Television: Aug. 29, 1969

Wednesday, August 27

YOUR DOLLAR'S WORTH (NET, 9-10 p.m.).* "Prescription Drugs: Prices and Perils." Starting with one of the drug industry's most painful and enduring scandals, the sale of thalidomide, this program moves on to discuss contraceptives, fertility drugs, new products and current testing and marketing standards for drugs. Repeat.

Thursday, August 28

THURSDAY NIGHT MOVIES (CBS, 9-11 p.m.). Bette Davis stars in The Nanny (1965), a thriller-chiller about—you guessed it—a nanny and her ten-year-old charge. Something for everyone: death, suspense, generation-gap intrigue.

Friday, August 29

THE HIGH CHAPARRAL (NBC, 7:30-8:30 p.m.). A camel? In High Chaparral country? Right. A sweet-talking Irish cavalry trooper, played by Frank Gorshin, sells the four-footed version of the Brooklyn Bridge to Uncle Buck, claiming the animal is expert at cattle herding. Uncle Buck buys both the story and the camel —hoof, line and stinker. Repeat.

Sunday, August 31 MEET THE PRESS (NBC, 12:30-1:30 p.m.). This gathering of State Governors for the annual conference held in Colorado Springs features Democrats Buford Ellington (Tenn.), Richard Hughes (N.J.), John McKeithen (La.), and Republicans John Love (Colo.), Nelson Rockefeller (N.Y.) and Richard Ogilvie (111.).

THE 215T CENTURY (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). In a program that could be Ralph Nader's favorite, Walter Cronkite leads a probe into methods of designing safer cars and highways, plans to improve driver competence and then moves headlong into the problem of traffic congestion.

SUNDAY NIGHT MOVIE (ABC, 8-10:45 p.m.). Sizzling action for a hot summer's night: Zulu (1964), the story of eight British officers (including Stanley Baker and Michael Caine), 97 men, one minister (Jack Hawkins) and the minister's daughter (Ulla Jacobsson) v. 4,000 assorted Zulu warriors. Eleven Victoria Crosses were earned in the original battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879.

Tuesday, September 2

FIRST TUESDAY (NBC, 9-11 p.m.). This segment of NBC's magazine-format show features a profile of big-game Conservationist Patrick Hemingway, Ernest's son; an attempt to answer the question of Whatever Happened to Carroll Baker; plus looks at skydiving, computer dating and other features.

CINEMA

RUN WILD, RUN FREE. The trouble with most matinee movies is that they often seem made by children rather than for them. Run Wild is a happy exception, a fondly and meticulously rendered parable about an autistic English boy (Mark Lester) and an almost magical white colt.

THE WILD BUNCH. The blood runs thick and often in Sam Peckinpah's raucous, magnificent western about a band of freebooting bandits operating on both sides of the Tex-Mex border around the turn of the century. The action is plentiful, the performances faultless, and the film itself one of the best of the year.

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. The journey of Apollo 11 has lent a new immediacy to Stanley Kubrick's visionary film of an expedition to Jupiter that assumes staggering metaphysical consequences. Kubrick is among the greatest of American film makers, and 2001 may well stand as his best film.