How the West Was Won. Cinerama turns from picture postcards to epic storytelling with a spectacle worthy of its wide-screen wonders. Sodbusters, Indians, outlaws, good guys, and a thousand thundering buffaloes, all but shake the balcony off its hinges.
The Wrong Arm of the Law. Sneaky Pete Sellers as a raffish Raffles heads a gang of candid-camera jewel robbers, meets his match when a rival gang, disguised as policemen, muscles in on the racket.
The Quare Fellow. In this movie version of his first successful play, Brendan Behan storms out against capital punishment. And, because Irishmen laugh when others might weep, he also laughs at the way men are made to live in jail, and condemned to die.
To Kill a Mockingbird. The Pulitzer Prize novel by Harper Lee has been made into an engaging movie that exchanges some of the novel's cuteness for a charm of its own--some of it supplied by the hero (Gregory Peck), most of it by three gumptious young 'uns (Mary Badham, Phillip Alford, John Megna).
The Trial. Orson Welles presents Kafka in chiaroscuro, an adaptation filled with wondrous Wellesian camera work, spectacularly haunting sets, and a troupe of actors who try to outdo themselves and--in some instances--end up by being undone.
Term of Trial. Sir Laurence Olivier matches skills with Simone Signoret; as a miserable married couple they make a sad little mess and a good little movie of their lives.
Love and Larceny. Vittorio Gassman is a gasser in a grab bag of disguises, ends up as a con man conned con amore.
A Child Is Waiting. This film takes an impassioned look at the problem of mental defectives (there are 5,700,000 of them in the U.S.), and makes some surprising recommendations. Burt Lancaster, Judy Garland and Bruce Ritchey play the principal parts with distinction.
Days of Wine and Roses. Remick-on-the-rocks with a twist of Lemmon is the recipe for this effective temperance lesson.
Lawrence of Arabia. Will run 'til the sands of the desert grow cold.
TELEVISION
Wednesday, March 27 Portrait (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.).* An interview with Winthrop Rockefeller from his Arkansas farm, Winrock.
Thursday, March 28 Read a good book.
Friday, March 29 Winston Churchill: The Valiant Years
(ABC, 7:30-8 p.m.). Rerun of an excellent series. Tonight: "Gotterdammerung," the deaths of dictators and Germany's surrender.
Saturday, March 30
Exploring (NBC, 12:30-1:30 p.m.). The program includes a reading of Casey at the Bat and an explanation of why a baseball curves when thrown. Color.
Sports International (NBC, 3:30-5 p.m.). A study of British auto racing, which focuses on former Champion Speedster Stirling Moss. Color.
The Defenders (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). "A Book for Burning" concerns a self-appointed censor and a novel he considers pornographic. Cast includes Walter Abel, Sam Wanamaker and Georgann Johnson.
Saturday Night at the Movies (NBC, 9 p.m. to conclusion). Ten North Frederick, an adaptation of John O'Hara's undress address, with Gary Cooper, Diane Varsi, Suzy Parker and Geraldine Fitzgerald. Color.
Sunday, March 31
Directions '63 (ABC, 2-2:30 p.m.). The final program in a series, "Ethics in Five Acts," features Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, Protestant Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, Jesuit Father Robert Johann, and Authoress Santha Rama Rau.
NBC Opera Company (NBC, 1:30-3:15 p.m.). Part one of Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew Passion, with Alfred Wallenstein conducting. Color.
The Sunday Sports Spectacular (CBS, 2:30-4 p.m.). "Hunting and Fishing" ranges, with Sportsman Leo Wulff, from moose in Newfoundland to fresh-water sharks in Nicaragua.
Wild Kingdom (NBC. 3:30-4 p.m.). "Exploring the Reef" examines the ways in which animals propel themselves through water. Marlin Perkins, director of the St. Louis Zoo, is host. Color.
The Sunday Night Movie (ABC, 8-10 p.m.). Tunes of Glory, with Alec Guinness and John Mills.
The Voice of Firestone (ABC, 10-10:30 p.m.). I Am the Way, a special Lenten opera composed and sung by Metropolitan Opera Bass Jerome Mines.
Monday, April 1
Ben Jarrod (NBC, 2-2:25 p.m.). Premiere of a new daytime drama series about a lawyer.
General Hospital (ABC, 1-1:30 p.m.). Premiere of a daytime serial concerning doctors, nurses, and requiring patience.
The Doctors (NBC, 2:30-3 p.m.). Premiere of an anthology series about--of all things--a hospital.
Tuesday, April 2
The World of Darryl Zanuck (NBC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). A study of filmland from the days of Valentino to the daze of Elizabeth Taylor, as told through the colorful producer of The Longest Day.
THEATER
On Broadway Strange Interlude, by Eugene O'Neill. The Actors Studio Theatre with a high-voltage cast makes a redoubtable debut and Geraldine Page fills the stage with prismatic splendor. The play itself, a 4 1/2-hour marathon, is a dated Lost Generation curio, infused, at odd moments, with O'Neill's personal anguish.
Enter Laughing, by Joseph Stein. The Jewish situation comedy is not a trend but a glut. This one offers traces of honest observation, and as a clown of a would-be actor, Alan Arkin is outrageously funny.
Never Too Late, by Sumner Arthur Long. Actor Paul Ford cannot face belated fatherhood, but he does glower at it all evening, which results in considerable jollity. As a son-in-law who moves as if popped from a toaster, Orson Bean helps with the fun.
Little Me welds song, dance and gag with high-precision skill in this musicomical saga of Belle Poitrine. Sid Caesar, clown supreme, stokes the evening with steady laughter.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, by Edward Albee, is the play that gets on more people's tongues and under more people's skins than any other current Broadway offering. Arthur Hill and Uta Hagen are shatteringly good as a sterile couple who savage each other in a nightlong bout of wit, alcohol and cruelty.
Beyond the Fringe. Four wickedly clever young English sharpshooters riddle such sacred institutions as God, Shakespeare and Harold Macmillan. The wackiest loon of the lunatic lot is Dr. Jonathan Miller.
RECORDS
Brecht on Brecht (Columbia) is a perfect reminiscence of the works of Bertolt Brecht, recited by the original cast that played it last year at Manhattan's Theatre de Lys. Since the action of the players consisted mainly of squirming about on high stools, nothing is lost in the recording. Brecht's own voice is heard, and the readings by Anne Jackson, Viveca Lindfors, George Voskovec, Dane Clark and Michael Wager are almost as pleasing to the ear as Brecht's songs as sung by Lotte Lenya.
Bentley on Brecht (Riverside) is a gesture more of love than of talent, but it captures the clattering, frightening spirit of Brecht's Berlin better than Columbia's virtuosi recording. Eric Bentley, Brecht's scholarly interpreter and entrepreneur, sings tinnily, recites brokenly, and now and then plays the piano badly, with the result that he is totally convincing and totally true to his master's idea of a winning performance.
Love Poems of John Donne (Caedmon; Richard Burton) shows what three centuries can do to the collision between love and sex. Donne's ardent poems (circa 1600) sound merely arch in Burton's reading, which wavers between the sleazy-sexy and the sticky-sentimental. Only in the poems to prideful love (The Good Morrow, Sweetest Love, I Do Not Go) does Burton's good voice ring out far enough to retrieve Donne from the mush.
Dramatic Readings from Eugene O'Neill (Columbia, Jason Robards Jr.) is a masterwork by one of the most masterful dramatic voices now on the stage. Robards reads with conviction from Long Day's Journey into Night, A Moon for the Misbegotten, The Hairy Ape and The Iceman Cometh, providing a good primer to O'Neill, and a better primer for other actors who dare the trick of reading on records.
Poetry of Lorca (Riverside) is excessively decorated by the Spanish guitar of Jose Motos, but the recital by Marius Goring is excellent and the choice of works discriminating. Included is Lorca's beautiful Romance Sonambulo (Somnambulistic Ballad), and his famous lecture, The Theory and Function of the Duende.
The Happy Prince and The Devoted Friend (Folkways) presents Oscar Wilde's two gentle fables told by the cheerful and gentle voice of Claire Luce. The stories are fey and perfect for aging children. Antony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare Recording Society) is a handsome, three-record addition to the large collection of Shakespeare already recorded, the best Antony available (another good version shrinks it onto one long-playing record). Anthony Quayle is a splendid Antony, Pamela Brown a tremulous Cleopatra.
BOOKS
Best Reading
That Summer in Paris, by Morley Callaghan. The Canadian novelist reminisces about some old pals, notably Fitzgerald and Hemingway, in the Montparnasse of the 1920s, when every Tom, Scott and Ezra thought he was a writer of genius.
V., by Thomas Pynchon. A likable, mad and unfathomable first novel about a beatnik's search for the .meaning of V.--which could stand for Venezuela or Vesuvius or almost anything else in the dream country of the hero's past.
The Ordeal of Change, by Eric Hoffer. Eisenhower's favorite philosopher argues in these essays that history is a constant--and constantly fruitful--tussle between the intellectuals and the masses.
Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller, A Private Correspondence. In an exchange of letters that crackled back and forth for nearly 25 years, the two novelists speak with wit, wisdom and dedication about the practice of their trade.
The Second Stone, by Leslie Fiedler. A zany triangle of Americans in Rome soon turns out to be a parable in which Author-Critic Fiedler pits the U.S. artist as rebel against the U.S. artist as public entertainer.
Voltaire and the Calas Case, by Edna Nixon. With precision and power, the author brings to life a moment in French history when the aging Voltaire came from retirement to rouse all Europe against French persecution of the Huguenots.
The Party, by Rudolph von Abele. The symbol of Nazi Germany, the author suggests in this biting novel, is not an armed camp or an insane asylum but a lurid party at which decent men lose their bearings and capitulate to monsters.
Best Sellers
FICTION 1. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour An Introduction, Salinger (1, last week) 2. Seven Days in May, Knebel and Bailey (2) 3. The Sand Pebbles, McKenna (3) 4. Fail-Safe, Burdick and Wheeler(4) 5. The Moon-Spinners, Stewart (5) 6. $100 Misunderstanding, Cover (6) 7. A Shade of Difference, Drury (7) 8. The Moonflower Vine, Carleton (8) 9. Triumph, Wylie (9) 10. The Cape Cod Lighter, O'Hara (10)
NONFICTION 1.Happiness Is a Warm Puppy, Schulz (1) 2.Travels with Charley, Steinbeck (1) 3. The Whole Truth and Nothing But, Hopper (5) 4.The Fire Next Time, Baldwin (9) 5. O Ye Jigs & Juleps!, Hudson (4) 6. Final Verdict, St. Johns (3) 7.Silent Spring, Carson (8) 8. The Points of My Compass, White (6) 9. My Life in Court, Nizer (10) 10. The Fall of the Dynasties, Taylor (7)
* All times E.S.T.
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