Narrated by two-time Oscar®-winner Kevin Spacey, the film features 45 original interviews with Carson’s friends, family and colleagues, including his second wife, Joanne, Dick Cavett, Doc Severinsen, and other The Tonight Show staff. Performers who appeared, or began their careers, on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson are also interviewed, including David Letterman, Jay Leno, Mel Brooks, Jerry Seinfeld, Ray Romano, Drew Carey, Garry Shandling, Steve Martin, Angie Dickinson, Ellen DeGeneres, Carl Reiner, Don Rickles, Bob Newhart,Joan Rivers, and David Steinberg. Late night TV hosts Jimmy Fallon and Conan O’Brien also discuss Carson’s influence on their careers.

For 15 years Jones wrote an annual letter to Carson requesting his cooperation in the production of a documentary. His appeals went unanswered until 2003, when he received a telephone call from Carson himself: “You write a damn fine letter, Peter, but I don’t have anything more to say.” Following Carson’s death in 2005, Jones directed his letters to Johnny’s nephew, Jeff Sotzing, who controls his uncle’s archives. Finally, in 2010, Sotzing agreed to cooperate and the Carson Entertainment Group granted unprecedented access to Johnny’s personal and professional archives, including family photo albums, home movies, memorabilia, and all existing episodes of The Tonight Show from 1962 until his retirement in 1992. His simple reason: “I didn’t want people to forget Johnny Carson.”

Quite possibly the biggest star that television has ever produced, Carson commanded, at his peak, a nightly audience of 15 million viewers – double the current audience of Leno and Letterman – combined. Rarely giving interviews, Carson chose to remain a very private man whose public persona made him an American superstar. He once revealed, “I can get in front of an audience and be in control. I suppose it’s manipulation. Offstage, I’m aloof because I’m not very comfortable.” American Masters Johnny Carson: King of Late Night explores this dichotomy and enigma, unearthing clues about Carson’s childhood, early days in the business, and personal and professional life.

“Carson has been one of the holy grails for documentary filmmakers, but there’s such a protective veil surrounding Johnny that I was beginning to wonder if this would ever happen,” says Jones, whose films for PBS include the Peabody Award-winning Inventing LA: The Chandlers and Their Times (2009) and American Masters: Goldwyn (2001).

“I am thrilled that the 20-year process of Johnny Carson taking his rightful place in American Masters has come to fruition at last!” remarks Susan Lacy, series creator and executive producer. “There is no one who touched more entertainment careers than Johnny. All of us are actually in his debt to some degree.”

In 2011, American Masters earned its eighth Emmy® Award for Outstanding Primetime Nonfiction Series in 11 years. Now in its 26th season, the series is a production of THIRTEEN for WNET, the parent company of THIRTEEN and WLIW21, New York’s public television stations, and operator of NJTV. For nearly 50 years, WNET has been producing and broadcasting national and local documentaries and other programs to the New York community.

Johnny Carson: King of Late Night is a co-production of Peter Jones Productions, Inc. and THIRTEEN’s American Masters for WNET.Writer/Director/Producer: Peter Jones. Director/Editor/Producer: Mark Catalena. Producer: Brian Tessier. Narrator: Kevin Spacey. Music: Earl Rose. American Masters Series Creator and Executive Producer: Susan Lacy.

American Masters is made possible by the support of the National Endowment for the Arts and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding for American Masters is provided by Rosalind P. Walter, The Blanche & Irving Laurie Foundation, Rolf and Elizabeth Rosenthal, Cheryl and Philip Milstein Family, Jack Rudin, Vital Projects Fund, The André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation, Michael & Helen Schaffer Foundation, and public television viewers.

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But who was the creator behind two of the world’s greatest lovers – Scarlett and Rhett – and the tumultuous romance that left book readers and film viewers wondering about their final fate together in one of storytelling’s most talked about cliffhangers? She was certainly no ordinary woman either.

Margaret Mitchell: American Rebel, a GPB production in association with THIRTEEN’s American Masters for WNET, explores the author’s extraordinary life.

Born in Atlanta in 1900, Margaret Mitchell was a force to be reckoned with until a tragic accident lead to her untimely death in 1949 – a debutante who challenged society with a brazen dance; a reporter who roamed town when tradition called for women to stay at home; and a philanthropist who risked her life in the name of generosity.

“Margaret Mitchell was always a writer and always a rebel,” says Emmy^®-winning executive producer/writer Pamela Roberts. “She was captivating and complex. She took chances every day of her life, and she changed the world with her one book, Gone With the Wind. Only Margaret Mitchell could have created Scarlett O’Hara.”

As a debutante from Atlanta’s upper crust, Mitchell challenged the stifling social restrictions placed on women at the time. She was one of Georgia’s first female newspaper reporters and used the money she made from Gone With the Wind to fund many causes, including the education of the South’s first African-American medical doctors.

Mitchell had a charismatic personality and a great sense of humor, but she also dealt with depression and illness. Setbacks in her early life included the loss of her mother and her fiancé as a teenager. A failed first marriage followed, but in spite of all that, she found her soul mate in her second husband, John Marsh, and with his support she wrote Gone With the Wind.

Margaret Mitchell: American Rebel engages leading authors, historians, biographers and people with personal connections to Mitchell to reveal a complex and mysterious woman who experienced profound identity shifts in her life and who struggled with the two great issues of her day: the changing role of women and the liberation of African Americans. Interviewees include friend Sara Mitchell Parsons, Carolyn Equen Miller (daughter of Mitchell’s lifelong arch rival Anne Hart Equen), Pat Conroy (The Prince of Tides), Pearl Cleage (What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day), Molly Haskell (Frankly My Dear: Gone With the Wind Revisited), Darden Asbury Pyron (Southern Daughter/The Life of Margaret Mitchell and the Making of Gone With the Wind), and John Wiley (Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind).

Roberts shot extensive reenactments for the film based on Mitchell’s personal letters, which trace Mitchell throughout her life, starting at age three, that show how Mitchell’s upbringing influenced Gone With the Wind. Margaret Mitchell: American Rebel also examines Gone With the Wind’s cultural impact. For some the work was a racial lightning rod, while for others it proved a model for survival.

Interviewees (in alphabetical order):

Ann Boutwell – docent, Margaret Mitchell House Museum; Atlanta historian
Kathleen Clark – University of Georgia historian writing a book on Margaret Mitchell
Pearl Cleage – novelist, poet, playwright
Pat Conroy – novelist; wrote introduction to 75^th anniversary edition of Gone With the Wind and his book My Reading Life (2010) devotes a chapter to Gone With the Wind
Robert Franklin – president, Morehouse College (Atlanta, GA)
Debra Freer – editor, Lost Laysen (Mitchell’s 1916 novella,first published in 1996)
Molly Haskell – author, Frankly My Dear: Gone With the Wind Revisited; film historian
Ira Joe Johnson – author, Benjamin E. Mays and Margaret Mitchell: A Unique Legacy in Medicine
Clifford Kuhn – Georgia State University historian
Carolyn Miller – daughter of Mitchell’s lifelong arch rival Anne Hart Equen
Sara Mitchell Parsons – friend of Mitchell in Atlanta (no relation)
Darden Asbury Pyron – author, Southern Daughter/The Life of Margaret Mitchell and the Making of Gone With the Wind
Marianne Walker – author, Margaret Mitchell and John Marsh: The Love Story Behind Gone With the Wind
Elizabeth West – Georgia State University English professor specializing in Africa-American literature and studies
John Wiley – author, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind; editor, The Scarlett Letter

Margaret Mitchell: American Rebel is a GPB production in association with THIRTEEN’s American Masters for WNET. Pamela Roberts is executive producer and writer. Kathy White is director of reenactments. Charlene Fisk is co-producer and editor. Kevan Ward is director of photography.

American Masters is made possible by the support of the National Endowment for the Arts and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding for American Masters is provided by Rosalind P. Walter, The Blanche & Irving Laurie Foundation, Rolf and Elizabeth Rosenthal, Cheryl and Philip Milstein Family, Jack Rudin, Vital Projects Fund, The André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation, Michael & Helen Schaffer Foundation, and public television viewers.

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More than 50 years after its publication, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than 40 languages worldwide, still sells nearly one million copies each year and is required reading in most American classrooms, making it quite possibly the most influential American novel of the 20th century. The 1962 film version, starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, won a trio of Academy Awards.

Harper Lee: Hey, Boo chronicles how this beloved novel came to be written, provides the context and history of the Deep South where it is set, and documents the many ways the novel has changed minds and shaped history. For teachers, students or fans of the classic, Hey, Boo enhances the experience of reading To Kill a Mockingbird.

Containing never-before-seen photos and letters, Hey, Boo features insightful interviews with friends and an exclusive interview with Lee’s sister, Alice Finch Lee (age 99 at filming), who share intimate recollections, anecdotes and biographical details for the first time, offering new insight into the life and mind of Harper Lee, including why she never published again. Oprah Winfrey; Tom Brokaw; Pulitzer Prize-winners Rick Bragg, Anna Quindlen, Richard Russo, Jon Meacham, and Diane McWhorter; and civil rights leader Andrew Young address the novel’s power, influence, and popularity, and the many ways it has shaped their lives.

Interviewees (in alphabetical order):

Mary Badham – actress, played Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Boaty Boatwright – casting director, To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Rick Bragg – author
Tom Brokaw – news anchor, journalist and author
Joy Brown – Lee’s friend
Michael Brown – Lee’s friend
Reverend Thomas Lane Butts – Pastor Emeritus of Lee’s church
Rosanne Cash – musician and author
Mark Childress – author
Jane Ellen Clark – former director, The Monroe County Heritage Museum
Allan Gurganus – author
David Kipen – former director of literature, National Endowment for the Arts
Wally Lamb – author
Alice Finch Lee – Lee’s sister
James McBride – author and musician
Diane McWhorter – historian
Jon Meacham – historian
James Patterson – author
Anna Quindlen – author
Richard Russo – author
Lizzie Skurnick – author
Lee Smith – author
Adriana Trigiani – author
Mary Tucker – educator and Monroeville, Alabama resident
Scott Turow – author
Oprah Winfrey – TV and film producer, founder of O, The Oprah magazine, radio programmer, actress, philanthropist, and chairman of Harpo Inc.
Andrew Young – civil rights leader

Harper Lee: Hey, Boo is a production of Mary Murphy & Company, LLC. Mary McDonagh Murphy is producer, writer and director. Rich White is director of photography. Christopher Seward is editor and producer. Susan Lacy is the series creator and executive producer of American Masters.

American Masters is made possible by the support of the National Endowment for the Arts and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding for American Masters is provided by Rosalind P. Walter, The Blanche & Irving Laurie Foundation, Rolf and Elizabeth Rosenthal, Cheryl and Philip Milstein Family, Jack Rudin, Vital Projects Fund, The André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation, Michael & Helen Schaffer Foundation, and public television viewers.

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Emmy^®-winning filmmaker Gail Levin explores Cab Calloway’s musical beginnings and milestones in the context of the Harlem Renaissance and segregationist America using archival footage, animation based on caricatures by famed illustrator Steve Brodner and French cartoonist Cabu, and interviews. The animated Cab dances alongside Matthew Rushing, choreographer/principal dancer of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (Uptown), who explains how modern Calloway’s movements were and his impact on hip-hop. Additional interviewees include Calloway’s daughters Cecelia and Camay; grandson and Cab Calloway Orchestra bandleader Chris “Calloway” Brooks; horn player Gerald Wilson; and The Blues Brothers (1980) director John Landis and band members Steve Cropper, Lou Marini and Donald “Duck” Dunne. The film introduced Cab and his music to a new generation, when he acted and performed as The Blues Brothers’s mentor, Curtis.

“I am especially delighted to bring Cab Calloway to younger audiences – and he does become quite alive through the inventive animation in this film,” says Susan Lacy, American Masters series creator and executive producer. “He, and his era, are such a vital part of our musical cultural heritage – and such an energetic one!”

“This film is not just another biopic in the sense of interviews and recollections, but a reinvigoration of the whole Calloway presence – a reprise of a timeless virtuoso,” adds Levin.

With The Cotton Club – where Blacks could perform but not attend – as his home stage, Cab became a star of New York’s jazz scene, and then a household name with his signature song “Minnie the Moocher.” Despite its tragic, taboo subject matter, the song broke into the mainstream and was even used in Max and Dave Fleischer’s Betty Boop cartoon of the same name, along with Cab’s dance moves. Breaking the color barrier with this “hi de ho” hit, Cab was one of the first Black musicians to tour the segregationist South. He published a Hepster’s Dictionary of his jive slang in 1938, starred in films including Stormy Weather (1943) with Lena Horne and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, and played Sportin’ Life – a role George Gershwin modeled on him – in a 1952 touring production of Porgy and Bess, making “It Ain’t Necessarily So” an enduring part of his brand. With his zany theatricality – scat singing, jive talking, zoot suit wearing, straight-hair, head-shaking, and backslide dance (a precursor to Michael Jackson’s moonwalk) – Cab transcended racial specificity on his own terms.

In 2011, American Masters earned its eighth Emmy^® Award for Outstanding Primetime Nonfiction Series in 11 years. Now in its 26^th season, the series is a production of THIRTEEN for WNET, the parent company of THIRTEEN and WLIW21, New York’s public television stations, and operator of NJTV. For nearly 50 years, WNET has been producing and broadcasting national and local documentaries and other programs to the New York community.

Cab Calloway: Sketches is a co-production of Artline Films, ARTE France, and AVRO, in association with Inscape Productions and THIRTEEN’s American Masters for WNET. Gail Levin is director and executive producer for Inscape Productions. Jean-François Pitet and Gail Levin are co-writers. Olivier Mille is producer for Artline Films. Susan Lacy is the series creator and executive producer of American Masters. This program is made possible in part by the support of CNC, PROCIREP, ANGOA, and SACEM.

American Masters is made possible by the support of the National Endowment for the Arts and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding for American Masters is provided by Rosalind P. Walter, The Blanche & Irving Laurie Foundation, Rolf and Elizabeth Rosenthal, Cheryl and Philip Milstein Family, Jack Rudin, Vital Projects Fund, The André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation, Michael & Helen Schaffer Foundation, and public television viewers.

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As the United States continues to engage in foreign wars, Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune is a timely tribute to an unlikely American hero whose music is as relevant today as it was in the 1960s. Phil Ochs was moved by the conviction that he and his music would change the world. Unyielding in his political principals and unbending in his artistic vision, Ochs tirelessly fought the good fight for peace and justice, in both song and action, throughout his short life (12/19/1940 – 4/9/1976). The tragedies of 1968, including the deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy and the violent events at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, changed the country and changed Ochs, who sank deep into depression and alcoholism. This, and a familial tendency to bipolar disorder, led to his suicide at the age of 35.

“His music was always so insightful and clever, so timely and slightly haunting. Humming ‘There But for Fortune’ after Phil Ochs’s death was a bittersweet experience back in the 60s,” says Susan Lacy, series creator and executive producer of American Masters, an eight-time winner of the Emmy® Award for Outstanding Primetime Non-Fiction Series. The series is a production of THIRTEEN for WNET, the parent company of THIRTEEN and WLIW21, New York’s public television stations, and operator of NJTV. For nearly 50 years, WNET has been producing and broadcasting national and local documentaries and other programs to the New York community.

Inspired by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Elvis Presley and John Wayne, Ochs rose to fame in the early 60s during the height of the folk-and-protest song movement, wielding only a battered guitar, a clear voice and the quiver of his razor-sharp songs. As prolific as he was passionate, he released seven albums and wrote hundreds of songs, the best known of which include “I Ain’t Marching Anymore,” “Changes,” “Crucifixion,” “Draft Dodger Rag,” “Love Me, I’m a Liberal,” “Outside of a Small Circle of Friends,” “Power and the Glory,” “The War is Over,” and “There But for Fortune,” famously covered by Joan Baez. American Masters Phil Ochs: There But for Fortune is buoyed by these anti-war movement anthems and melodies, which play the role of film narrator, giving contextual depth to the unfolding saga of Ochs’s politics and personal life.

In the film, Joan Baez, Tom Hayden, Pete Seeger, Sean Penn, Peter Yarrow, Christopher Hitchens, Ed Sanders, and others who knew or were inspired by Ochs tell stories of political passions that were equal parts idealism, conviction and fantasy – mixed together with a big ego and often wild disorganization. These interviews together with photos, film clips and historic live performances reveal that Ochs’s lasting legacy in both music and politics ultimately mirrored the complexities and contradictions of the country he loved – and his life, sadly, reflects the arc of the turbulent times in which he lived.

Phil Ochs: There but for Fortune is a production of S2BN Entertainment in association with Barking Dog Productions, Inc. and THIRTEEN’s American Masters for WNET. Kenneth Bowser is writer and director. Michael Cohl, Kenneth Bowser and Michael Ochs are producers. Pamela Scott Arnold is editor, with additional editing by Ian B. Wile. Lizzy McGlynn and Brian MacDonald are co-producers. Katie Ehrman, Zev Greenfield and Riva Marker are associate producers. Music is by Phil Ochs. Susan Lacy is the series creator and executive producer of American Masters.

American Masters is made possible by the support of the National Endowment for the Arts and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding for American Masters is provided by Rosalind P. Walter, The Blanche & Irving Laurie Foundation, Rolf and Elizabeth Rosenthal, Cheryl and Philip Milstein Family, Jack Rudin, Vital Projects Fund, The André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation, Michael & Helen Schaffer Foundation, and public television viewers.