Show Business: Top of the Week

In one of TV's more ambitious weeks this season. Lee J. Cobb's performance in I, Don Quixote (see below) was one of several striking performances. Others:

¶ 1) Julie Harris as Nora in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (NBC). In the semi-modern classic that for years was regarded as a ringing plea for woman's emancipation, she was superb as the child-wife who is treated as a mindless, soulless plaything by a priggish husband (Christopher Plummer). But while Actress Harris—kittenish, hectically gay and finally rebellious—could break out of Nora's plush Victorian prison, she could not wholly shake off the stilted language and obtrusive 19th century stagecraft which Adaptor James Costigan took over from Ibsen.

¶ Alec Guinness in The Wicked Scheme of Jebal Decks (NBC). Not long ago Guinness, perhaps best remembered, for his role as the dubious bank clerk in The Lavender Hill Mob, declared: "I have an absolutely unalterable rule—no more roles about a dubious bank clerk." For his TV debut, he played just such a clerk, who dubiously plots to avenge 22 years of thankless labor by humiliating the bank's brass. His scheme: instead of swiping the bank's funds, he adds his own money to them, creates total bookkeeping chaos, and rapidly advances toward the presidency when he irons out the bugs. The show was directed too broadly, lacked the requisite British dryness, but in his subdued hilarity, Actor Guinness was perfect.

¶ Art Carney, as the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder's Our Town (NBC). "Nothing should stand out about this guy," said Carney about his role, and he may have carried a good judgment too far, was sometimes too emotionless compared to the rest of the cast, directed by José Quintero with the same intensity that he brought to O'Neill on Broadway. The play itself once again emerged as an unfailingly touching, tender hymn to life.