Wednesday, October 22 GOODBYE, CITY HALL (NET, 9-10 p.m.).* Outgoing Mayors Jerome Cavanagh, Detroit, Joseph Barr, Pittsburgh, Arthur Na-talin. Minneapolis, and Allen Thompson, Jackson, Miss., discuss municipal pressures, problems and palliatives at the executive residence in Detroit.
Thursday, October 23
NET PLAYHOUSE (NET, 8:30-10 p.m.). The Battle of Culloden is a documentary reconstruction done in newsreel fashion of the last battle to be fought on British soil and its aftermath. Repeat.
IT TAKES A THIEF (ABC, 10-11 p.m.). Senta Berger and Nigel Patrick are the guest stars in a comic caper, "Flowers from Alexander."
Saturday, October 25
WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 6-7:30 p.m.). A boxing match between the U.S. and Russia is covered live from Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 8:30-11 p.m.). Albert Finney, Susannah York, Hugh Griffith, Dame Edith Evans, Joan Greenwood and Diane Cilento in the many-Oscared film version of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1963). This romantic romp in 18th century England was directed by Tony Richardson.
Sunday, October 26
MEET THE PRESS (NBC, 1-1:30 p.m.). The Shah of Iran takes on members of the Fourth Estate.
DEDICATION CONCERT AT JUILLIARD (CBS, 5:30-7 p.m.). Live coverage of the dedication concert from Alice Tully Hall, featuring performances by Van Cliburn, Shirley Verrett, Itzhak Perlman, with Leopold Stokowski and Jean Morel sharing the direction of a 70-piece symphony orchestra.
LAND OF THE GIANTS (ABC, 7-8 p.m.). Sugar Ray Robinson is a trumpet-playing giant who promises freedom to the crew of a wrecked spaceship if Copilot Don Marshall will agree to give him jazz lessons on the horn.
IT'S THE GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN (CBS, 7:30-8 p.m.). Let's all gather in the punkin' patch and see if the Great One will appear this year. Repeat.
THE BOLD ONES (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). A convicted murderer is given a retrial after seven years of imprisonment on Death Row in "If I Should Wake Before I Die." District Attorney Washburn (Hari Rhodes) and the deputy chief (Leslie Nielsen) disagree on his guilt.
Monday, October 27
NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE (CBS, 9:30 p.m. to conclusion). The New York Giants v. the Dallas Cowboys in Dallas.
Tuesday, October 28
THE UNDERSEA WORLD OF JACQUES COUSTEAU (ABC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). Cousteau and the crew of the Calypso track California Grey Whales.
THE RED SKELTON SHOW (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). John Wayne celebrates his 40th year in movies by joining Red in a few familiar-sounding skits like "The High and the Flighty" and "Hominy and True Grit." The Baja Marimba Band makes music for the occasion.
NET FESTIVAL (NET, 9-10 p.m.). "ACT Now" goes backstage to examine the professional training program of William Ball's American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.
THEATER
On Broadway
A PATRIOT FOR ME. When John Osborne steps into the spotlight and throws a nightlong temper tantrum, the dramatic results are explosively and corrosively alive. But when he goes rummaging through history for his theme, he is far less successful. A Patriot for Me tells the story of Alfred Redl. a homosexual officer in the army of the decaying Austro-Hungarian Empire who was blackmailed by the Russians into turning traitor. Osborne's characters are not immersed in history; they merely wear it like a costume supplied by the wardrobe mistress. Maximilian Schell as Redl is as frostily remote as his monocle.
FORTY CARATS. Julie Harris stars in this frothy French farce that pleads for a single standard of judgment on age disparity in marriage.
PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM. Woody Allen plays Woody Allen in his comedy about a neurotic young man who is rejected even by the girls of his fantasies.
Off Broadway
A WHISTLE IN THE DARK has the raw, roiling energy of life observed with an exactitude that defies disbelief. The Carneys are a pride of Irish gutter lions, bred to the tooth and claw, who move into the home of the only brother who attempts to flee their world of lacerating animal instinct. The performances are all labors of skill and love, and Arvin Brown's deft direction is full of silent music.
ADAPTATION-NEXT. Elaine May directs both her own play, Adaptation, and Terrence McNally's Next in an evening of perceptive and richly comic one-acters.
NO PLACE TO BE SOMEBODY. Charles Gordone's story of black-white and black-black relations is flawed by melodrama; yet the play ticks with menace and is unexpectedly and explosively funny.
OH! CALCUTTA! For a good part of the evening this revue is diverting and civilized, though it scarcely provides the elegant erotica that Kenneth Tynan promised.
TO BE YOUNG, GIFTED AND BLACK is a moving tribute to the late playwright Lorraine Hansberry, made up of readings and dramatizations from her writings.
DAMES AT SEA is a delightful parody of the movie musicals of the 1930s, complete with all the frenetic dance routines and a classic cliche: the naive young girl who survives the Broadway jungle to tap her way to stardom.
CINEMA
MEDIUM COOL. Writer-Director Haskell Wexler takes a fictitious plot, places it against an authentic backdrop (the Chicago convention) and explodes a film that is both social and cinematic dynamite.
MIDNIGHT COWBOY. Jon Voight is a strutting phallus, good for nothin' but lovin'; Dustin Hoffman is a septic crippled thief. Together, they create one of the most moving and poignant performances in the history of American film. Though
Director John Schlesinger has decorated the story with stylistic tics, the film stands as a moving study of the lonely and the loveless.
THE WILD BUNCH. "Killing is no fun. I was trying to show what the hell it's like to get shot," says Director Sam Peckinpah about this film that follows a ragtag bunch of bandits as it scrounges through the Southwest. While traveling with the bunch, Peckinpah gives long looks at scenes of uncontrolled frenzy in which the feeling of chaotic violence is overwhelming.
STAIRCASE. Among other things, Richard Burton and Rex Harrison are known for their heterosexuality. Here they show their acting talent by portraying a pair of middle-aged homosexuals, and they do it most convincingly.
ALICE'S RESTAURANT. This is a film about young people that is, as they say, very much together. Taking Arlo Guthrie's hit song of a couple of years ago, Director Arthur Penn has, with a master's touch, fashioned a sad, funny, tragic, beautiful picture of a way of life.
THE GYPSY MOTHS. Director John Frankenheimer once more brings courage to the fore in this tale of three stunt parachutists bound together by danger. The story bogs down somewhat in heavy-handed philosophy, but Frankenheimer manages to pull the rip cord in time with a brilliant skydiving sequence that makes the moviegoer's time well spent.
TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN. Woody Allen makes his debut as a film director. He also co-authored this zany crime flick and plays the starring role of a crook. What's more, he makes it all work.
EASY RIDER. A major movie on an old theme--youth searching for where it's at. The props are familiar--drugs and motorcycles--but Director Dennis Hopper (who also co-stars with Peter Fonda) puts starch in what has become worn material. Though self-pity gets more footage than it deserves, a brilliant performance by Newcomer Jack Nicholson, plus the use of hard-core Americans playing themselves, makes the youths' odyssey Homeric indeed.
TRUE GRIT. It's the Duke at his best. In what could have been just another western, John Wayne shows true grit in this cornball shoot-em-up.
BOOKS
Best Reading
AMBASSADOR'S JOURNAL, by John Kenneth Galbraith. Kept during the author's two years as Ambassador to India, this diary is rare both for first-rate prose and succinct, irreverent opinion ("The more underdeveloped the country, the more overdeveloped the women").
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS, by Antonia Fraser. A rich, billowing biography of a pretty queen who, by casting herself as a religious martyr, has upstaged her mortal enemy, Queen Elizabeth I, in the imagination of posterity.
THEM, by Joyce Carol Gates. A family's battle to escape the economic and spiritual depression of urban American life is the theme of this novel by the author of A Garden of Earthly Delights and Expensive People.
CUSTER DIED FOR YOUR SINS, by Vine Deloria. A savagely funny and perceptive book by a young member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe examines the modern plight of red men beset by white plunderers and progressives alike.
MY LIFE WITH MARTIN LUTHER KING JR., by Coretta Scott King. Intimate touches and a personal context lend new dimensions and drama to the life of her doomed and dedicated husband.
DR. BOWDLER'S LEGACY: A HISTORY OF EXPURGATED BOOKS IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA, by Noel Perrin. Examining the literary atrocities of squeamish expurgators, the author has created a brilliant little work of cultural history full of wit and learning.
THE WATERFALL, by Margaret Drabble. The author's finest novel is a superb audit of the profits and losses of love for a woman threatening to destroy herself.
THE EGG OF THE GLAK AND OTHER STORIES, by Harvey Jacobs. Bizarre urban fairy tales delivered with the kick and rhythm of a nightclub comedian.
JESUS REDISCOVERED, by Malcolm Muggeridge. The 66-year-old British cultural curmudgeon writes tellingly of the ways, means and meditations that led to his conversion to Christianity.
FAT CITY, by Leonard Gardner. A brilliant exception to the general rule that boxing fiction seldom graduates beyond the level of caricature.
BIRDS, BEASTS AND RELATIVES, by Gerald Durrell. Zoology begins at home, or at least that's the way it seems to Naturalist Durrell, who recalls his boyhood infatuation with animals and his family's strained tolerance of some of the things that followed him into the house.
THE COST OF LIVING LIKE THIS, by James Kennaway. An intense and coldly realistic novel about a man's coming to terms with two women who love him and the cancer that is pinching off his life.
THE FRENCH: PORTRAIT OF A PEOPLE, by Sanche de Gramont. Only the cuisine comes off unscathed in this analysis vinaigrette of the French national character.
COLLECTED ESSAYS, by Graham Greene. The novelist repeatedly drives home the same obsessive point: "Human nature is not black and white but black and grey."
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. The Godfather, Puzo (1 last week)
2. The Love Machine, Susann (2)
3. Portnoy's Complaint, Roth (5)
4. The Andromeda Strain, Crichton (6)
5. The Promise, Potok (8)
6. Naked Came the Stranger, Ashe (3)
7. The Pretenders, Davis (4)
8. In This House of Brede, Godden
9. A Place in the Country, Gainham (10)
10. The Goodbye Look, Macdonald
NONFICTION
1. My Life with Jacqueline Kennedy, Gallagher (2)
2. The Peter Principle, Peter and Hull (1)
3. The Kingdom and the Power, Talese (3)
4. My Life and Prophecies, Dixon and Noorbergen (7)
5. The Making of the President 1968, White (4)
6. The Honeycomb, St. Johns (5)
7. Prime Time, Kendrick (8)
8. Between Parent and Teenager, Ginott (6)
9. Captive City, Demaris (10)
10. The American Heritage Dictionary
< FOOTNOTE> * All times E.D.T.
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