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- A series showcasing documentaries on American history.
- It starts with a live radio broadcast from the Bikini Atoll a few days before it is annihilated by a nuclear test. Shows great footage from these times and tells the story of the US Navy Sailors who were exposed to radioactive fallout. One interviewed sailor suffered grotesquely swollen limbs and he is shown being interviewed with enormous left arm and hand.
- Lise Yasui explores three generations of her Japanese-American family - from their immigration to Oregon in the early 1900s through their imprisonment in internment camps during World War Two.
- A documentary covering the R&B (rhythm and blues) field from the 1940s to the early 1950s. Included is footage of performances by major R&B singers of the time, and interviews with singers, producers and others involved in the field.
- Documentary exploring the struggles of The Donner Party, a group of American pioneers and their two Indigenous guides who became stranded in the Sierras during a horrible winter.
- The NAACP and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall build a Supreme Court case against the policy of segregation.
- An award-winning documentary of the invasion of Normandy in World War II, using rare archival films and pictures from British, American, and German archives. The narrator provides the overall continuity, but the voices of over 50 participants who were involved in the staging of the invasion in Britain or were on the beaches of France bring the images to life.
- 1987– 1h 28mUnrated7.4 (183)TV EpisodeStruggling to keep the family farm in the family.
- Documentary about the battle between Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst over Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). Features interviews with Welles' and Hearst's co-workers also as a relative complete bio of Hearst.
- A docudrama adaptation of Ulrich's Pulitzer-winning book, which was based on thousands of entries in the journal of Martha Ballard, a Maine midwife, in the late 1700's and early 1800's. The movie intercuts between reenactments of Ballard doing her Maine midwifery and related tasks, and Ulrich in her eight years of research on her book; in the end, clear comparisons are made between the work of the two women.
- When he left the White House in 1989, Ronald Reagan was one of the most popular presidents of the century. A former Hollywood star and seemingly simple man, Reagan was consistently underestimated by his opponents. One by one, he overcame them all. Incorporating interviews with key political insiders, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and members of the Reagan family, "Reagan" explores the man who saw America as a "shining city on a hill" and himself as its heroic defender. The program follows Reagan's life from his itinerant boyhood in Illinois to his battle with "communist agitators" in the Screen Actors Guild and his dramatic 1980 victory over Jimmy Carter. Only 70 days into his presidency, a would-be assassin's bullet left him more debilitated than anyone knew. Reagan's massive military buildup and bold challenges to the Soviet Union caused his critics to portray him as a trigger-happy cowboy. But he negotiated deep cuts in nuclear weapons and resolved to end the Cold War. Five years after leaving office, Reagan announced he had Alzheimer's disease and dropped from public view. [info from DVD container]
- 1987– 1h 50m8.5 (117)TV EpisodeAn assassin's bullet ended the life of William McKinley in 1901, making his vice president, Theodore Roosevelt, an "accidental" president at the age of 42.
- 1987– 1h 30m8.1 (103)TV EpisodeDocumentary chronicling the history of World War II's "Battle of the Bulge", when the German army launched a major surprise counteroffensive against the American forces that caught them almost completely off-guard, sweeping away major portions of the front line, pushing deep into the rear areas and causing tens of thousands of casualties before it was finally halted.
- 1987–7.5 (72)TV EpisodeAs the campaign to force Jews out of Germany ramps up, the American government blocks efforts to help rescue many of these displaced persons, and Americans' antisemitism only seems to get worse.
- In the 1850s, thousands of homeless children roamed New York City streets in search of food and shelter. The Children's Aid Society sent the children on trains to rural areas, where families would take in the orphans.
- Biography of U.S. Army General Douglas MacArthur. Part one looks at his early life and service in World War I.
- The story of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) in World War II.
- Rising more than 700 feet above the raging waters of the Colorado River, it was called one of the greatest engineering works in history. The Hoover Dam, built during the Great Depression, drew men desperate for work to a remote and rugged canyon near Las Vegas. There they struggled against heat, choking dust and perilous heights to build a colossus of concrete that brought electricity and water to millions and transformed the American Southwest.
- 1987–6.8 (16)TV EpisodeRecounting the historic attack of 1941, including the planning and military outlook of both the United States and Japan at the time.
- A documentary chronicling the events surrounding the murder of famed architect Stanford White by millionaire Harry Thaw over the affections of showgirl Evelyn Nesbitt in New York in 1906.
- A documentary about the history of African American race films during the Golden Age of Hollywood.
- 1987– 1h 30mApproved6.7 (51)TV EpisodeThe personal development of George Washington is the focus as Producer David Sutherland brings to life a uniquely human Washington who transformed himself from social climber into a patriot willing to give up everything for a higher cause.
- The film explores the beginnings of America's first amusement park and takes us through its good times all the way up to its end. The show was originally produced for PBS's American Experience.
- 1987– 1h 52mTV-PG8.1 (119)TV EpisodeAward winning filmmaker David Grubin profiles one of the most controversial U.S. presidents, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who rose from obscurity to the pinnacle of power, only to suffer disillusionment and defeat. Witness the events that brought LBJ from Texas to Washington, the White House, and a landslide election in 1964. Follow his triumphs in passing a wave of social legislation then his downward spiral which ends in withdrawal from politics. This is the first of two parts.
- History of the American and Soviet development of the H-bomb.
- Exploration of life in America in the first year of the 20th century, using archive film footage and photographs.
- 1987– 1h 30m7.2 (28)TV EpisodeLife story of the controversial African-American leader Marcus Garvey.
- 1987– 6h8.4 (158)TV EpisodeThe story of the Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln's childhoods - his in a remote backwoods log cabin, hers in a wealthy Kentucky home - and describes their courtship.
- Polio at age 39, president at age 50. Explore the public and private life of a determined man who steered this country through two monumental crises: the Depression and World War II. FDR served as president longer than any other, and his legacy still shapes our understanding of the role of government and the presidency. A film by award winning filmmaker David Grubin. This is the first of two parts.
- The worst nuclear-power-plant accident in U.S. history.
- A documentary based on the book "War Letters; Extraordinary Correspondence From American Wars" by Andrew Carroll.
- For more than thirty years, Eleanor Roosevelt was America's most powerful woman. Millions adored her, but her FBI file was thicker than a stack of phone books. She spoke out fearlessly for civil rights, and the KKK put a price on her head. She helped Franklin D. Roosevelt rise to power and was one of his most valuable political assets, but the media satirized her as an ugly busybody. Drawing on interviews with her closest relatives, friends, and biographers, as well as rare home movie footage, the film reveals the hidden dimensions of one of the century's most influential women. She was born to wealth and power but orphaned at the age of 10. Her private life was marked by tragedy, infidelity, and a never-ending search for intimacy. Yet she persevered, fighting tirelessly for social justice for all and taking a lead role in the United Nations landmark Declaration of Human Rights.
- On August 1, 1942, a 22-year-old Mexican American man was stabbed to death at a party. To white Los Angelenos, the murder was just more proof that Mexican American crime was spiraling out of control. The police fanned out across LA, netting 600 young Mexican American suspects. Almost all those taken into custody were wearing the distinctive uniform of their generation: zoot-suits. The tragic murder and the injustice of the trial that followed, coupled with sensational news coverage of both, fanned the flames of the racial hostility that was already running rife in the city. Within months of the verdict, Los Angeles was in the grip of some of the worst violence in its history.
- Story of the first great American song writer, composer of "My Old Kentucky Home," "Camptown Races," "Listen to the Flower People" and more.
- Few American artists have reached a wider audience, or enjoyed more widespread popularity in their own lifetime, than Ansel Adams. None has had more profound an impact on how Americans grasp the majesty of their continent, or done more to transform how people think and feel about the meaning of the natural world. A visionary photographer, a pioneer in photographic technique and a crusader for the environment, Adams would take part in an extraordinary revolution: in photography, and ways of seeing what he called "the continuous beauty of the things that are." His greatest photographs would seek to capture "the instant of revelation -- of timelessness" amidst the evanescence of the natural world. Ansel Adams is the intimate portrait of a great artist and ardent environmentalist -- for whom life and art, photography and wilderness, creativity and communication, love and expression, were inextricably connected. ANSEL ADAMS, a ninety-minute documentary film written and directed by Ric Burns, and broadcast on national public television in April 2002, provides an elegant, moving and lyrical portrait of this most eloquent and quintessentially American of photographers.
- The great influenza pandemic of 1918 - the worst epidemic ever seen in the United States.
- The story of Carl Graham Fisher, an Indiana entrepreneur who created Miami Beach out of the Florida swamps.
- Biography of U.S. President Harry S Truman.
- During World War II and the era of staunch racial segregation, a Black carpenter's son named Vivien Thomas, who had a talent for surgery, along with a white surgeon named Dr. Alfred Blalock, who defied the medical establishment created a partnership that changed the course of cardiac surgery. With only a high school diploma, Thomas became a leading cardiac pioneer and educator of two generations of the United States' premiere heart surgeons. This moving documentary tells the story of Thomas and his relationship with Blalock, one that ushered in advances in surgery that are still in existence today.
- After his famous flight, Charles Lindbergh becomes known to all the world but struggles with life in the limelight.
- The story of the female investigative reporter, Nellie Bly and her race around the world in less than 80 days.
- A documentary examining the 1955 murder of a 14-year-old boy from Chicago while visiting relatives in Mississippi, and the broad impact of his death, his funeral, and the subsequent trial and acquittal of his white killers.