Cinema
From Hollywood
Damn Yankees. A devilishly good Hollywood remake of the Broadway musical about baseball and Beelzebub, with Dancer Gwen Verdon and Ray Walston.
Me and the Colonel. Danny Kaye's warmest and very nearly funniest movie, about a gentle, ingenious refugee escaping one jump ahead (and occasionally one jump behind) the Nazi invasion of France.
The Defiant Ones. Two escaped convicts (Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier) loathe each other, but since they are bound together at the wrist by a chain, they eventually learn a brutal, moving lesson about brotherhood.
The Reluctant Debutante. Rex Harrison and Wife Kay Kendall romping through Mayfair, as pixy a pair as ever made pix.
From Abroad
Father Panchali (Indian). A radiantly beautiful and entirely natural tragedy of a Brahman family hard put to make ends meet, leavened by an energy for life and some marvelously funny side glances.
The Case of Dr. Laurent (French). A baby is born on-camera in the final scene, but far earlier than that, Jean Gabin, as a kindly rural doctor, and Nicole Courcel, as his first natural-childbirth convert, have given the film warm, memorable appeal.
TELEVISION
Wed., Oct. 22
Pursuit (CBS, 8-9 p.m.).*A new dramatic show founded on the premise that, given enough time, everyone will come to hate everyone. In the premiere, Macdonald Carey is a vengeance-bent detective trying to gum up Sal Mineo, who crippled Carey's son in a sidewalk set-to.
Thurs., Oct. 23
Bell Telephone Science Series (NBC, 8-9 p.m.). The University of Southern California's Professor Frank Baxter, whose TV fame rests largely on a pleasantly wind-blown approach to Shakespeare, turns popular scientist in Gateways to the Mind, which attempts to make sense of the human senses.
Playhouse 90 (CBS, 9:30-11 p.m.). One of TV's best dramatic programs dispatches Edward G. Robinson, cast as a retired toy tycoon, to a small Vermont town, where the neighbors are right persnickety; with Ray (Damn Yankees) Walston and Beatrice Straight.
Sun., Oct. 26
United Nations Day Concert (CBS, 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.). In a taped recording of a U.N. Day ceremony held two days earlier, Charles Munch conducts the Boston Symphony in Honegger's Fifth Symphony; legendary Cellist Pablo Casals joins Mieczyslaw Horszowski in Bach's Sonata No. 2 in D Major for Cello and Piano.
File 7 (ABC, 11:30 a.m.-noon). A double-gaited educational hoss that runs like a'critter out of the Encyclopaedia Britannica by Confidential. The subject is Edgar Allan Poe—not his poetry and prose, but his alcoholism and drug addiction. Professor-Author (The Histrionic Mr. Poe) N. Bryllion Fagin conducts the inquest.
Bishop Pike (ABC, 12-12:30 p.m.).
Dean James Pike, Episcopal Bishop of California, in the first of an informal series of chats; the opening show's guest is Pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, a bible writer in his own right.
Omnibus (NBC, 5-6 p.m.). The program that symbolizes TV's search for dignity opens its sixth season with Boston Lawyer Joseph N. Welch probing capital punishment; Alistair Cooke still provides the accompaniment.
The Steve Allen Show (NBC, 8-9 p.m.).