Wednesday, August 11, 2021

Briefs for August 11-12, 2021

I didn't expect to do obituary posts on consecutive days, but Pat Hitchcock died on Monday at the age of 93. She was of course the daughter of director Alfred Hitchcock and his wife Alma Reville who had some script and continuity responsibilities for a bunch of his famous movies. Pat was most famously cast in Strangers on a Train, where she plays the bespectacled sister of Ruth Roman and watches in horror as Robert Walker nearly strangles a guest at a Washington party. Unfortunately I couldn't find a good picture of that on the web, so the next best thing is a picture of Pat and Farley Granger:

Actor Alex Cord died on Monday as well; he was 88. I feel like I should recognize him; probably his biggest movie role was as the Ringo Kid in the 1960s remake of Stagecoach, which doesn't seem to be coming up on any of the movie channels any time soon. Wikipedia says Cord has an uncredited role in The Chapman Report, which is going to be on TCM Friday as part of Jane Fonda's turn in Summer Under the Stars.

Speaking of Summer Under the Stars, we get our silent movie star tomorrow. That would be Ramon Novarro, although most of the daytime is taken up by early sound pictures. The highlight of Novarro's day, of course, would be the 1925 version Ben-Hur, at 8:00. It's thrilling even if the the chariot race isn't in widescreen. I doubt Sydney Pollack would get the heebie-jeebies however, as the scene wasn't filmed in widescreen.

One of the westerns that's been showing up in the StarzEncore Westerns rotation is The Secret of Convict Lake. It has another airing tomorrow at 8:38 AM.

As far as I can tell, there's nothing that I haven't mentioned recently that's been put back into the rotation on FXM. Maybe The King and I on Friday, which is of course a musical version of Anna and the King of Siam that I blogged about this past March.

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