Neill, Arthur and Barbara Gelb

:* All times E.D.T.

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