TELEVISION

All eyes, especially TV's, will be on Washington this week when Luci Johnson marries Patrick Nugent. Special programs both live and taped will cover virtually every aspect of the event, except the ceremony in the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. CBS leads off with a wedding-eve special on Friday from 10 to 11 p.m. NBC and ABC join in on Saturday with live coverage from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., plus taped recaps of the highlights on all three networks in the evening.

Thursday, August 4

THE AVENGERS (ABC, 10-11 p.m.).* In a modernized parody of those Pearl White cliffhangers of the early 1900s, Mrs. Emma Peel and John Steed set out to investigate a snag in Britain's early-warning radar system, and Mrs. Peel ends up tied to a railroad track--all to the accompaniment of a tinkling old piano.

Friday, August 5

SUMMER FUN (ABC, 8-8:30 p.m.). Bert Lahr plays a well-meaning but blundering spirit who tries to help a family with its daily problems in "Thompson's Ghost."

COLLEGE ALL-STAR FOOTBALL GAME (ABC, 10 p.m. to conclusion). Outstanding seniors from the 1965 collegiate season meet the Green Bay Packers, champions of the pro National Football League, in the 33rd annual College All-Star game at Soldier Field in Chicago.

Saturday, August 6

ABC'S WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). Heavyweight Champion Cassius Clay in a title bout against his Bum-of-the-Month, this time Britain's Brian London, live by satellite from Earls Court, London.

Sunday, August 7

AMERICAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE PRESEASON GAME (NBC, 3:30 p.m. to conclusion). The A.F.L. Champion Buffalo Bills meet the Boston Patriots in Boston College Alumni Stadium.

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). "Airdrop at Arnhem" recounts the massive Allied paratroop attack behind Nazi lines in Holland on Sept. 17, 1944, and reviews the tragic failure of this bold plan to hasten the end of World War II. Walter Cronkite revisits the area where, as a war correspondent, he parachuted with the 101st Airborne Division, and also interviews the intelligence chief of the Dutch underground. Repeat.

CBS NEWS SPECIAL (CBS, 10-10:30 p.m.). Harry Reasoner narrates "Essay on Bridges" by Andrew Rooney. Repeat.

THEATER

On Broadway

MAME. Practically everybody has already met Auntie in a book, a movie, and a play, but as impersonated by Angela Lansbury in a musical version, she's the kind of luscious and loony relative who makes reunions fun.

PHILADELPHIA, HERE I COME! Irish Playwright Brian Friel, knowing that every man is his own toughest critic and most devoted fan, uses two actors to play the inner and outer selves of a youth caught between nostalgia and expectations before leaving for America.

SWEET CHARITY is a dance hall hostess, fortune's fool and no one's darling. Her unsuccessful attempts to remedy the situation provide the rather sad story for a very slick musical. As the doxy who requites the unrequited, Gwen Verdon is a dancing dynamo.

WAIT A MINIM! Thanks to a talented cast and exotic instruments, this musical revue from South Africa is light of foot and light of heart. But with satire often too diffuse to make its point, it sometimes seems light of mind as well.

CACTUS FLOWER. The French need sex farces as children need fairy tales. In this telling, a dour duckling (Lauren Bacall) becomes an appealing swan just in time to tame the big wolf (Barry Nelson). No one cares whether or not they live happily ever after.

Off Broadway

HOGAN'S GOAT. The poetry is purplish, the melodrama mauve, but William Alfred paints a colorful canvas of the deeds and misdeeds of Irish politicians in Brooklyn at the turn of the century.

THE MAD SHOW offers some diverting bits of comedy and occasional moments of" humor, but in general its mood is too mild to live up to the title.

RECORDS

Light Classics

LOS INDIOS TABAJARAS: CASUALLY CLASSIC (RCA Victor). Thirty years ago, two sons of a Tabajaras Indian chieftain in Brazil's Amazon jungle came across an old guitar on a forest path. They taught themselves to play it, traveled 1,200 miles to Rio to be heard, and after absorbing the ridicule of the crowds, traded their uncouth twangings for classical techniques. Here the brothers play their Brazilianized versions of such favorites as The Minute Waltz and Flight of the Bumblebee, and there is nothing casual about their virtuosity.

AN EVENING AT THE "POPS" (RCA Victor). Arthur Fiedler, that old magician-maestro, knows the necessary ingredient of light-music concerts--surprise and wit. The Boston faithful who came to the recent concert at which this recording was made sat still for an outrageous mixture of The Beautiful Blue Danube, A Hard Day's Night and something called TV Triptych, a melange of themes from three TV shows. They cheered as if the Red Sox had won the pennant.

OFFENBACH: GAIETE" PARISIENNE (London). "Every accent in it is a snap of the fingers in the face of moral responsibility," snapped George Bernard Shaw in the face of Jacques Offenbach's high-kicking music, which conquered 19th century Europe and has not retreated since. In 1938 French Composer Manuel Rosenthal raided half a dozen Offenbach operettas to construct Gaiete Parisienne, a raffish ballet night on the town in Paris, and Charles Munch changes his usually sedate ways to lead the New Philharmonia Orchestra in an exuberant performance.

ITALIAN OPERA PRELUDES AND INTERMEZZOS (RCA Victor). Italian opera composers lavished their melodic genius on entr'actes during which audiences often strolled and chatted. Included in this catalogue are the familiar intermezzos from that perennial double bill, Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, and less well-known interludes by Cilea, Catalani and Wolf-Ferrari. The music is well worth silent concentration, and the performance by Arturo Basile conducting the Bologna Municipal Theater Orchestra is both intimate and exacting.

LIBERACE PLAYS CONCERTOS BY CANDLELIGHT (Columbia). Liberace turns his febrile fingers to "concertos and concerto-like compositions" including themes from movies like Suicide Squadron and While I Live, in which no one had previously suspected concerto potential.

CAPITOL CLASSICS (Capitol). In an effort to engage the rock-'n'-rollers, Capitol has released a series of classics wrapped in sexy jackets and hoked-up titles. Among recent issues: Leonard Pennario Plays Chopin for Young Lovers, which translates the masterpieces into No Other Love, Till the End of Time and I'm Always Chasing Rainbows; I Love You: Romantic Melodies of Edvard Grieg, dolefully played by the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra; and I Like Beethoven: a Musical Tribute to the Hero of Nonconformists Everywhere, a description that goes a long way toward blunting the composer's impact.

RITUAL FIRE DANCE (Columbia) and THE WONDERFUL WALTZES OF TCHAIKOVSKY (RCA Victor) are two graceful dance anthologies. In the former, Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia deftly step through a medley ""of Falla, Ponchielli, Rossini and Smetana; in the latter, Morton Gould and the Chicago soar with ballet and opera waltzes that are not an invitation but a command to dance.

CINEMA

HOW TO STEAL A MILLION. Ars graftia artis. Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole in an elegant comedy about the joys of burgling and forging the old masters.

WALK, DON'T RUN. Stepping lightly out of his customary Romeo role, Gary Grant at 62 plays matchmaker for Samantha Eggar and Jim Hutton. The trio squeezes winning high comedy from a wheezy plot about crowded housing in Tokyo during the 1964 Olympics.

WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? Edward Albee's corrosive play about the love-hate relationship between a middle-aged faculty couple, Martha and George, is just as brutal and just as funny in the screen version, starring the Burtons, Elizabeth and Richard.

THE ENDLESS SUMMER. Two California surfers prowl the world in a studious documentary on the quest for the perfect wave.

A BIG HAND FOR THE LITTLE LADY. The full house includes Henry Fonda, Joanne Woodward and a couple of other aces in a mock-heroic poker comedy.

THE NAKED PREY. Director-Star Cornel Wilde as a white hunter desperately trying to escape native man hunters in 19th century Africa.

"THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING." As a Soviet sailor whose sub has run aground on an island off the New England coast, Broadway's Alan Arkin makes a feature film debut that may well win him an Oscar.

AND NOW MIGUEL. A ten-year-old boy comes of age among New Mexican sheep ranchers in an intelligent juvenile film by the makers of Island of the Blue Dolphins and Misty.

LE BONHEUR. Writer-Director Agnes Varda translates the French word for happiness into an exquisite tale of infidelity.

BORN FREE. How a tamed lion learns to survive in the wilderness is told in an en thralling adventure film based on the bestseller by Joy Adamson.

DEAR JOHN. A robust seafaring man (Jarl Kulle) and a waitress (Christina Schollin) have a weekend fling that develops into a tender Swedish love match.

BOOKS

Best Reading

SELECTED POEMS, by Andrei Voznesensky. In these fine translations by W. H. Auden and others, the stocky, stentorian Muscovite justifies his reputation as Russia's finest lyric poet since Pasternak.

THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS, by Carl Bakal. An often intemperate but thought-provoking polemic against the easy availability of firearms, which cause close to 17,000 deaths yearly in the U.S.

CHINESE FOOTBINDING, by Howard S. Levy. In a book that often reads like an Oriental Kinsey report, Sinologue Levy recounts the lurid history of a national foot fetish that persisted for a thousand years.

A VOICE THROUGH A CLOUD, by Denton Welch. A brilliant, terrible, autobiographical novel recapitulates the story of the tragic motor accident that broke Author Welch's body but gave him the clarity of a man seeing life for the last time.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON AND THE WORLD, by Philip L. Geyelin. A perceptive, sometimes tartly irreverent account of how L.B.J. has fared in foreign affairs, by the Wall Street Journal's diplomatic correspondent.

LOVE'S BODY, by Norman O. Brown. The author of Life Against Death, elaborates on his thesis that sexual repression is the skulking killer of laughter and freedom.

JAMES BOSWELL: THE EARLIER YEARS, by Frederick A. Pottle. This warm and perceptive portrait reveals Johnson's biographer as one of the most dedicated and engaging rakehells of his or anyone's time.

MR. CLEMENS AND MARK TWAIN, by Justin Kaplan. A thorough, thoughtful biography paints Mark Twain as an embittered cynic who courted the values of his time and despised himself for doing so.

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

2. The Adventurers, Robbins (2)

3. Tai-Pan, Clavell (3)

4. The Source, Michener (4)

5. Tell No Man, St. Johns (5)

6. The Embezzler, Auchincloss (6)

7. The Double Image, Maclnnes (8)

8. I, the King, Keyes (10)

9. Those Who Love, Stone (7)

10. The Detective, Thorp (9)

NONFICTION

1. How to Avoid Probate, Dacey (1)

2. The Last Battle, Ryan (2)

3. Papa Hemingway, Hotchner (3)

4. Human Sexual Response, Masters and Johnson (4)

5. In Cold Blood, Capote (5)

6. Games People Play, Berne (6)

7. The Crusades, Oldenbourg (9)

8. Churchill, Moran (7)

9. The Big Spenders, Beebe (10)

10. Unsafe at Any Speed, Nader (8)

* All times E.D.T.

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