Screen

The UCLA Film & Television Archive's Festival of Preservation turns its spotlight on the small screen with a tribute Saturday to the television work of an award-winning actress and a celebration March 23 of an acclaimed but short-lived ABC anthology series. Julie Harris has won five Tony Awards and is best known to film fans for her role as James Dean's character's love interest in 1955's "East of Eden. " During the 1950s, she was one of the superstars of live drama anthologies. One of her earliest TV appearances, in the1951 Goodyear Television Playhouse "October Story," screens Saturday afternoon at the Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood.

WASHINGTON - More than a decade after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Transportation Security Administration is reassessing airline safety with an eye toward identifying the most likely threats. On Thursday, TSA Administrator John Pistole made his first appearance before Congress since last week's announcement that small knives, golf clubs, hockey sticks and assorted other items were no longer prohibited. "These are not things that terrorists are intending to use," Pistole told a House Homeland Security subcommittee.

It's a long way from Christy Walton's ocean-view manse near La Jolla to the arid plains of 1940s New Mexico. But over the decades, the billionaire heiress to the Wal-Mart fortune has found solace and inspiration in Rudolfo Anaya's coming-of-age novel, "Bless Me, Ultima," set in that unforgiving landscape, and in the mystical story of a Mexican American boy named Tony who lives there. Finally, a realization hit her. "One of the things I wanted to do before I died was to see this book made into a movie," Walton said one recent morning, gazing from her cliffside home toward the Pacific.

On May 19, 1836, a force of Comanche warriors accompanied by their Kiowa and Kochi allies attacked Ft. Parker in central Texas. Besides killing several of the residents of the fort, the Comanches kidnapped five captives, including 9-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker. For years, her uncle James Parker tried and ultimately failed to find her. Cynthia Ann stayed with the Comanches for 25 years, marrying a warrior and having three children, including the legendary Quanah Parker, a famed Comanche chief and leader of the Native American Church.

Feeling a little rebellious? Frustrated with authority? You can't do much better than to spend Saturday night picking fights with Jack Nicholson at the Egyptian Theatre. It's a trifecta of discontent that begins with 1969's "Easy Rider," then 1970's "Five Easy Pieces" before closing with 1973's "The Last Detail. " I love all three for the way they show the actor's rising power and so did the academy, nominating Nicholson for an Oscar each time ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" brought his first win in '76)

Valerie Perrine may be the only former Las Vegas showgirl to win the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival. Just a few years after she had hung up her glitzy showgirl costume, Perrine was the toast of the town as Lenny Bruce's stripper/showgirl wife Honey Harlow in Bob Fosse's acclaimed 1974 biopic "Lenny," with Dustin Hoffman as the groundbreaking comedian. After eight years working at the Desert Inn and the Lido, which was a topless revue, Perrine was visiting a friend in Los Angeles looking for career opportunities.

If you think air carriers have run out of ideas for new fees to charge passengers, think again. Among the fees airlines have announced in the last few weeks are a charge to zip through airport screening gates and board early, a fee to watch streaming movies and a fee to have your bags delivered in 36 cities around the country. It should be no surprise that airlines keep coming up with new fees: Combined, such charges generated an estimated $36 billion in 2012 for the world's largest airlines.

Paleyfest is back to celebrate the best and brightest in the medium of television. Check out big-screen showings of some of your favorite TV programs, including "The Walking Dead," "The Newsroom," "American Horror Story" and more. A variety of special talks and panels featuring your favorite stars will augment the festivities. The Saban Theatre, 8440 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. Fri. through March 15. Times and prices vary. (310) 786-1000; http://www.paleycenter.org .

Sarah Silverman, the Sklar Brothers, Dana Gould and Aziz Ansari are among the comedians who will be presenting their favorite movies at the 2nd Wayne Federman Film Festival Thursday through Saturday at the Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theatre. Federman, a comic actor who has appeared in such films as "Step Brothers" and "50 First Dates," came up with the idea for the festival last year. Silverman will present Woody Allen's 1989 comedy-drama "Crimes and Misdemeanors" Thursday evening, with the second bill featuring the Sklar Brothers and special guest Paul Dooley screening 1979's Oscar-winning "Breaking Away.

I love the smell of preservation in the morning. The rest of the day, too, if it comes to that. So it's a pleasure to announce that the UCLA Film and Television Archive's one-of-a-kind Festival of Preservation opens for business Friday night with a knockout new print of one of the killer classics of film noir, Joseph H. Lewis' "Gun Crazy. " It's too bad the concept of preservation has such a musty sound, because what it means in practice is that today's audiences can experience the most unusual, the most entertaining and exciting treasures from the entire range of cinema's past, all brought back to life by the archive's team of crack preservationists.