Wednesday, February 12 SINGER PRESENTS THE BEAT OF THE BRASS (NBC, 9-10 p.m.).* Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass tootle through the U.S., stopping in such places as Ellis Island, New Orleans during Mardi Gras, and the chil dren's zoo in Los Angeles. Repeat.
Thursday, February 1 3 NET PLAYHOUSE (NET, 8-9:30 p.m.). John Hopkins' quartet of dramas, Talking to a Stranger, examines a weekend in the life of the Stephens family. Each of the plays tells the story from the viewpoint of a different member of the family. First to be aired will be the daughter's version: Any time You're Ready I'll Sparkle.
Friday, February 14 FRIDAY NIGHT MOVIES (CBS, 9-11 p.m.).
Kim Novak begins a thesis on sex, and Tony Randall, James Garner and Howard Duff turn up on her index cards in Boys' Night Out (1962).
Saturday, February 15 FISHERMAN'S WORLD (CBS, 5-6 p.m.). Celebrities Gypsy Rose Lee, John Gary and Sam Snead are among the aficionados who set out with hook, lure and spear to capture the finny ones.
WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). North American Figure Skating Championships from Oakland, Calif., team up with the World Figure "8" Stock Car Thrill Race from Islip, N.Y.
FEELIN' GROOVY AT MARINE WORLD (ABC, 7:30-8 p.m.). Bing Crosby and his wife Kathryn sing and swing their way through ABC's 60-acre Marine World complex, meeting Anissa ("Buffy") Jones and the Rascals along the way.
Sunday, February 16 PHOENIX OPEN (ABC, 5-7 p.m.). By the time TV gets there, they'll be on the last round of the $100,000 golf tourney at the Arizona Country Club.
CHILDREN'S LETTERS TO GOD (NBC, 8:30-9 p.m.). Gene Kelly hosts the live action-animated special that explores youngsters' letters and their thoughts about creation, human relations, animals and love.
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE ICE CAPADES OF 1969 (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). Jack Jones, Nancy Sinatra and Louis Nye add spice and variety to a collection of the skating troupe's silver moments.
Monday, February 17 NET JOURNAL (NET, 9-10 p.m.). "The Battered Child" is a documentary on the mal treated child and his abusive parents.
CHRYSLER PRESENTS THE BOB HOPE COMEDY SPECIAL (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). Diana Ross and the Supremes are on the guest list.
JACK BENNY'S BIRTHDAY SPECIAL (NBC, 10-1 1 p.m.). The eternal 39-year-old cele brates, with help from Lucille Ball, Dan Blocker, Lawrence Welk, Dennis Day, Ann-Margret and Singer Rouvanun.
Tuesday, February 18 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY SPECIAL (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). An expedition by Land Rover and on foot explores "Australia -- the Timeless Land" showing the contrasts between the modern coastal cities and the primitive Outback, and peering into the future of the continent that may be the last frontier.
THEATER
On Broadway CELEBRATION, by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, the co-creators of The Fantasticks, is a charmer for sophisticates who have never quite forsaken the magic realm of childhood. Potemkin, a master of ceremonies winningly played by Keith Charles, presides over a land of enchantment peopled by a handsome blond Orphan, a crestfallen Angel, a bored and impotent Mr. Rich, and a group of Revelers. With a straight melodic line and the apt lyrics of the songs, the play is one of those good things that come in small packages.
COCK-A-DOODLE DANDY is a Sean O'Casey play that has rarely been staged during the 20 years since it was written. Accustomed as they are to the theater of the absurd, today's theatergoers are less likely than the audiences of the '50s to balk at the play's zany unconcern with sequiturs, probabilities or dramatic p's and g's. The very talented players of the APA Repertory Company make this blast at what O'Casey felt was wrong with Ireland into a rollicking, rambunctious piece of theater.
HADRIAN VII is a dramatization of Frederick William Rolfe's novel, Hadrian the Seventh. Playwright Peter Luke makes Rolfe the hero of his own story; he is a misfit who, after being rejected twice for the priesthood, develops the fantasy that he becomes Pope. In a performance that is a paradigm of the elegant best in English acting style, Alec McCowen evokes a sense of pity and affection for Rolfe.
PROMISES, PROMISES is a musical to remember other musicals by. No playgoer will feel bilked if he attends the show, nor will he miss a thing if he skips it. Jerry Orbach as the self-abasing anti-hero and Marian Mercer as an amorous pickup turn in the best performances.
FORTY CARATS is precisely the sort of show that people always say they want to see in order to forget the trials and tribulations of the day. The comedy stars Julie Harris as a half-smitten, half-reluctant lady ardently wooed by Marco St. John, a handsome lad almost half her age.
JIMMY SHINE. Playwright Murray Schisgal is lucky to have Dustin Hoffman's ingratiating stage personality working for him in this play--which is somewhat like a book from which the text has been excised and only the footnotes published.
Off Broadway
TANGO, by Polish Playwright Slawomir Mrozek, has David Margulies as a young man eager to exercise the sacred right of youth to rebel; but he finds that his totally permissive home life leaves him nothing to rebel against. Despite stilted direction and a somewhat awkward translation, the play is one of those rare and engrossing dramas that pay an evening-long courtesy call on the mind.
LITTLE MURDERS is a revival of Cartoonist Jules Feiffer's first full-length play. Though it still seems a series of animated cartoons spliced together, Director Alan Arkin gives it a breath-catchingly funny air, a surrealistic style, and an incredibly fast pace.
TO BE YOUNG, GIFTED AND BLACK. In a moving tribute to Negro Playwright Lorraine Hansberry, an able interracial cast presents sketches from her writings that thread an elegiac mood through the range of comedy, rage and introspection.
DAMES AT SEA. Bernadette Peters, aided by an engaging cast, is naive little Ruby, who comes to the Broadway "jungle" determined to "tap her way to stardom" in this friendly parody of the movie musicals of the '30s.
CINEMA
RED BEARD, the most recent film by the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, is a morality play about the spiritual growth of a young doctor. Kurosawa is technically without peer, and such actors as Toshiro Mifune help him to achieve almost overwhelming emotional force.
GRAZIE ZIA is a flashy first film by young (25) Italian Film Maker Salyatore Samperi. His theme is moral and spiritual decadence, and his style is already accomplished, but the film is too repetitious and vague to be entirely satisfying.
THE SHAME. Ingmar Bergman examines war and the artistic conscience in his 29th film. The visual imagery is brilliantly desolate, and the performances--by Max von Sydow, Gunnar Bjornstrand and Liv Ullman--are orchestrated with precision.
THE FIXER. "I am a man who, although not much, is still much more than nothing," proclaims the accidental hero of this drama of social commitment and political responsibility. Under the brilliant direction of John Frankenheimer, Alan Bates, Dirk Bogarde and Ian Holm often approach perfection in their difficult roles.
FACES. The purgatory of modern, middle-aged marriage is depicted by Writer-Director John Cassavetes with an obsessive eye for surface realism. His film has an air of honesty, but his characters are so preoccupied with themselves that they leave little room for audience empathy.
THE NIGHT THEY RAIDED MINSKY'S. Good humor and excellent performances abound in this affectionate tribute to the raunchy days of oldtime burlesque. As a seedy song and dance man, Jason Robards wears a straw boater as naturally as John Wayne wears a Stetson.
THE FIREMEN'S BALL. What starts out as a simple, funny little anecdote about a group of firemen planning a party for their retiring chief is turned by Director Miloi Forman (Loves of a Blonde) into a pithy parody of Communist bureaucracy.
OLIVER! Dickens' novel might at first seem as likely a subject for a musical as Middlemarch, but Lionel Bart's score, Carol Reed's direction and John Box's breathtaking sets all combine to make what is easily the entertainment of the year.
BOOKS
Best Reading
IT HAPPENED IN BOSTON? by Russell H. Greenan. In this sprightly first novel, a witty but deranged narrator, park-bench dreamer and master painter tells of the ludicrous events that made him a forger and murderer anxious to meet and kill God.
THE STRANGLERS, by George Bruce. The original "thugs" were Indian marauders who strangled travelers and robbed them. It wasn't until the 1830s, when their recent victims were numbered in the tens of thousands, that a crusading British officer finally wiped them out. A horrifying, little-known facet of Empire.
ZAPATA AND THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION, by John Womack Jr. A young (31) Harvard historian tells the great revolutionary's story with skill, judgment and a sense of compassion.
OBSOLETE COMMUNISM: THE LEFT-WING ALTERNATIVE, by Daniel and Gabriel Cohn-Bendit. One of the leaders of the near-revolution that shook France during last year's fateful "days of May" joins forces with his brother to examine the student-worker revolt. Their absorbing chronicle concludes by blaming the revolt's failure on the Communist Party, French trade unions and the left-wing establishment.
HIS TOY, HIS DREAM, HIS REST, by John Berryman. Using a fictional white middle-aged American named Henry as his mouthpiece, Berryman comments on a whole range of human experience, particularly life during the past eleven years, and completes the poem cycle begun in 77 Dream Songs.
JOYCE GARY, by Malcolm Foster. The discontent of the artist in organized society emerges as the major theme in this first full-scale biography of the late author of such novels as The Horse's Mouth and Herself Surprised.
ALEXANDER POPE, by Peter Quennell. A considered, selective and urbane biography of the great 18th century poet, satirist and curmudgeon.
SILENCE ON MONTE SOLE, by Jack Olsen. An account of the Nazis' liquidation of 1,800 people on an Italian mountainside that draws its strength from the author's careful research and unrhetorical style.
THE ARMS OF KRUPP, by William Manchester. The "smokestack barons" of the Ruhr, whose arsenal armed Germany in two world wars, are portrayed in an encyclopaedic history of their most powerful and eccentric family.
MILLAIS AND THE RUSKINS, by Mary Lutyens. The odd marriage of the Victorian critic and esthete is given an enlightened going-over by a British biographer.
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. The Salzburg Connection, MacInnes (1 last week)
2. A Small Town in Germany, le Carre (2)
3. Airport, Hailey (4)
4. Force 10 from Navarone, MacLean (6)
5. Preserve and Protect, Drury (3)
6. The First Circle, Solzhenitsyn (5)
7. A World of Profit, Auchincloss (9)
8. The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B. Donleavy (7)
9. The Hurricane Years, Hawley (8)
10. And Other Stories, O'Hara (10)
NONFICTION
1. The Money Game, 'Adam Smith' (1)
2. Instant Replay, Kramer (2)
3. The Joys of Yiddish, Rosten (6)
4. Thirteen Days, Kennedy
5. The Valachi Papers, Maas (5)
6. The Arms of Krupp, Manchester (4)
7. Sixty Years on the Firing Line, Krock (7)
8. The Day Kennedy Was Shot, Bishop (3)
9. The Rich and the Super-Rich, Lundberg (8)
10. Miss Craig's 21-Day Shape-Up Program for Men and Women, Craig
* All times E.S.T.
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