Filter By Subjects
African Americans Social life and customs Depressions 1929 United States Jazz History and criticism Music 20th century History and criticism Musical form Style, Musical United States History 1901-1953 United States History 1919-1933 United States Politics and government 1901-1953 United States Politics and government 1919-1933Filter By Subjects
African Americans Social life and customs Depressions 1929 United States Jazz History and criticism Music 20th century History and criticism Musical form Style, Musical United States History 1901-1953 United States History 1919-1933 United States Politics and government 1901-1953 United States Politics and government 1919-1933Summary: This Bill Moyers program features news correspondent Richard Strout, who covered Washington and the White House from 1925 to his retirement in 1984. Strout's reports, filed for the Christian Science Monitor and The New Republic, are studied here not only as chronicles of American history but as milestones circumscribing our nation's capital-and its evolution from a "small town" to the nerve...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: The 20th century began with enormous hopes for a future made safe and humane by technology. Although it realized some of these hopes, the century neared its end under the shadow of superweapons that still threaten the earth with annihilation. In this program, Bill Moyers traces the evolution of three instruments that enabled combatants to mass-produce death-the machine gun, the submarine, and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: The outbreak of World War II saw two motion picture experts from Germany and the United States battle each other with as much ferocity as any army or navy. Their respective missions: to ignite a public desire to wage and win a global conflict. This Bill Moyers program contains an interview with Fritz Hippler, chief filmmaker for the Nazi Party. Hippler unrepentantly claims to have spoken to the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this program, Bill Moyers returns to his hometown of Marshall, Texas-discovering, in his words, "a new town perched on the memory of one that's gone." Today it is hoped and expected that all of Marshall's citizens, regardless of racial background, share the responsibilities of living and working in a small town. But there was a time in recent history when the opposite was assumed and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: The year 1954 can now be seen as a clarifying point of convergence in American history. Among other things, it was the year that brought the Supreme Court's decision to outlaw racial segregation in the schools of the United States. In this program, Bill Moyers, Ossie Davis, and Ruby Dee tell the story of how the New Deal, World War II, and postwar social changes set the stage for a long-awaited...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: With farms and factories falling victim to the Great Depression, jazz was one of the few American industries poised for explosive growth. This program explores the art form during the first half of the decade, a period in which New York City usurped Chicago as America's jazz capital, Louis Armstrong revolutionized Broadway song craft, and Chick Webb forged his big-band sound at the Savoy...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: Amid the rise of suburbia, television, rock 'n' roll, and the baby boom generation, jazz lost a beloved and burned-out star: Billie Holiday. But the music still had its two guiding lights. In 1956, the first year Elvis topped the charts, Duke Ellington recaptured the nation's ear with a performance at the Newport Jazz Festival. The next year, Louis Armstrong made headlines when he condemned...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: The stock market surged through the 1920s and jazz was everywhere in America. Now, for the first time, soloists and singers took center stage, transforming the music with distinctive voices and unique stories. This program introduces Bessie Smith, Empress of the Blues, whose songs eased the pain of life for millions of black Americans; Bix Beiderbecke, the first great white jazz star, inspired...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: The social tensions underlying America's postwar prosperity were reflected in the broken rhythms and dissonant melodies of bebop-and in the troubled life of Charlie Parker. Nicknamed "Bird," Parker demonstrated ideas and techniques as overwhelming for musicians of his generation as Louis Armstrong's had been a quarter-century before. But Parker wasn't the only bebop innovator. Dizzy Gillespie...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: Dixieland, swing, bebop, modal, free, avant-garde, these were some of the terms critics used during the 1960s to categorize the diverse manifestations of jazz music. As for the artists themselves, many were desperate for work and headed for Europe, including bebop saxophone master Dexter Gordon. At home, jazz sought relevance. During the Civil Rights struggle it became a voice of protest, while...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: As the Depression dragged on, jazz came as close as it ever would to being America's popular music. Now it was often called swing, and, as this program illustrates, it became the defining music of a generation. Suddenly, jazz bandleaders were the new matinee idols, with Benny Goodman hailed as the "King of Swing," while teenagers jitterbugged just as hard to the music of his rivals: Tommy...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: During the early 20th century, Washington, D.C., was the cultural capital of black America. Prefiguring Harlem in the 1920s, D.C.'s Uptown area nurtured dynamic figures such as Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes, Mary Church Terrell, Justice Thurgood Marshall, and Dr. Charles Drew. In this program, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hedrick Smith tells the often-overlooked story of the heyday,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: The flowering of the Jazz Age is a tale of two great cities, Chicago and New York, and two extraordinary artists whose achievements spanned nearly three-quarters of a century. Louis Armstrong was a fatherless waif who grew up on the rough streets of New Orleans, developing his extraordinary gifts before moving to Chicago, where his transcendent sound inspired a new generation of musicians. Duke...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2000
View online at AVOD
Summary: When America entered World War II, jazz became part of the arsenal, with bandleaders like Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw taking their swing to troops overseas. For many black Americans, however, that sound had a hollow ring. Segregated at home and in uniform, they found themselves fighting for liberties their own country denied them-as when authorities padlocked the integrated Savoy Ballroom....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: Best known for its flappers, gangsters, and jazz, the Roaring Twenties was also an era of social tensions and political change. This program is a time capsule of a boisterous era that began with a surge of hope and ended on the verge of the Great Depression. Topics include the presidencies of Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, the post-World War I "return to normalcy," the economic boom and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: The story of jazz begins in New Orleans, 19th-century America's most cosmopolitan city. Here, in the 1890s, African-American artists created a new music out of ragtime syncopations, Caribbean rhythms, marching band instrumentation, and the soulful feeling of the blues. This program introduces the pioneers of this revolutionary art form: half-mad cornet player Buddy Bolden, pianist Jelly Roll...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2000
View online at AVOD
Summary: As the 1930s drew to a close, swing-mania was still going strong, but some fans were saying success had made the music too predictable. Their ears were tuned to a new sound, suffused with the blues-the Kansas City sound of Count Basie's band, which ignited new musical adventures. By 1938, Basie and his men were helping Benny Goodman bring jazz to Carnegie Hall. Soon Basie's lead saxophonist,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: This Universal newsreel focuses on two topics, as follows. Reel 1, North Beach Airport, N.Y.: Taking off from the waters of Bowery Bay, the Flying Colonel and his wife are seen in unusual pictures on the start of their flight to Greenland to survey a route across the North Atlantic for Pan American Airways. Reel 2, Freeport, Ill.: A remarkable screen interview with Mrs. Caroline Mattern as she...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: This Universal newsreel focuses on the 1935 Toledo Strike. Toledo, Ohio: Huge crowds of picketers patrol the approaches to an automobile factory when negotiations between workers and owners fail. Francis J. Dillon explains the American Federation of Labor's position in the industry.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: This Universal newsreel focuses on two topics, as follows. Reel 1, New York, N.Y.: Thousands of radio listeners throughout the U.S. are frightened into mass hysteria by a dramatization of H. G. Wells' old thriller, The War of the Worlds, as staged by Orson Welles. Reel 2, London, England: Patients at the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street get a great thrill when King George and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: This Universal newsreel focuses on Franklin D. Roosevelt's Fireside Chat No. 2. Washington, D.C.: In a dramatic newsreel interview at the White House, the Chief Executive reviews the accomplishments of his two-months-old administration, promising further legislation designed to better economic conditions throughout the United States and to improve the financial standing of the industrial...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: This Universal newsreel focuses on the town crier of Provincetown. Provincetown, Mass.: The brassy voice of this historic village's recently appointed town crier forces attention to his recital of community news delivered in time-honored manner.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: This Universal newsreel focuses on the sinking of the U.S. gunboat Panay by Japanese naval aircraft. Footage of the Rape of Nanking is followed by the U.S.S. Panay bombing in its entirety--exactly as photographed! Filmed by Norman Alley.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: This Universal newsreel focuses on two topics, as follows. Reel 1, Fort Meade, Md.: Mechanical monsters of the 66th U.S. Infantry (Light Tanks) sweep everything before them as they advance through smoke and shell fire to the attack. A thrilling sight, from daylight to dark, as the "battle wagons" roll along. Reel 2, Pimlico, Md.: In the horseracing classic of the century, War Admiral, the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010