Gore Vidal is a novelist, essayist, playwright, and provocateur whose career has spanned six decades, beginning in the years immediately following World War II.

Over three and a half-decades, Muddy Waters’ band became a springboard for many of his sidemen, launching a prominent school of blues performers.

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.

View a timeline of the life and career of Joni Mitchell.

AMERICAN MASTERS Online presents an interview with "Juilliard" filmmaker Maro Chermayeff.

View a timeline of the life and career of George Cukor.

For Chaney, acting was the art of continual transformation, and it came from a desire to become someone else, to leave his own skin and enter another's.

View a timeline of Sun Records.

AMERICAN MASTERS Online presents an interview with "Willie Nelson" filmmaker Steven Cantor.