TELEVISION

Wednesday, November 9

BATMAN (ABC, 7:30-8 p.m.)* Movie Director Otto Preminger briefly reverts to acting in the guest role of Mr. Freeze, threatening to cool everybody in Gotham City unless they ante up $1 billion in antifreeze.

BOB HOPE PRESENTS THE CHRYSLER THEATER (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). When a songwriter (Peter Falk) hits it big and a society girl (Janet Leigh) just as suddenly runs into hard times, their mutual tax man recommends a merger for the best tax break. The momentous question: will their compatibility extend beyond IRS Form 1040?

THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS (ABC, 9-9:30 p.m.). Actor Robert Lansing's real wife, Emily McLaughlin, drops in for a guest bit of spy spoofing in "Pay Now, Pray Later."

CLOWN ALLEY (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Red Skelton & Co. in a special tribute to the circus funnymen. With Jackie Coogan, Audrey Meadows, Robert Merrill, Vincent Price, Martha Raye, Cesar Romero, Amanda Blake and Bobby Rydell.

ABC STAGE 67 (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). A city dweller's nightmare becomes reality in 2067, when the U.S. population tops 1 billion, and it takes three weeks to travel the traffic-jammed four miles from New York City's Battery Park to Times Square. (Actually, a lot of New Yorkers feel that 2067 is here already.) Caught in "The People Trap" are Stuart Whitman, Vera Miles, Connie Stevens and Lee Grant.

Thursday, November 10 JERICHO (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). The grass is always greener on the other side of the tube, so Singer Vic Damone crosses over to play a paisano partisan who helps the Allied agents on the Jericho team.

BEWITCHED (ABC, 9-9:30 p.m.). Those unconvinced by official stories about what caused the great East Coast blackout last year now have an occult explanation in "The Short Happy Circuit of Aunt Clara."

THE CBS THURSDAY NIGHT MOVIES (CBS, 9-11:45 p.m.). High politics in Allen Drury's Advise and Consent (1962) with Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton, Don Murray, Walter Pidgeon, Peter Lawford and Gene Tierney.

Friday, November 11

THE CBS FRIDAY NIGHT MOVIES (CBS, 9-11:15 p.m.). In Major Dundee (1965), Charlton Heston as a Union officer and Richard Harris as a Confederate prisoner join forces to defeat a marauding Apache

" HALLMARK HALL OF FAME (NBC, 9:30-11 p.m.). Peter Ustinov, Geraldine Page and Anthony Quayle going Barefoot in Athens, and having a rough time of it as Socrates (Ustinov) is ordered to stand trial for corrupting the thoughts of Athenian youth. Hemlock for those who miss it.

Saturday, November 12

ABC'S WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). The National "500" Stock Car championship, Charlotte, N.C.; the World Lumberjack championships, Hayward, Wis.; and a preview of the Nov. 14 Clay-Williams heavyweight championship fight in Houston.

SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 9-11:30 p.m.). James Stewart and Doris Day in Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956).

Sunday, November 13

DISCOVERY '66 (ABC, 11:30 a.m. to noon). "The World Beneath the Sea," first of two parts examining the work of marine biologists at Miami University who are working to increase the food harvest from the three-fourths of the earth that is ocean.

MEET THE PRESS (NBC, 1-1:30 p.m.). Michigan's Republican Governor George Romney.

DIRECTIONS (ABC, 1-1:30 p.m.). Hume Cronyn narrates the first of three parts, "The Sacred Lake of the Taos," dealing with New Mexico's Taos Pueblo Indians and their fight with the U.S. Government over rights to their sacred Blue Lake area.

MUTUAL OF OMAHA'S WILD KINGDOM (NBC, 5-5:30 p.m.). Host Marlin Perkins tracks deep into Indian jungles for his film, "The Tigers of Sariska," starring a Bengal tigress and her two cubs.

BACK TO BUDAPEST (NBC, 6:30-7:30 p.m.). NBC News Correspondent Frank Bourgholtzer, who reported the 1956 Hungarian revolution, returns for a look at family and factory life in the satellite capital.

Monday, November 14 RAT PATROL (ABC, 8:30-9 p.m.). Enemies become allies when Germans join with Rat Patrol Raiders to stave off an Arab attack.

Tuesday, November 15 CBS REPORTS (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Charles Kuralt reports on "The State of the Unions," reviewing the history of American unionism and discussing present-day problems--from the fight to organize a grape workers' union in California to the U.A.W.'s complex operations at Ford Motor Co.'s Dearborn, Mich., plant.

THEATER

On Broadway

HOW'S THE WORLD TREATING YOU? manages to be blisteringly funny in the modern British fashion as it peppers hypocrisy, respectability, caste and class snobbery and native Blimpcompoops. Two insuperable zanies, Peter Bayliss and Patricia Routledge, volley comic antics back and forth with the precision of a finals match at Wimbledon.

THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE. Frank Marcus' comedy hangs out the dirty laundry behind the scenes of a BBC soap opera On the air, Sister George (Beryl Reid) is a habitual hymn hummer, but once her loving listeners tune out, she stalks around her lesbian household as a gin-and-cigar-flavored tyrant with whiplash language.

THE APPLE TREE spoofs Adam and Eve and other celebrated romances, including the requited love of a slavey for Hollywood stardom. Despite the saucily mocking presence of Barbara Harris, the evening consists of flabby satire, cartoon comedy and plop art.

A DELICATE BALANCE, by Edward Albee, has echoes of Pinterish menace and Cocktail Party elegance as it mutedly discusses the absence of love and the anguish of aloneness. The characters fill and refill their whisky glasses, but the play is empty of thought or drama.

MAME. Every family has its black sheep but few have a renegade as racy as the tante terrible of the Dennis clan. The staging of this musical is sensational, the performances professional. The music, however, is distinguished only by its volume.

PHILADELPHIA, HERE I COME! A son of the Ould Sod cuts 'through the Irish mist that envelops his boyhood village as he sets out for a metropolis in an alien land. Playwright Brian Friel tells his tale with invention and compassion.

SWEET CHARITY, a musical suggested by Fellini's Nights of Cabirici, chronicles the sexcapades of a Manhattan taxi dancer who's looking for a one-way ticket to the altar. Gwen Verdon leads a high-kicking troupe through Bob Fosse's choreographic wonderland.

WAIT A MINIM! has held a stage in Manhattan for seven months now, after stops in Johannesburg and London, us South African octet offers well-paced skits even if the targets of its satire are slightly behind the times.

CACTUS FLOWER is a Gallic sex farce that not only survived the transplant from Paris, but, as deftly tended by Abe Burrows, has thrived as a long-blooming Broadway hit.

Off Broadway

EH?, by Henry Livings. This English import is a gorgeous farce with a stubbornly heroic anti-hero whom no machine, man or woman can tame. In a perfect cast, Dustin Hoffman is pluperfect.

THE BUTTER AND EGG MAN first opened in 1925, and is the only play that George S. Kaufman ever wrote without a collaborator. This show-biz saga sags a bit now, and the lines are scarcely howlers, but period costumes and an able, loving cast endow it with innocent nostalgia.

ClNEMA

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM. Even though Director Richard Lester (A Hard Day's Night, The Knack) tries hard, he cannot spoil all of the fun in this hilarious burlesque based on the plays of Plautus. The funniest things happen to Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers and Jack Gilford, playing Pseudolus, Lycus and Hysterium, three dirty old men in dirty old Rome.

THE FORTUNE COOKIE. Director Billy Wilder (The Apartment; Kiss Me, Stupid) tackles that great pastime, cheating the insurance company. His anti-hero is a leering, sneering shyster lawyer, played by Walter Matthau, who pulls the strings for the supposedly injured party, Jack Lemmon, and ends up stealing the show.

GEORGY GIRL. In an ordinary British comedy, Lynn Redgrave (daughter of Sir Michael, sister of Vanessa) displays extraordinary zest as an overweight, forlorn young creature who dreams only of romance and motherhood. Instead, she finds the path to matrimony an obstacle course of tragicomic misadventures, middle-aged satyrs, and a modish menage a trois.

LOVES OF A BLONDE. Czech Director Milos Forman, 34, explores the pleasures and pains of youth in this touching comedy about a small-town girl and her brief encounter with a dashing young hipster from Prague.

CRAZY QUILT. Henry (Tom Rosqui), by profession a termite exterminator, is a completely illusionless man. Lorabelle (Ina Mela), who believes in Providence and butterflies, is a visionary maid. How this unlikely couple meet, marry, and share a long life together is the bittersweet burden of this American fable.

BOOKS

Best Reading

LA CHAMADE, by Franchise Sagan. Another swift vignette of autumnal love in Paris, turned out with crisp economy by a Gallic miniaturist.

THE SECRET SURRENDER, by Allen Dulles. This account of the capitulation of 1,000,000 Nazi and Italian troops during World War II, told by the man who arranged it, demonstrates that fact can sometimes be an improvement on espionage fiction.

THE BIRDS FALL DOWN, by Rebecca West. To her nonfictional catalogue of traitors, Dame Rebecca in her sixth novel has now added the imaginary figure of a double agent, plying his unscrupulous trade in fin de siecle Europe.

ROBERT FROST: THE EARLY YEARS, by Lawrance Thompson. An expert and surprising portrait of the poet as a precious, mixed-up young man who had to work hard to become a serene country sage.

A HOUSE IN ORDER, by Nigel Dennis. There is a very fine difference between being savagely witty and wittily savage, and Author Dennis never confuses the two in this anguished parable of a man who chooses to be a gardener instead of a soldier.

TREMOR OF INTENT, by Anthony Burgess. An ordinary spy plot becomes a novel of unusual depth, thanks to Burgess' memorable characterization and wit.

THE SUN KING, by Nancy Mitford. The scandalous complexity and splendor of Louis XIV's Court of Versailles reconstructed--and dissected--with learning and flair.

THE FIXER, by Bernard Malamud. The 1913 Beiliss trial, the Russian equivalent of the Dreyfus case, becomes an opportunity for Novelist Malamud to analyze the individual beleaguered by orthodoxies.

Best Sellers

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

2. The Secret of Santa Vittoria, Crichton (2)

3. Capable of Honor, Drury (4)

4. Tai-Pan, Clavell (3)

5. The Fixer, Malamud (7)

6. The Adventurers, Robbins (5)

7. Giles Goat-Boy, Barth (6)

8. All in the Family, O'Connor (8)

9. Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry, Kemelman

10. The Source, Michener (9)

NON FICTION

1. How to Avoid Probate, Dacey (1)

2. Rush to Judgment, Lane (2)

3. Everything But Money, Levenson (3)

4. Random House Dictionary of the English Language (10)

5. Games People Play, Berne (5)

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

7. With Kennedy, Salinger (6)

8. The Search for Amelia Earhart, Goerner (8)

9. Flying Saucers--Serious Business, Edwards (7)

10. The Passover Plot, Schonfield (9)

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