TELEVISION
Wednesday, January 17
LAURA (ABC, 9-11 p.m.).* Truman Capote adapts the 1944 film for this series of specials redone for TV. With Robert Stack, George Sanders, Farley Granger, Arlene Francis, and Lee Bouvier (Radziwill), making her television debut.
RUN FOR YOUR LIFE (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Julie Harris plays a fading novelist, Lucrece, who makes serious charges against her old friend Paul (Ben Gazzara) Bryan in "The Rape of Lucrece."
Thursday, January 18
CHRYSLER PRESENTS THE BOB HOPE CHRISTMAS SPECIAL (NBC, 8:30-10 p.m.). Highlights from Bob's Christmas visit to the G.I.s in Thailand, Viet Nam and Guam.
Friday, January 19
WONDERFUL WORLD OF HORSES (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Lorne Greene narrates this special on all the many ways horses assist man--or simply entertain him.
BELL TELEPHONE HOUR (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). "Carnival of the Menuhins" focuses on Violinist Yehudi Menuhin and his musical family at home and in concert.
Saturday, January 20
NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE (CBS, 1:30-4 p.m.). Philadelphia at Boston.
SHELL'S WONDERFUL WORLD OF GOLF (NBC, 5-6 p.m.). Gardner Dickinson plays Mason Rudolph at the Guatemala Country Club in Central America. Gene Sarazen and Jimmy Demaret are the commentators for the match.
ABC'S WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). The National Figure Skating championships, from Philadelphia.
Sunday, January 21
RACE TO THE WHITE HOUSE (ABC, 1:30-2 p.m.). Governor George Romney is guest.
AMERICAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE ALL-STAR GAME (NBC, 1:30 p.m. to conclusion). From the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Fla.
THE PRO BOWL (CBS, 4-7 p.m.). The National Football League's allstars, from Los Angeles.
Monday, January 22
ROWAN AND MARTIN'S LAUGH-IN (NBC, 8-9 p.m.). The comedy team of Dan Rowan and Dick Martin plays host to Barbara Feldon, Pamela Austin and Henry Gibson, among others, in the first of a new variety series.
THE DANNY THOMAS HOUR (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). Bradford Dillman as the head of a small-time numbers racket talks Richard (Man of La Mancha) Kiley into becoming a bagman for his illegal operation in "Measure of a Man."
THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Reunion time with Garry Moore and Durward Kirby joining Carol.
Tuesday, January 23
THE ANNUAL N.B.A. ALL-STAR GAME (ABC, 8:30 p.m. to conclusion). Top stars from the National Basketball Association's Eastern and Western divisions hoop it up on the court in Manhattan's new Madison Square Garden.
THEATER
HOW TO BE A JEWISH MOTHER culls some of the feebler witticisms from Dan Greenburg's fitfully satiric guidebook and further dilutes them with a few primitive racial cliches. Veteran Comedienne Molly Picon clucks and coos authentically, but Bubi, her baby, is, of all people, hulking Negro Comic Godfrey Cambridge (brought in, he says, because "there aren't too many Negro theater parties"). Some things in the book did strike home; yet Seymour Vall's two-character revue is nothing but the schlock of recognition.
THE SHOWOFF. Into a middle-middle-class Philadelphia family comes a two-bit backslapping braggart who succeeds in captivating the young daughter and outraging the rest of the family. Helen Hayes has found her best role since she played Queen Victoria 29 years ago. She is the carping, cajoling mother of the family in this excellent revival of George Kelly's 43-year-old comedy.
PANTAGLEIZE is the creation of Belgian Playwright Michel de Ghelderode and a "lunar individual" to whom a funny thing happens on the way to his destiny. In a visually impressive production by the APA repertory company, Ellis Rabb plays the innocent who just happens to be there when a revolution is looking for a leader.
EVERYTHING IN THE GARDEN is Edward Albee's version of the wicked world of U.S. suburbia. When the little woman (Barbara Bel Geddes) finds she needs more money, she goes to work on the side as a, well, you know, a lady of pleasure. Hubby (Barry Nelson) adjusts quickly after he finds out all the girls at the country club are doing it.
THE BIRTHDAY PARTY. Harold Pinter taps the adrenal flow of the audience's anxiety and guilt as he unleashes a pair of new roomers on the sole boarder of a rooming house at an English seaside resort.
Off Broadway
SONG OF THE LUSITANIAN BOGEYMAN marks the highly propitious debut of a fresh repertory group, the Negro Ensemble Company. The Peter Weiss play is an atrabilious tract on the evils of Portuguese colonialism, but the supple cast turns it into a mimetic dance of woe and joy.
IPHIGENIA IN AULIS. Euripides' parable of disastrous ambition is charged with timeless emotion, and Director Michael Cacoyannis keeps this production in swirling, stylized motion. Greek Actress Irene Papas brings to her role of Clytemnestra a smoldering tension that erupts in a cry expressing the pain of a woman whose husband destroys their daughter for his own ends.
RECORDS
Operatic & Recital
STRAUSS: ELEKTRA (2 LPs; London). Whips crack, victims scream and villains laugh, but Birgit Nilsson's laser-beam voice prevails, making this one of the most powerfully brilliant recordings in years. Strauss must have had a prescience of Nilsson's artistry when he penned his strident version of Sophocles' agonizing tragedy, for she is blessed with an almost superhuman ability to pierce thick orchestration while lavishing subtle expressiveness on every phrase. Others in the cast should receive credit for their contributions, especially Regina Resnik, who sings a demented Clytemnestra with genius. Georg Solti conducts, and John Culshaw--who produced London Records' fine Ring Cycle recordings--produced this one too. It will leave most listeners in a cold sweat, but those with strong nerves will recognize it as a masterpiece.
TCHAIKOVSKY: QUEEN OF SPADES (4 LPs; Melodiya/Angel). Because of the form's grandeur of aspiration and complexity of means, it is difficult to find a trivial opera. Yet Tchaikovsky managed to write a nearly flawless bit of trivia when he sat down to put silly music to a silly libretto about a fateful faro game and an old countess who is scared to death. That's right, scared to death by a mad gambler named Herman. In this recording, the role of the Countess is fairly well sung by Mezzo-Soprano Valentina Levko, and Herman is less well sung by Tenor Zurab Andzhaparidzye. The other principals validate Russia's pride in its bassos and baritones, and embarrassment for its screechy sopranos. Boris Khaikin conducts the Bolshoi's orchestra with conviction--which is not an attitude easily assumed for this opera.
BORODIN: PRINCE IGOR (3 LPs; Angel). A nation's music can reflect a nation's soul, and Igor performs an expose of Mother Russia's near-seduction by terrifying but awfully stylish barbarians from the East. Igor, as a P.O.W., must resist the charms of the Khan's slave girls singing Borodin's most popular themes, The Polovtsian Dances, not to mention a suave invitation from the Khan to join up and "together feed on the blood of our enemies." Boris Christoff sings two major roles boomingly: the comparatively noble Khan Konchak and the curiously ignoble Russian Prince Galitsky. Constantin Chekerliiski does well as Igor, and his colleagues of the Sofia National Theater Opera, under Conductor Jerzy Semkow, contribute to the opera's oriental beauty.
LEONTYNE PRICE: PRIMA DONNA, VOL. 2 (RCA Victor). Scores of recital albums are released each year, one after the other, boasting unknown, known and overly known singers rendering familiar collections of pop arias. Such banality is quite beneath Leontyne Price. She adorns the measliest note with proud individuality, and in this recording caresses and enriches works ranging from Handel's Care selve through Weber's Leise, leise to Puccini's Senza mamma.
CINEMA
SMASHING TIME. En route to fame and fortune in swinging London, Rita Tushingham and Lynn Redgrave mug their way through mud, sprayed paint and hurled pies amid a mod bedlam that is more goofy than spoofy.
THE STRANGER. Italian Director Luchino Visconti (Rocco and His Brothers) has been fanatically faithful to Albert Camus' fine novel of alienation and despair, even to the point of including a long soliloquy on life, death and the meaninglessness of it all by the hero (Marcello Mastroianni), which mars an otherwise powerful film.
IN COLD BLOOD. In black-and-white photography that evokes the grimness of the real event, Director Richard Brooks records the murder of a Kansas family with remarkable fidelity and probes the characters of the two killers, expertly played by Robert Blake (as Perry Smith) and Scott Wilson (as Dick Hickock).
BOOKS
Best Reading
THE DIFFERENCE OF MAN AND THE DIFFERENCE IT MAKES, by Mortimer J. Adler. The American philosopher and dialectician defends man's unique nature against the encroachment of manlike machines.
THE BLAST OF WAR 1939-1945, by Harold Macmillan. In the second volume of his memoirs, the former Prime Minister again shows himself a man of generous mind and literary ability as he tells of his role in England's wartime government.
TOLSTOY, by Henri Troyat. One of history's greatest writers is brought to life in a monument to the art of biography.
THE FUTURE OF GERMANY, by Karl Jaspers. In a remarkable work of national selfcriticism, the German philosopher appeals to his countrymen to relinquish the dream of a perfectly ordered state and to forge a nation based on individual political and moral responsibility.
WILLIAM MORRIS, HIS LIFE, WORK AND FRIENDS, by Philip Henderson. A biography of the talented artist who dedicated his life to restoring beauty and craftsmanship to the working class of 19th century England.
THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER, by William Styron. A vivid novel based on the diary of the man who led the 1831 Negro slave revolt in Virginia.
JOURNEY INTO THE WHIRLWIND, by Eugenia Semyonovna Ginzburg. The horrors of Stalin's slave-labor camps are recalled with painful intensity by a woman who was a prisoner for 17 years.
THE COLLECTED STORIES OF ANDRE MAUROIS. The female mind and heart are examined in these 38 tales by the late French partisan in the battle of the sexes.
MEMOIRS: 1925-1950, by George F. Kennan. A leading expert in American-Russian relations, the former diplomat details his career as student and shaper of U.S. foreign policy.
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. The Confessions of Nat Turner, Styron (1 last week)
2. The Gabriel Hounds, Stewart (4)
3. Christy, Marshall (3)
4. Topaz, Uris (2)
5. The Chosen, Potok (8)
6. The Exhibitionist, Sutton (6)
7. The Instrument, O'Hara (5)
8. Where Eagles Dare, MacLean (10)
9. The President's Plane Is Missing, Serling (9)
10. Rosemary's Baby, Levin (7)
NONFICTION
1. Our Crowd, Birmingham (1)
2. Nicholas and Alexandra, Massie (2)
3. Tolstoy, Troyat (6)
4. Memoirs: 1925-1950, Kennan (4)
5. Report from Iron Mountain, Lewin, ed. (9)
6. Rickenbacker, Rickenbacker (3)
7. The New Industrial State, Galbraith (5)
8. Between Parent and Child, Ginott (8)
9. Last Reflections on a War, Fall
10. Incredible Victory, Lord (7)
* All times E.S.T.
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