Anyone with bets down on both the Clay-Cooper fight and the Preakness is going to need two TV sets to keep track of the action this Saturday. For once, it isn't due to the networks' penchant for counterprogramming. Both events are being held simultaneously: the heavyweight championship bout, live from London via Early Bird satellite (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.);* the 91st running of the Triple Crown classic, live from Pimlico, Md. (CBS, 5:30-6 p.m.).
Thursday, May 19
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE WHITE HOUSE (NBC, 8:30-9:30 p.m.). A satirical and musical special on American politics starring Elliott Reid, Tom Lehrer, the Plaza9 troupe and the Buster Davis Singers. A funny thing also seems to have happened on the way to Maine. Old Jack Paar, supposedly rusticating there, is host-narrator.
Friday, May 20
THE ANATOMY OF DEFENSE (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). A look at the hierarchy of command within the U.S. armed forces.
Saturday, May 21
MISS U.S.A. BEAUTY PAGEANT (CBS, 10-11:30 p.m.). June Lockhart, Pat Boone and Art Linkletter purvey the prime—and well pasteurized—pulchritude of this perennial, live from Miami Beach.
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 9-11:30 p.m.). For those who can't stand the Miami Vestals, a touch of Vertigo may make them feel better. Alfred Hitchcock jumps Jimmy Stewart, Kim Novak and Barbara Bel Geddes through the usual nightmarish hoops.
Sunday, May 22
PERRY MASON (CBS, 9-10 p.m.). "The Case of the Final Fade-Out," the last new episode of this nine-year-old series, which is now being turned out to the pasture where the reruns grow. Three producers of the series will appear as extras in the episode, and Author Erie Stanley Gardner will play the judge. The plot is appropriate: a TV producer is found strangled with one of his own films.
EMMY AWARDS PROGRAM (CBS, 10-11:30 p.m.). TV crows over its own. Presenting the statuettes will be Mary Tyler Moore, Dick Van Dyke, Adam West, Barbara Stanwyck, and the Carols Channing and Burnett.
Tuesday, May 24
ALL-NEW 1966 NATIONAL DRIVERS TEST (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). For those who flunked the 1965 National Drivers Test and have been boning up ever since—a chance to try again, with different questions.
THEATER
On Broadway
IVANOV. Chekhov's first full-length play takes the pulse of a life-sick anti-hero consumed by boredom and narcotized by talk, the opiate of the Russian gentry. John Gielgud's acting and direction somewhat jangle the playwright's night music of the soul, but not enough to drive away a lover of Chekhov's genius.
MARK TWAIN TONIGHT! invites the literate mind to a banquet with a consistently ironic, sometimes macabre American wit. So thoroughly does Hal Holbrook immerse himself in the psyche of Clemens that his performance seems like an uncanny transmigration of souls.
PHILADELPHIA, HERE I COME! Before a man can fully embrace the future, he must be willing to endure a somewhat painful relinquishing of the past. In an honestly affecting portrait of an Irish émigré, Playwright Brian Friel depicts a young man caught between the pull of memories and the beckoning of hopes.