Television, Theater, Records, Cinema, Books: Oct. 25, 1968

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TELEVISION

Wednesday, October 23

SUMMER OLYMPICS (ABC, 1-2 p.m., 7-7:30 p.m., 10-11 p.m.).* Continuation of ABC's 44-hour telecast of the 1968 Summer Olympic games live from Mexico City. Ends Sunday.

AMERICAN WONDERLANDS&151;THE NATIONAL PARKS (CBS, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). A National Geographic Society special on the beauty of the U.S. parks system.

GIRL FRIENDS AND NABORS (CBS, 8-9 p.m.). Jim Nabors hosts Debbie Reynolds, Vikki Carr, Carol Burnett and Metropolitan Opera Soprano Mary Costa in a variety of tunes ranging from Row, Row, Row Your Boat to the waltz from Gounod's Roméo et Juliette.

SOPHIA (ABC, 9-10 p.m.). Italian Film Star Sophia Loren narrates the rags-to-riches life story of Sophia Loren.

KRAFT MUSIC HALL (NBC, 9-10 p.m.). A Friars Club Roast. This year, the organization of showfolks skewers Johnny Carson. Alan King is roastmaster with Ed Sullivan, Steve Allen, Ed McMahon, Don Rickles, Groucho Marx, Flip Wilson and New York Mayor John Lindsay.

THE BING CROSBY SPECIAL (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Bing's helpers: Bob Hope, Diana Ross and The Supremes, José Feliciana and Stella Stevens.

Thursday, October 24

IT'S THE GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN (CBS, 7:30-8 p.m.). Animated Peanuts.

Sunday, October 27

AFL FOOTBALL (NBC, 4 p.m. to conclusion). San Diego Chargers v. Kansas City Chiefs, at Kansas City.

Monday, October 28

MONDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES (NBC, 9-11:30 p.m.). Exodus (1960). Part one of Otto Preminger's version of Leon Uris' novel about the Israeli war for independence. Stars are Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint, Ralph Richardson, Lee J. Cobb and Peter Lawford. Part two: Tuesday, 9-10:55 p.m.

NFL FOOTBALL (CBS, 9:30 to conclusion). Green Bay Packers v. Dallas Cowboys, live from Cotton Bowl, Dallas.

Check local listings for dates and times of these NET specials:

NET FESTIVAL. Dylan Thomas: The World I Breathe. Award-winning portrait of the Welsh poet. Program includes recordings of his own readings, as well as interviews with his close friends Novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson and Painter Mervyn Levy. Repeat.

NET PLAYHOUSE. The Soldier's Talc. Stravinsky's ballet, starring Robert Helpmann and Svetlana Beriosova.

THEATER

THE APA REPERTORY COMPANY offers two drawing-room comedies in verse. Moliere's The Misanthrope is as deliciously vicious a lampoon of the manners and meanness of Louis XIV's court as it was 300 years ago, and it is performed with panache. But T. S. Eliot's 1950 spiritual parable, The Cocktail Party, seems stilted and stale in a limp production.

THE GREAT WHITE HOPE, a sprawling semidocumentary, by Howard Sackler traces the career of the first Negro heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson. The play is a drama of contrition spiked by the adrenaline of newspaper headlines, but James Earl Jones, as the brooding boxer, commands the stage like an avenging giant.

THE DEATH OF BESSIE SMITH and THE AMERICAN DREAM, by Edward Albee, are caustic comic strips of the American scene. In Theater 1969's deft revivals, Rosemary Murphy is chilling as the coldly hysterical nurse of Bessie Smith, while Sudie Bond is endearingly shrill as the Grandma of Dream.