The Best Episodes of American Masters Season 20

John Ford and John Wayne — a friendship and professional collaboration that spanned 50 years, changed each others’ lives, changed the movies, and in the process, changed the way America saw itself. It was a relationship that reflected all the elements and all the paradoxes of 20th century America — generosity of spirit, abuse of power, a sense of loyalty, and a restless nationalism that didn’t quite know what to do with itself.

Director: Kenneth Bowser, Sam Pollard

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Archival performances, home movies and interviews illustrate singer Nat King Cole's achievements during a 30-year music and television career.

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The life and times of the hard traveling music-man Woody Guthrie.

Director: Peter Frumkin

Writer: Peter Frumkin

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Walter Cronkite was the man who gave us the news for two tumultuous decades in the late 20th century. As historian, journalist and author David Halberstam says in praise of the great CBS newsman: "Most Americans really learned of the evening news and learned of Vietnam and learned of the civil rights movement and learned of Watergate with Walter Cronkite as the man who ushered it into their homes. And did it with great professionalism over a very long time and was I think absolutely true to himself." In AMERICAN MASTERS Walter Cronkite: Witness to History, a documentary narrated by Katie Couric, historians, fellow journalists and CBS colleagues appraise the career of the man who was called "the most trusted man in America." CBS writer and commentator Andy Rooney, legendary producer/director Don Hewitt, correspondents Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Lesley Stahl and Barbara Walters, columnists Molly Ivins and Helen Thomas, Senator John McCain and President Jimmy Carter guide the viewer from Cronkite's early days as a foreign correspondent in World War II through his thirty-year career at CBS News.

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Ric Burns' absorbing profile of Andy Warhol (1928-87) traces the pop icon's rise from poverty to an artist who, said art critic Dave Hickey, “changed the world”.

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Ric Burns' absorbing profile of Andy Warhol (1928-87) traces the pop icon's rise from poverty to an artist who, said art critic Dave Hickey, “changed the world”.

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Frank Gehry loves to sketch. It is the beginning of his architectural process. From Gehry’s sketches flow the models, one after another, each a refinement, that will eventually become finished buildings unlike any others in the architectural world. It is this sketch quality, what he calls the “tentativeness, the messiness,” that Gehry clings to as a way of guarding against formula or repetition. And it is this sketch quality that Sydney Pollack was so keen to explore in the film SKETCHES OF FRANK GEHRY.

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This film traces the artistic self-realization of Annie Leibovitz, from childhood through the death of her beloved friend, Susan Sontag, and includes snippets of Leibovitz's last visual memories of Sontag. The film traces the arc of her photographic life, her aspirations to artistry, and the trajectory of her career through phases that included the tumultuous sixties in Berkeley, CA., touring with the Rolling Stones, a mentorship by Hunter S. Thompson, and, later, capturing the last candid moments of John Lennon's life with Yoko Ono. It closes with her reflections on life, children, and the the wake of her relationship with Sontag. The archival material presented here is invaluable for framing an understanding of this immeasurably influential visual artist.

Director: Barbara Leibovitz

Writer: Barbara Leibovitz