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American Masters Season 34 Episodes
Season 34 Episode Guide
8 Episodes 2019 - 2020
Episode 1
Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool
Tue, Feb 25, 2020114 mins
Musicians, scholars, family and friends reflect on the life of jazzer Miles Davis to reveal the man behind the legend. Full access to Davis' estate provides rare footage and photos, outtakes from recording sessions and new interviews.
Episode 2
Mae West: Dirty Blonde
Tue, Jun 16, 202085 mins
Mae West achieved great acclaim in every entertainment medium that existed during her lifetime, spanning eight decades of the 20th century. A full-time actress at seven, a vaudevillian at 14, a dancing sensation at 25, a Broadway playwright at 33, a silver screen ingénue at 40, a Vegas nightclub act at 62, a recording artist at 73, a camp icon at 85 - West left no format unconquered. She possessed creative and economic powers unheard of for a female entertainer in the 1930's and still rare today. Though she was a comedian, West grappled with some of the more complex social issues of the 20th century, including race and class tensions, and imbued even her most salacious plot lines with commentary about gender conformity, societal restrictions and what she perceived as moral hypocrisy. American Masters - Mae West: Dirty Blonde is the first major documentary film to explore West's life and career, as she "climbed the ladder of success rung by rung" to become a writer, performer and subversive agitator for social change. Produced and directed by Sally Rosenthal and Julia Marchesi.
Episode 3
Toni Morrison
Tue, Jun 23, 2020
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Toni Morrison's life, her works, and the themes she confronted throughout her literary career.
Episode 4
Unladylike2020
Fri, Jul 10, 2020
Six women trailblazers help shape American politics at the turn of the 20th century; narrator Julianna Margulies.
Episode 5
Walter Winchell: The Power of Gossip
Tue, Oct 20, 202053 mins
The life and times of radio commentator and syndicated newspaper gossip columnist Walter Winchell, who reached an audience of 50 million at his peak.
Episode 6
Michael Tilson Thomas: Where Now Is
Fri, Oct 23, 2020
The life and career of Michael Tilson Thomas, music director of the San Francisco Symphony, founder and artistic director of the New World Symphony and conductor laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra.
Episode 7
Laura Ingalls Wilder: Prairie to Page
Tue, Dec 29, 2020
Laura Ingalls Wilder is celebrated for her autobiographical fiction that helped record the expansion of the American frontier into the Midwest. Laura was born in 1867 to Charles and Caroline Ingalls in a log cabin north of Pepin, Wisconsin in the woods that border the upper Mississippi River: their "Little House in the Big Woods". When she was two years old, she and her family moved to Indian country in the territory of Kansas, the setting for "Little House on the Prairie." They returned to Wisconsin before moving to a dugout dwelling "On the Banks of Plum Creek" near Walnut Grove, Minnesota. Eventually, her father accepted a railroad job in 1879 moving everyone to DeSmet, South Dakota. She began a brief teaching career two months shy of her 16th birthday. That ended when she married 28-year-old Almanzo Wilder. After early years burdened with crop failures and health problems, they ended up in the Mansfield, Missouri area. The Wilders were always short of funds, so their daughter Rose, already a well established writer, encouraged Laura to write her stories to sell to publishers. Her initial autobiography, "Pioneer Girl", was rejected with suggestions to rewrite it for children. Rose was hugely responsible for the successful transformation of this manuscript into the Little House series. The first of those was published when Laura was 65. The pair kept secret that Rose was ghostwriting the books from her mother's notes. This became apparent from letters between the two that have now surfaced.
Episode 8
Keith Haring: Street Art Boy
Fri, Dec 4, 2020
Between 1980-1990, Keith Haring became an art world celebrity and a pop culture icon with his distinctive and recognizable artwork style. We hear Haring's own words from previously unheard interviews recorded by John Gruen.
