Gotham Lights Beckon Exam Weary Students

Good Food and Gaiety

In your desire to escape the memory of dining hall food, you will probably rush madly hither and you. Let the following guide you. The Carnaval Room of the Sherry--Netherlands offers dinner and supper dance music by sundry gypsies and Lester Lanin. Down the street a bit, Le Ruban Bleu, 4 E. 56th Street features no less than ten night club artists to form a pleasant distraction during the meal time. A block away is Le Coq Rouge at 65 E. 56th Street. It supplies Phil D'Arcy's trio and Eddie Davis' orchestra. There is dancing here. If you are after the best, and want to pay for it, head for the "21" Club, at 21 W. 52nd. If you saw "All About Eve," you also saw the "21."

Returning to earth, Joe King's "G-A" at 190 Third Avenue is tops for inexpensive German-American food, thick brew and community singing. Lum Fong has got it if you are looking for real stuff in Chinese food, while Sallo de Champagne, 135 MacDougal St. in the Village offers comfortable couchs to sit and relax on. It has a truly unique atmosphere, and serves terrific wines and champagnes.

Theatre

The theatregoer will find a broad and varied fare this weekend, ranging from such long run favorites as South Pacific and Kiss Me Kate to one-week old adaptation of Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon.

Leading off the list of popular musicals is Guys and Dolle, a brassy, tough affair starring Vivian Blaine. Guys and Dolle, which was called from a Damon Runyon gambling story, is running at the 46th Street Theatre.

Irving Berlin's newest offering Call Me Madam, features noisy Ethel Merman in an apparent take-off on Perle Mesta, current ambassador to Luxembourg. Berlin's score has been effectively combined with a Lindsay and Crouse book to make one of the top musicals of this, or any other, season. (Imperial).

Running quite a few paces behind these works are the mediocre Bless You All (Mark Hellinger) and Cole Porter's Out of This World (Century). Comedian Charlotte Greenwood has kept Porter's musical in the black.

Mike Todd's Peep Show features some cleaned-up Scollay Square gags and a more appetizing chorus line. Burlesque followers can pick up this number at the Winter Garden.

Old favorites, South Pacific, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Kiss Me Kate are still drawing full houses. South Pacific is at the Majestic, starring Mary Martin, but not Ezio Pinza. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is playing at the Ziegfield. Anne Jeffreys has replaced Patricia Morison in Cole Porter's Kate, at the Schubert.

The straight plays offer an even more interesting selection for this weekend than the musicals. Hits like Death of a Salesman or Madwoman Challiot are now on the road, but the current fare is by no means lean.

Claude Raines has drawn impressive notices for his performance in Darkness At Noon, Sidney Kingley's adaptation of Koestler's novel of the same name. Tickets are scarce for this tragedy but it is certainly worth investigation. (Alvin).

Christopher Fry's The Lady's Not for Burning, is another excellent opus, with John Gielgud and Pamela Brown heading the cast. (Royale).

The Country Girl, Clifford Odet's newest play, concerns a drunken actor (Paul Kelly) seeking a return to stardom. Both Kelly and Uta Hagen give brilliant performances in this drama. (Lyceum).

Frederic March and Florence Eldridge are co-starred in Arthur Miller's adaptation of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. (Boadhurst).

King Lear, with Louis Calhern in the title role, has been successfully, if elaborately, revived. (National).

Less attractive dramatic works include Philip Barry's Second Threshold and Louis Vernuil's Affairs of State, starring Celeste Holm. (Morosco and Music Box, respectively).

Ring Around the Moon, Jean Anouilh's comedy, is still at the Martin Beck.

Another first-rate comedy is Bell, Book and Candle, a farce about sorcery in Manhattan starring Lill Palmer and Rex Harrison. (Ethel Barrymore).

One of the best of the current comedies is critic Wolcott Gibbs' Season in the Sun, a clever farce about life on New York's Fire Island. (Cort).

Equally funny is a revival of Hecht and MacArthur's Twentieth Century, starring Jose Ferrer and Gloria Swanson. (Fulton).

Current standbys include The Cocktail Party, The Happy Time, and Member of the Wedding. All three are still definitely worth seeing. The Cocktail Party, by T. S. Eliot '10, is at he Henry Miller; The Happy Time, a portrait of a French-Canadian family, at the Plymouth, and Member of the Wedding, with Etnel Waters, Julie Harris, and Brandon de Wilde, at the Empire.

All shows nightly except Sunday, except Peep Show, which takes Monday off; and all give Saturday matinees.

Cinema

New York's movie houses offer little more than Boston's except in the foreign line, where there is an excellent selection, and a small squad of high-budget Hollywood openings.

Ways of Love, which apparently will never slip into vigilant Boston, has escaped from a trigger-happy censor and is now running with all three superb sections at the Paris, 58th and Fifth. If Cardinal Spellman make as much progress in New York as he has here, this may be nearly the last chance to see it in the East.

Jean Cocteau's Orpheus winds up a long run at the 55th Street Playhouse (near Seventh). Replete with international awards, often imaginative symbolism, and sometimes stunning originality, this adaptation of the Greek legend to modern dress and psychology has added considerably to the reputation of France's jack-of-all-arts.

In its second month at the Little Cine Met, Sixth at 39th, Manon features Cecile Aubry and a fairly clumsy modernization of the French classic, Manon Lescaut.

From Italy comes Bitter Rice, a tale of passion starring Sylvana Mangano and the Po valley, at the World, 49th and Seventh.

Vittorio DeSica's prize-laden Bicycle Thief is undergoing revival at the Greenwich, 12th and Seventh, coupled with Robert J. Flaherty's famous Tabu.

Trio, three more W. Somerset Maugham short stories, is keeping the Sutton in business, at 57th and Second. Another English feature is the witty Last Holiday, starring Alec Guinness, "the best actor of 1950." The Interborough Rapid Transit stops a stone's throw from the Ascot at 183rd and Grand Concourse in the Bronx.

If it is possible that anybody has still not seen The Red Shoes, the RKO chain distributed it to all its Manhattan outlets yesterday.

Winding up the European theatre, The Blue Angel, with Marlene Dietrich, a German revival, is at the Art, 8th east of Fifth.

The new domestic pictures are uninspiring. The personal appearance of Danny Kaye lends class to the Technicolor version of Call Me Mister, which opened yesterday at the Roxy, Seventh and 50th. Betty Grable and Dan Dailey grace the "75,000 inch Technicolor screen" in the former Broadway success; and Yma Sumac, the Dunhill dancers, and Hill Baird's marionettes give the stage show remarkable variety.

September Affair enters the hollowed Radio City Music Hall today, with Joan Fontaine, Joseph Cotton, and Jessica Tandy. The Second Woman brings Robert Young and Betsy Drake to the Rivoli screen today. The Little Carnegie, next door to the big one on West 57th, presents The Dancing Years with the gaiety of old Vienna and a ballet corps which reportedly does justice to the music.

James Stewart, Judy Holliday, and Jose Ferrer are as successful on the screen as they were on stage in three recent seleases. Harvey is at the Astor, Broadway and 45th; Born Yesterday at the Victoria, one block north; and Cyrano de Bergerao at the Bijou, 45th Street west of the Great White Way.

All About Eve is now at the 68th Street Playhouse, on Third Avenue, with Bette Davis, George Sanders, and Anne Baxter. The Symphony, Broadway and 95th; is reviving intermezzo with Ingrid Bergman and the late Leslie Howard, along with the "star-studded" Since You Went Away (Colbert, Cotten Jones, and Temple).

Jazz

Jimmy Archey is still the best in town, and he is still at Jimmy Ryans, the last of the 52nd Street dives. Pops Foster, who was the first bass-player to go all-pizzicato, and drummer Tommy Benford, who hit the main circuit with Jelly Roll Morton, assist the star trombonist. Sunday is day off.

Wild Bill Donovan blows his trumpet as hard as he can at Eddie Condon's 3rd Street emporium, with Edmund Hall on the clarinet and Gene Scroeder at the drums. Young Ralph Sutton's piano playing make for the best intermission in years.

Pae Wee Erwin's Dixieland band plays with vigor verging on skill and humor verging on corn at Nick's, at the corner of Seventh and 10th.

Tomorrow night is time for the weekly jam sessions on Second Avenue. The Stuyvesant Casino at 9th Street and the Central Plaza at 6th gather such artists as Max Kaminsky, Red Allen, Sid Catlett, Buster Bailey, Bud Freeman, James P. Johnson, George Wettling, Joe Sullivan, and whoever else of note is in New York and has time to spare.

United Nations

An out of place reminder that both the General Assembly and the Security Council are discussing and attempting to deal with matters of more than passing interest. Now that China has been branded "aggressor," debate is due on what to do about it.

Still meeting at Lake Success, in Flushing, the U. N. hires personnel to answer Extension 2253, Fieldstone 7-1100 and help people arrange to watch the deliberations of either chamber.