THEATER: On Broadway, Sep. 21, 1959

CINEMA

Blue Angel. The 30-year-old Dietrich dazzler updated, with sultry Swedish Actress May Britt as the Berlin Lorelei whose siren song lures West Germany’s Box Office Idol Curt Jurgens onto the rocks.

The Magician (Swedish). Writer-Director Ingmar Bergman’s latest public fantasy, full of sharp physical images and foggy symbols; the story of a mid-19th century Mesmer and his touring Magnetic Health Theater, whose members include his wife (Ingrid Thulin), masquerading as a male helper, his witch grandmother, an ailing actor, and an oversexed coachman.

The Man Upstairs (English). A demented scientist, with only his pistol and his twisted dreams for company, holes up on the top floor of a sleazy London rooming house and defies a world below that tries to coax him into coming down.

North by Northwest. Director Alfred Hitchcock’s implausible, entertaining mystery, with Gary Grant as a Madison Avenue adman up to his immaculate collar in spies and counterspies, among them Eva Marie Saint and James Mason.

Anatomy of a Murder. Lee Remick and James Stewart are slickly professional in this adaptation of 1958’s most physiological bestseller; yet even they cannot compete with a cinema (but not TV) newcomer from Boston named Joseph N. Welch, a lawyer by training.

The Nun’s Story. A startlingly beautiful though spiritually slight study of convent life, with Audrey Hepburn as the Roman Catholic nun whose choice between love of God and love of mankind comes hard.

Porgy and Bess. George Gershwin would spin like a top at the heavy, wide-screen pageant that Producer Sam Goldwyn has fashioned from his folk opera, but nothing can stop the tingle of Gershwin’s wonderful songs.

TELEVISION

Wed., Sept. 16 Khrushchev at the National Press Club

(NBC, 1:30-3 p.m.).The beginning of what will surely seem a minute-to-minute report of the big visit. All week, all the networks will be sighting in with live coverage.

The Arthur Godfrey Show (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Is this the beginning of the trouper’s return to active duty? Arthur is holding out. His old friends will have to tune in to find out what sort of program he put together while recuperating in Hawaii and at home in Leesburg, Va.

Thurs., Sept. 17

Woman! (CBS, 2-3 p.m.). Second in a carefully researched series of specials apparently dedicated to stripping modern women of every secret. Good direction may keep Hostess-Swimmer Esther Williams properly inconspicuous while the show attacks the question: “Is the American Woman Losing Her Femininity?”

Fri., Sept. 18

America Pauses in September (NBC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). Mood shots and mood music from all over the U.S. as the nation changes gears with the changing seasons Burgess Meredith calls the tunes, with Julie London, Gene Nelson, the cast of Holiday on Ice, and the Martin Denny Group.

M-Squad (NBC, 9:30-10 p.m.). One of the best of the cops-and-robbers crew has finished the reruns and starts fresh. Lee Marvin as Chicago Detective Frank Ballinger sweats out the search for a bomb planted in a hospital.

Sat., Sept. 19

N.C.A.A. Football (NBC, 4:45 p.m.). First of the season’s colorcasts that will give college football a new TV dimension. Louisiana State v. Rice at Baton Rouge.

Sun., Sept. 20

Ed Sullivan Show (CBS, 7:30-9 p.m.). Smiley has so much to offer that for the first time in twelve years his show runs on for an hour and a half. Fun and games with Eileen Farrell, Louis Armstrong, Rosemary Clooney, Wayne & Schuster, Ford & Hines, and assorted big-league baseball stars.

Mon., Sept. 21

Peter Gunn (NBC, 9-9:30 p.m.). The jazz is as lively, Edie is as lovely, Pete and his police pal, Lieut. Jacoby, are as laconic as ever. The new season brings a new “Mother,” Minerva Urecal. She begins with a bang: her saloon is blown up by protection racketeers.

Tues., Sept. 22

Bronco (ABC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). A blue chip from the network’s big bet on bread-and-butter programing. The trick is to find a new frame for a shoot-’em-up. This one turns an ex-Confederate officer into a disillusioned jack-of-all-trades, starts off his long series of romantic troubles with Game at the Beacon Club, a look at a San Francisco gambling parlor complete with Oriental heavies and Occidental queens.

THEATER

A Raisin in the Sun. Lorraine Hansberry’s poignant, prizewinning first play about a Chicago Negro family that yearns to leave the black South Side jungle for a place in the white suburban sun.

J.B. Out of the verse of Poet Archibald MacLeish and the theatrical verve of Director Elia Kazan, a businessman’s Job comes excitingly alive.

La Plume de Ma Tante. If the producers of this madcap French revue chance to do a sequel, the late Wallace Stevens provided a title: Le Monocle de Mon Oncle.

My Fair Lady, with Edwardian charm, The Music Man, with mid-American corn, and Flower Drum Song, with Oriental flair, make a trio of memorable musicals. Redhead cuts a nifty caper, and the fanciest footwork is Gwen Verdon’s.

BOOKS

Best Reading

John Paul Jones, by Samuel Eliot Morison. He had a murderous temper, the morals of a tomcat, and a colossal ego, but he could fight a ship. A matchless biography of the great naval hero by the ablest living chronicler of U.S. sailormen at war.

The Mermaid Madonna, by Stratis Myrivilis. Life is harsh, but the living of it sweet, in this island idyl of the wine-dark sea, by one of Greece’s finest contemporary novelists.

Lover Man, by Alston Anderson. Fifteen well-crafted short stories about life among Negroes of a small Southern town establish the author as a first-rate writer, on his first try between hard covers.

On a Balcony, by David Stacton. An astringent tale, several notches above the usual historical novel, of Egypt’s neurotic Pharaoh Ikhnaton and his attempts to replace the old gods with a new and self-centered religion.

More Than Meets the Eye, by Carl Mydans. A vivid written (no pictures) account by a crack photographer of nearly a quarter-century spent covering the world’s battlefronts.

Surgeon at Arms, by Daniel Paul with John St. John. In September 1944, an airborne attempt to outflank the Siegfried Line failed, and a British battle surgeon who tended the wounded of that unsuccessful mission writes movingly of blood, death and capture.

Advise and Consent, by Allen Drury. The novel is overlong (616 pages), and the prose something less than sparkling; but New York Timesman Drury knows his way about Washington. Few readers will need any help finding the fact behind the fiction.

The Frozen Revolution, by Frank Gibney. An expert reading of Poland’s cliff-hanging predicament, halfway between subjugation and freedom.

The Satyricon of Petronius, translated by William Arrowsmith. A skilled classicist provides the best English version yet of the Priapean satire by Nero’s arbiter of elegance.

Richard Nixon, by Ear! Mazo. A fascinating biography, flattering but far from a campaign puff piece.

Best Sellers

FICTION

1. Exodus, Uris (1)-

2. Advise and Consent, Drury (2)

3. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Lawrence (3)

4. The Ugly American, Lederer and Burdick (4)

5. Dear and Glorious Physician, Caldwell (7)

6. The Cave, Warren (9)

7. Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris, Gallico (10)

8. Doctor Zhivago, Pasternak (5)

9. Eva, Levin

10. The Art of Llewellyn Jones, Bonner (6)

NONFICTION

1. The Status Seekers, Packard (2)

2. For 2v-PJaJn, Golden (1)

3. The Elements of Style, Strunk and White (5)

4. How I Turned $1,000 into $1,000,000 in Real Estate, Nickerson (4)

5. Folk Medicine, Jarvis (7)

6. The Years with Ross, Thurber (3)

7. Richard Nixon, Mazo (8)

8. The Great Impostor, Crichton (6)

9. Image of America, Bruckberger

10. Mine Enemy Grows Older, King (10)

-Position on last week’s list.

-All times E.D.T.