Wednesday, May 11

BATMAN (ABC, 7:30-8 p.m.).*"The Purr-fect Crime," with Julie Newmar as the furtive Catwoman, was partly pre-empted during its broadcast earlier this season by the aborted Gemini 8 space flight. Repeated intact for fans who have cats, as well as bats, in their belfries.

BOB HOPE PRESENTS THE CHRYSLER THEATER (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). A family of private eyes--father (Robert Young), son (David Wayne) and holy terrors (Barbara Hershey and Brooke Bundy)--in pursuit of a jewel thief.

Thursday, May 12

CBS THURSDAY NIGHT MOVIE (CBS, 9-11:15 p.m.). The Manchurian Candidate has Laurence Harvey as a brainwashed zombie, Angela Lansbury as his mum, Frank Sinatra as a good guy and Janet Leigh as his careful doll.

Friday, May 13

CBS NEWS SPECIAL REPORT (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). "Crash Project--The Search for Auto Safety," reports on the Senate investigation, with comment by Ford and General Motors safety engineers.

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Illya is mistaken for the son of Peter O'Toole in "The Arabian Affair"--perhaps the funniest bone U.N.C.L.E. has tickled this season. Repeat.

Saturday, May 14

ABC'S WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). The A.A.U. Indoor Synchronized Swimming championships in Salt Lake City, the World Professional Target Diving championships in Las Vegas, and the National Scrambles Motorcycle championship in Perris, Calif.

HOLIDAY ON ICE (ABC, 9:30-10:30 p.m.). A color special from the Palais du Sport in Paris featuring several world champion skaters, a skating chimpanzee, and Maitre des Ceremonies Milton de Berle.

Sunday, May 15

LOOK UP AND LIVE (CBS, 10:30-11 a.m.). "Thoughts From a New Generation," interviews with Chicago teen-agers of varied economic and social backgrounds.

DIRECTIONS '66 (ABC, 1-1:30 p.m.). "Epilogue--A Ballad of Aging," an essay about old age, using still photos of elderly men and women, as well as their voices.

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). Contemporary Russian film footage highlights a documentary about the 880-day siege of Leningrad during World War II. Repeat.

AN AUSTRIAN AFFAIR (NBC, 6:30-7:30 p.m.). A special investigating the revival of a Nazi-style minority in Austria, complete with dueling fraternities.

FRANK SINATRA: A MAN AND HIS MUSIC (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). An excellent musical autobiography, told and sung by Himself. Repeat.

Monday, May 16 THE BEST ON RECORD (NBC, 9-10 p.m.).

The 1965 Grammy awards -- the Oscars of the record business--with Winners Roger Miller, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Bill Cosby, Petula Clark, Jody Miller, the Anita Kerr singers, Duke Ellington and his band. Guests Tony Bennett and Robert Goulet perform the winning numbers. Bob Hope, Perry Como, Steve Allen, Don Adams, Godfrey Cambridge, Bill Dana and Henry Mancini are also on hand.

THEATER

On Broadway

MARK TWAIN TONIGHT! As Actor Hal Holbrook brings the man from Hannibal, Mo., back to life in a one-man show, he seems a snow-thatched Jove who has laid aside punitive thunderbolts for lightning strokes of irony and mirth. The format is that of Twain's turn-of-the-century lectures; the wry humor is timeless.

PHILADELPHIA, HERE I COME! On the eve of a departure, memories wrestle with longings, the familiar competes with the unknown. Irish Playwright Brian Friel gives a compassionate rendering of the conflict in one young man as he prepares to leave Ireland for the New World.

SWEET CHARITY. Dancer Gwen Verdon is dazzling as the doxy with a heart of gold, and Bob Fosse's choreography is as refreshing as a spring shower. But Neil Simon's book is a reminder that every silver lining must have its cloud.

CACTUS FLOWER. While the French venerate Venus, they pay court to Cupid as well, and delight in mixing a modicum of mischief in their amour. This sex farce imported from Paris is amusing proof that they preach well what they practice.

YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU, but you can enjoy it while you have it is the moral of this madness. The hilarious Sycamore family was first introduced to Broadway 30 years ago by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, and it's nice to have them back in the neighborhood.

RECORDS

Chamber Music

BEETHOVEN: THE "ARCHDUKE" TRIO (Columbia). Beethoven, at 40, expanded the trio beyond the classic proportions and moods of Mozart and Haydn and gave his tiny cast a giant drama. This celebrated group--Violinist Isaac Stern, Cellist Leonard Rose and Pianist Eugene Istomin --never quite let go in the romantic manner, but the players speak their roles with great eloquence and clarity.

BRAHMS: THE THREE STRING QUARTETS (2 LPs; Columbia). There are a few uneasy moments of slightly errant pitch in these recent performances by the venerable Budapest String Quartet. Yet the deep reserves of feeling and the delicate melding of the four musical strands richly enhance Brahms's quartets (he wrote only three, haunted by Beethoven's footsteps behind him). In Schumann's Piano Quintet, the Budapest sets off a rousing performance by Rudolf Serkin, once it gets past the long second-movement funeral march.

RAMEAU: PIECES DE CLAVECIN EN CONCERTS (Nonesuch). These five "concerts" of Rameau are sprightly little suites of three or four movements each. Instead of labeling the two-minute movements by mood or speed--Scherzo or Allegro--Rameaa often gave them the names of friends and acquaintances. Brightly colored miniature portraits are drawn by Flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal, Harpsichordist Robert Veyron-Lacroix and Cellist Jacques Neilz.

CHOPIN AND PROKOFIEV: SONATAS FOR CELLO AND PIANO (RCA Victor). Chopin's only cello sonata is thin but elegant. Prokofiev's work begins in lunar shadows, then emerges into the sunlight of a playful scherzo, with plucked-string passages echoing the gentle percussion of the piano. Cellist Gregor Piatigorsky and Pianist Rudolf Firkusny play together with understanding--although Mstislav Rostropovich and Sviatoslav Richter are even more closely attuned on a Monitor version of the Prokofiev.

SCHUBERT: STRING QUARTET IN G MAJOR (Deutsche Grammophon). Even to ears accustomed to the bite of Bartok's music, Schubert's bold, symphony-length Quartet in G, the last he wrote, holds some harmonic surprises. There are also sad Schubertian songs for the cello and whirling dances for the violins, all of which the London-based Amadeus Quartet carries off in great style.

DEBUSSY: SONATA FOR VIOLIN AND PIANO (Everest). In Debussy's ethereal duet, written the year before he died, the sinuous lines of the violin float on air while the piano furnishes ground swells of sound. Debussy's directions for the second movement--"fantastic and light"--set the entire mood for French Violinist Christian Ferras and Pianist Pierre Barbizet. They also play Faure's Second Violin Sonata, written like Debussy's in 1917 and likewise impressionist in manner, but more restrained.

CINEMA

BORN FREE. Kenya's scenery is spectacular, but the big cats snatch the lion's share of attention in a delightful film version of Joy Adamson's book about Elsa the lioness, whose loyalty and intelligence would do credit to any species.

MORGAN! After their divorce, an eccentric London artist (David Warner) sets out to court his socialite ex-wife (Vanessa Redgrave) according to the law of the jungle. Their battle of the sexes is way, way out but surprisingly hilarious, poignant and civilized.

HARPER. A bleary private eye (Paul Newman) seems to view the world through the bottom of his drinking glass much as Bogart used to do, but Director Jack Smight revives a grand old tradition in slick '60s style. Pamela Tiffin, Robert Wagner and Lauren Bacall are among the beautiful-but-damned folk at hand.

THE GIRL-GETTERS. Youth's go-go restlessness fills this British beach movie about a hot-weather Lothario (Oliver Reed) who sets his own rules for the midsummer nights and ultimately loses by them.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW.

With a script based on Scripture and a cast of nonprofessional actors, Director Pier Paolo Pasolini, an Italian Communist, retells the life of Christ as an earthy social drama, happily avoiding the pretentious piety of most Bible epics.

SHAKESPEARE WALLAH. A young actress (Felicity Kendal) encounters romantic complications while touring India with a tatty Shakespearean company left over from the British colonial era, in a brilliant and graceful comedy.

DEAR JOHN. Love and lust subtly merge in this clever, Swedish-made valentine to a sailor (Jarl Kulle) and a girl (Christina Schollin) whose weekend passion turns out to be more than sin-deep.

THE GROUP. As in Mary McCarthy's gossipy bestseller about Vassar's class of '33, eight little grads make an entertaining mess of their lives while seeking sexual fulfillment and social betterment in the turbulent years before World War II.

THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET. Terrorized by the Nazis, a bumbling Aryan carpenter (Josef Kroner) turns his back on an old Jewish shopkeeper (Ida Kaminska) whose fate is the crux of this Oscar-winning tragicomedy from Czechoslovakia.

BOOKS

Best Reading

GAUGUIN IN THE SOUTH SEAS, by Bengt Danielsson. In a levelheaded account of Gauguin's exile years in Tahiti and the neighboring Marquesas, Anthropologist Danielsson perceives the man without debasing the artist.

THE DOCTOR IS SICK, by Anthony Burgess. A rogue philosopher whose comic novels also bite, Burgess conducts a tour along the perimeters of reality.

PAPA HEMINGWAY, by A. E. Hotchner. Writing with candor and affection, an old friend gives a lively account of the most famous literary man of his generation.

THE LAST BATTLE, by Cornelius Ryan. With meticulous detail. Author Ryan presents the always exciting, often terrifying chronicle of the fall of Berlin and the final agonies of Hitler's Third Reich.

A GENEROUS MAN, by Reynolds Price. A rambling man hunt through the North Carolina pinewoods provides the setting for this subtle, solid novel of a boy's growth into manhood.

A PASSIONATE PRODIGALITY, by Guy Chapman. This reissue of an authentic classic of World War I is more than an unforgettable memoir of life and death in the trenches; it stands as an elegy for an entire generation.

THE FATAL IMPACT, by Alan Moorehead. Historian Moorehead skillfully constructs a new version of the fall of man as he shows how the European Enlightenment brought disastrous changes in the primitive societies of the Pacific.

ACCIDENT, by Nicholas Mosley. This cryptic little tale about the vicariously amorous adventures of an Oxford don raises the art of intellectual tease to the level of mild torture.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. Valley of the Dolls, Susann (1 last week)

2. The Adventurers, Robbins (2)

3. The Double Image, MacInnes (4)

4. The Embezzler, Auchincloss (5)

5. The Source, Michener (3)

6. Tell No Man, St. Johns (8)

7. Those Who Love, Stone (7)

8. The Comedians, Greene (6)

9. Columbella, Whitney

10. Menfreya in the Morning, Holt

NONFICTION

1. In Cold Blood, Capote (2)

2. The Last Battle, Ryan (1)

3. The Last 100 Days, Toland (3)

4. The Proud Tower, Tuchman (4)

5. Games People Play, Berne (6)

6. Papa Hemingway, Hotchner (5)

7. A Gift of Prophecy, Montgomery (8)

8. A Thousand Days, Schlesinger (7)

9. Unsafe at Any Speed, Nader

10. How to Avoid Probate, Dacey

* All times E.D.T.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.