Episodes

Throughout his career, Truman Capote remained one of America’s most controversial and colorful authors, combining literary genius with a penchant for the glittering world of high society. Though he wrote only a handful of books, his prose styling was impeccable, and his insight into the psychology of human desire was extraordinary.

Plácido Domingo is one of the most loved and listened to opera singers of the 20th- century. He was born in 1941, into a musical family in the Barrio de Salamanca section of Madrid. His parents were both singers, and when he was five they moved to Mexico with a traveling musical company.

Paul Robeson was the epitome of the 20th-century Renaissance man. He was an exceptional athlete, actor, singer, cultural scholar, author, and political activist. His talents made him a revered man of his time, yet his radical political beliefs all but erased him from popular history. Today, more than one hundred years after his birth, Robeson is just beginning to receive the credit he is due.

Thomas Eakins died in 1916; he left behind a body of work unprecedented in American art for its depth, strength, perception, character, & commitment to realism. During his life, Eakins sold less than 30 paintings. Rejected by the public & the art establishment of his day, it was only after his death that a new generation of scholars & critics recognized Eakins was one of America’s great painters.

In writing INVISIBLE MAN in the late 1940s, Ralph Ellison brought onto the scene a new kind of black protagonist, one at odds with the characters of the leading black novelist at the time, Richard Wright. If Wright’s characters were angry, uneducated, and inarticulate — the consequences of a society that oppressed them — Ellison’s Invisible Man was educated, articulate, and self-aware.

Sam Pollard, director of WHAT'S GOING ON, discusses why he wanted to share Marvin Gaye's story.

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.

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.

Allowed unprecedented access to Philip Glass' working process, filmmaker Scott Hicks gives us a singular revelation into the life of the composer.

One of the major American architectural minds of the twentieth century, Philip Johnson has played an enormous role in both understanding and creating the urban skylines of the country. As historian, curator, and practicing architect he has had a formative effect on generations of architects.

Told in Young’s own words, the film weaves hours of exclusive interviews with previously unseen performance footage from the star's own extensive collection.

Among our major living writers, Norman Mailer is perhaps the most well-known, both in the United States and internationally. No career in our literature has been at once so brilliant, varied, controversial, public, prolific and misunderstood. Few American writers have had their careers on the anvil of public inspection for such a lengthy period.

Yehudi Menuhin had one of the longest and most distinguished careers of any violinist of the twentieth century. The child of recent immigrants, Menuhin was born in New York in 1916. By the age of seven his performance of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto had found him instant fame. As a teenager he toured throughout the world and was considered one of the greats long before his twentieth birthday.

American Masters Executive Producer Kantor recalls, “The documentary film community is reeling from the loss of Bruce Sinofsky. I can’t think of a filmmaker who doesn’t admire his work. Brothers’ Keeper was not a film for American Masters — it was, however, a film for the ages. If you haven’t seen it, get ahold of it now — it’s definitely in the top 10 of great American documentary films.”

Prior to the 1960s, there were virtually no outlets for the wealth of black theatrical talent in America. Playwrights writing realistically about the black experience could not get their work produced, and even the most successful performers, such as Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen, were confined to playing roles as servants.