Wednesday, December 3
JACK BENNY’S NEW LOOK (NBC 9-10 p.m.). Gregory Peck makes a musical debut with Jack and George Burns. Eddie (“Rochester”) Anderson, Nancy Sinatra, and Gary Puckett and the Union Gap.
Thursday, December 4
NET PLAYHOUSE (NET, 8-9:30 p.m.). A twelve-year-old boy casts evil spells on two of his teachers in “The Tin Whistle.” Repeat.
Friday, December 5
G.E. FANTASY HOUR (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” returns to entertain the kiddies. Burl Ives narrates as Sam the Snowman.
Saturday, December 6
N.C.A.A. FOOTBALL (ABC, 1-4:30 p.m.). Texas plays Arkansas at Fayetteville, Ark.
N.F.L. GAME (CBS, 1 p.m. to conclusion). Chicago Bears v. the 49ers at San Francisco.
HALLMARK HALL OF FAME (NBC, 7:30-9 p.m.). “The Littlest Angel” presents treasures to the baby Jesus. Nine-year-old Johnny Whitaker and Fred Gwynne (as Patience, the Guardian Angel) co-star in this new musical.
ANN-MARGRET SPECIAL (CBS, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). With Ann, “From Hollywood With Love,” are Dean Martin, Lucille Ball and the Watts 103rd Street Band.
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 9 p.m. -midnight). Teetotalers v. boozers on The Hallelujah Trail. Burt Lancaster, Lee Remick, Jim Hutton and Martin Landau enhance the scenery.
Sunday, December 7
A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS (CBS, 7-7:30 p.m.). Charlie and Linus find out what Christmas really means. Repeat.
FROSTY THE SNOWMAN (CBS, 7:30-8 p.m.). Frosty’s voice is Jackie Vernon’s, and Jimmy Durante tells the tale.
THE ADVOCATES (NET, 10-11 p.m.). Whether police responsibility for social problems should be abated so that their attention can center on major crimes is tonight’s topic.
Monday, December 8 MONDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 9-11 p.m.). World premiere of The D.A. — Murder One has Howard Duff out to prove that Nurse Diane Baker killed a few husbands and relatives with insulin injections.
NET JOURNAL (NET, 9-10 p.m.). Rehabilitation of mental patients through intensive “confrontation therapy” at the David Singer Zone Center at Rockford, III., is the subject of “To Save Tomorrow.” Eight succeeding 30-minute programs on the same theme in other locales will be seen Wednesdays at 8, beginning this week.
Tuesday, December 9 MOVIE OF THE WEEK (ABC, 8:30-10 p.m.).
A Nobel-prizewinning scientist’s dead daughter materializes to make him stop his work. Based on a novel by Paul Gallico, Daughter of the Mind stars Ray Milland, Gene Tierney and Don Murray.
THEATER
On Broadway
THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE. William Saroyan’s play is revived with great care and affection by the Lincoln Center Repertory Company. In the context of 1969, this 30-year-old work is revealed as a kind of prophecy prefiguring changing dramatic trends and the skeptical questioning of American values.
THREE MEN ON A HORSE. Jack Gilford plays Erwin, a composer of verses for greeting cards, and Sam Levene plays Patsy, the horseplayer, in this 1935 comedy. The cast is superb, and while the plot may contain no surprises, the entire production is polished to a high gloss.
THE FRONT PAGE. Robert Ryan and Bert Convy, backed by an adroit cast, star in a revival of the Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur saga of newspapering in the Chicago of the 1920s. When the time comes to put the paper to bed and bring down the final curtain on this breezy merriment, the audience may well feel sorry that it has to go home.
Off Broadway
A SCENT OF FLOWERS takes a girl on a semipoetic, semiprosaic long day’s journey into the night of her suicide. Katharine Houghton gives a tender, well-wrought performance that has beauty and intensity.
A WHISTLE IN THE DARK. Irish Playwright Thomas Murphy has written a drama full of the raw, roiling energy of life. The story of the Carney clan, moving in on a brother who has tried to flee their world of animal instinct, is full of the rude poetry of the commonplace. The performances are labors of love and skill, and Arvin Brown’s direction is flawless.
BOOKS
Best Reading Children’s Picture Books
ALEXANDER AND THE WIND-UP MOUSE, by Leo Lionni (Pantheon; $3.95). A toybox parable for an automated age tells how a real mouse named Alexander yearns to be like his wind-up friend Willie—until he learns that children are fickle and mechanical toys grow obsolete.
RAIN RAIN RIVERS, by Uri Shulevitz (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $4.50). A lyrical portrait of rain from the drips on the windowpane to rushing rivers. The author’s blue and green line and wash drawings look appealingly wet and moody.
THE HATING BOOK, by Charlotte Zolotow, illustrated by Ben Shecter (Harper & Row; $2.95). “I hate hate hated my friend.” So begins this tale of a hot but brief misunderstanding between two little girls that is finally solved by confrontation: “When I wore my new dress, Sue said Jane said you said I looked like a freak.” “I did not! I said you looked neatl”
SCHOOL FOR SILLIES, by Jay Williams, illustrated by Friso Henstra (Parents’ Magazine Press; $3.95). A graceful parody of the classic fairy tale in which a poor, bright boy outwits a king to win the hand of a princess. This time, the young suitor creates a school for fools and cleverly enrolls the king.
THE DRAGON OF AN ORDINARY FAMILY, by Margaret Mahy, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury (Watts; $4.95). “Dragon, Housetrained, Unusual Pet, Very Cheap, 50¢,” or so the sign said when Mr. Belsaki, the father of the ordinary family, went out to purchase an ordinary pet for son Gaylord. With considerable help from attractively grotesque illustrations, both the dragon and Belsaki’s life soon expand on an extraordinary scale.
HERMAN’S HAT, by George Mendoza, illustrated by Frank Bozzo (Doubleday; $4.50). When the clown gave Herman his big black hat he warned: “Once you place it on your head you must never take it off or else everyone will know what you are thinking.” And Herman, naturally, is thinking all sorts of unimaginable things. Glowing illustrations heavily influenced by Marc Chagall.
THE LAST LITTLE DRAGON, by Roger Price, illustrated by Mamoru Funai (Harper & Row; $3.50). A modern Just So Story about a little dragon with “a long spiked tail and 212 teeth” who, alas, couldn’t breathe fire so the old sea turtle fixed that with some hot peppers, coal and oil, but then Algon burnt up everything around the house, so once again the old sea turtle, etc., etc., and that, oh best beloved, is how the first alligator was born.
A LION IN THE MEADOW, by Margaret Mahy, illustrated by Jenny Williams (Watts; $4.95). Dazzling illustrations send a small boy, the year’s most attractive lion, and the boy’s matter-of-fact mother into cheerful orbit.
IVAN AND THE WITCH, by Mischa Damjan, illustrated by Toma Bogdanovic (McGraw-Hill; $4.50); IVANKO AND THE DRAGON, by Marie Halun Bloch, illustrated by Yaroslava (Atheneum; $4.95). Two books, both worth reading, based on the same-folk tale—though the first claims to be Russian, the second Ukrainian. The Bogdanovic casein and pastel illustrations are blurrily magical. Yaroslava’s precise pictures are closer to folk art.
SQUAPS, THE MOONLING, by Ursina Ziegler, translated from the German by Barbara Kowal Gollob, illustrated by Sita Jucker (Atheneum; $4.95). Apollo 11 literary fallout about an astronaut who returns from the moon with a funny little creature clinging to his space suit. His children make it their playmate and call it Squaps (the sound that answers all questions on the moon). Squaps enjoys the earth, especially his discovery of water —from shower baths, sprinklers and watering cans. And then comes the next full moon.
THE ROTTEN BOOK, by Mary Rodgers, illustrated by Steven Kellogg (Harper & Row; $2.50). At breakfast one morning, in between telling Simon to eat his egg, his parents are discussing a little boy who is “rotten, absolutely rotten.” And Simon begins to imagine all the things he would do if he were rotten. The detailed pencil drawings show him racing through a supermarket, cutting off his sister’s hair and finally going to jail. The text by musical writer Mary Rodgers (Once Upon a Mattress) is deadpan funny.
THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE, by Barbara Hazen and Tomi Ungerer (Lancelot; $3.95). The lazy young apprentice tries some magic spells of his own—with optional help from an LP record ($5.98 for set) of Paul Dukas’ music interpreted by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic.
THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO, by C. Collodi, illustrated by Attilio Mussino (Macmillan; $9.95). A reissue of the 1925 classic blots out Walt Disney and half a dozen other abridged and syrupy substitutes that have intervened. Here Pinocchio can be seen again as what it is: a morality tale about the rewards of mendacity; cruel, fearful and utterly charming.
WHAT IF?, by Robert Pierce (Golden Press; $1.00), is an exuberant book for the very young with splashy drawings and light verse. Sample: “What if a crocodile big as an ox/Hid in the hallway and ate your socks?”
Best Sellers
FICTION
1. The Godfather, Puzo (1 last week)
2. The House on the Strand, du Maurier (3)
3. The Inheritors, Robbins (2)
4. The Seven Minutes, Wallace (4)
5. The Love Machine, Susann (7)
6. In This House of Brede, Godden (6)
7. The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Fowles
8. The Promise, Potok (8)
9. The Andromeda Strain, Crichton (5)
10. An Affair of Honor, Wilder
NONFICTION
1. The Selling of the President 1968, McGinniss (1)
2. The Peter Principle, Peter and Hull (2)
3. Present at the Creation, Acheson (3)
4. Ambassador’s Journal, Galbraith (8)
5. The Collapse of the Third Republic, Shirer
6. My Life with Jacqueline Kennedy, Gallagher (4)
7. My Life and Prophecies, Dixon and Noorbergen (5)
8. The Human Zoo, Morris (7)
9. Prime Time, Kendrick (10)
10. The Making of the President 1968, White (6)
* All times E.S.T.
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