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S22 Ep2
Zora Neale Hurston - Jump at the Sun
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurtson was an influential author of African-American literature, anthropologist, and filmmaker, who portrayed racial struggles in the early-20th-century American South, and published research on Haitian Vodou. The most popular of her four novels is Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937. She also wrote more than 50 short stories, plays, and essays.
Premiered: 4/9/2008
S21 Ep6
Tony Bennett: The Music Never Ends
Tony Bennett is an artist who moves the hearts and touches the souls of audiences. He’s the singer’s singer and has received high praise from his colleagues through the years, including Frank Sinatra, who stated unequivocally, “Tony Bennett is the best singer in the business.” He is an international treasure who was honored by the United Nations with its Citizen of the World award.
Premiered: 9/12/2007
S5 Ep8
Sanford Meisner: The Theatre’s Best Kept Secret
A leading acting teacher who trained some of the most famous performers of the stage and screen, Sanford Meisner was a founding member of the Group Theatre. The Group Theatre, a cooperative theater ensemble, became a leading force in the theater world of the 30s. Meisner performed in many of the group’s most memorable productions.
Premiered: 8/27/1990
S16 Ep6
Merce Cunningham: A Lifetime of Dance
The title of Charles Atlas’ new documentary on Merce Cunningham may be taken quite literally: his mother described his dancing down the aisle of the church the family attended in Centralia, Washington, at the age of four. At 82, Cunningham is still making new work for the dance company he formed at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, in the summer of 1953.
Premiered: 12/16/2001
S4 Ep2
Stella Adler: Awake and Dream!
From 1905, at the age of four, until her death eighty-seven years later, Stella Adler dedicated herself to understanding the theater. The child of actors Sarah and Jacob Adler, Stella began her career in the Yiddish theater. At the age of eighteen, she went to London, where she worked for a year before returning to New York.
Premiered: 7/10/1989
S22 Ep3
Marvin Gaye: What's Going On
When Marvin Gaye died in 1984, he left behind one of the great legacies in American music. More than a superb vocalist and subtle composer, he was a visionary who expressed the tenor of his times. Both radical and romantic, a self-taught singer with a flair for autobiographical revelation, he thrived on confession and loved candor.
Premiered: 5/7/2008
S17 Ep1
Willie Nelson: Still is Still Moving
He’s been instrumental in shaping both country and pop music, yet his appeal crosses all social and economic lines. Sometimes he’s called an outlaw, though from Farm Aid to the aftermath of September 11, from the resurrection of a burned-out courthouse in his own hometown to fanning the flame of the Olympics, it is Willie Nelson who brings us together.
Premiered: 10/2/2002
S4 Ep1
Harold Clurman: A Life of Theatre
Harold Clurman has been called the most influential figure in the history of the American theater. Between 1935 and 1980, he directed over forty plays, including Jean Giraudoux’s TIGER AT THE GATES, Eugene O’Neill’s TOUCH OF THE POET, and Arthur Miller’s INCIDENT AT VICHY. He authored seven books, and from 1953 until his death in 1980 he was a drama critic for THE NATION.
Premiered: 7/3/1989
S23 Ep1
Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About
Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz was born in New York on October 11, 1918 and raised in Weehawken, New Jersey. Deprived of a college education by the Depression, he began his career as a dancer in the experimental troupe of Gluck Sandor. George Balanchine cast him in the chorus of a pair of Broadway shows, and soon after, he got into Ballet Theatre (later American Ballet Theatre).
Premiered: 2/18/2009
S21 Ep5
John James Audubon: Drawn From Nature
John James Audubon is best known for The Birds of America, a book of 435 images, portraits of every bird then known in the United States – painted and reproduced in the size of life. Its creation cost Audubon eighteen years of monumental effort in finding the birds, making the book, and selling it to subscribers. Audubon also wrote thousands of pages about birds (Ornithological Biography).
Premiered: 7/25/2007
S17 Ep5
Joni Mitchell: Woman of Heart & Mind
Although she is clearly a child of the great American popular tradition, there is no more serious artist on the contemporary scene than the composer-poet, Joni Mitchell. Her work, like that of Duke Ellington and Stevie Wonder, transcends the limits imposed by the terms “popular” and “serious.” Furthermore, her music-poetry is a remarkable example of the ever-present potential of ancient unity.
Premiered: 4/2/2003
S21 Ep3
Les Paul: Chasing Sound
A notorious fussbudget about sound, Paul arrives at the Iridium from his home in Mahwah, N.J., at 4:15 p.m., nearly four hours before his first show, so he has time to fine-tune the sound system. He is joined by his son and sound man Rusty, who lives with him, and another sound man. Since moving to its new locale at 1650 Broadway, the club has gone to great lengths to meet Paul’s demands.
Premiered: 7/11/2007
S19 Ep6
Ernest Hemingway: Rivers to The Sea
Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway was an American journalist, novelist, short-story writer, and sportsman. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his adventurous lifestyle and his public image brought him admiration from later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s.
Premiered: 9/14/2005
S18 Ep7
Hank Williams: Honky Tonk Blues
More than fifty years after his death, Hank Williams ranks among the most powerfully iconic figures in American music. Iconic to the point that man and myth are inextricably entwined. He set the agenda for contemporary country songcraft and sang his songs with such believability that we feel privy to his world, despite the fact that he left no in-depth interviews and just a few letters.
Premiered: 6/23/2004

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