Briefs for February 6-7, 2021

This week's entry in Noir Alley is The Killer that Stalked New York, which I blogged about many years ago. It's somewhat of a docudrama about a woman (Evelyn Keyes) smuggling diamonds from Cuba who picked up a case of smallpox while she was down there, and is now spreading the disease through the city. Timely with all the coronavirus kerfuffle, and nice to see authorities not panic and put everybody under house arrest and then say that the people thrown out of work by this should have gotten "essential" jobs. The Killer that Stalked New York is on at midnight tonight and 10:00 AM tomorrow.

Over on FXM, Anna and the King of Siam is one of the movies that's back in the rotation after a while. I don't think I've actually blogged about that one before, and haven't seen it in ages, so I'll have to record tomorrow's showing to do a post on it at some point. You can catch it at 7:20 AM tomorrow Also in the rotation -- and I don't know if I've ever seen it on FXM or even FMC back in the day -- is The Man from Snowy River, an entertaining double role for Kirk Douglas. It's on tomorrow at 1:10 PM and again Monday.

I was going to mention the passing of Haya Harareet earlier, but then Christopher Plummer died and he really deserved an entire post to himself. Israeli-born actress Harareet, who is probably best known for playing the female lead in the Charlton Heston version of Ben-Hur, was 89. I didn't realize she married British director Jack Clayton and co-wrote the screenplay to Our Mother's House, an effectively creepy movie Clayton directed.

Today marks 110 years since the birth of Ronald Reagan; unsurprisingly for a Saturday TCM isn't doing a birthday programming salute, even though this is one of the few years they'll get the chance since 31 Days of Oscar is being moved to April this year. (I suppose it's possible that the Oscars could permanently go back to April, where they were decades ago.) One person whose fans are in luck is Lana Turner; her centenary comes up on Monday and with no 31 Days of Oscar and Turner having worked a lot at MGM, she'll get what looks like a 24-hour tribute.