About this season
American Masters is a PBS television series which produces biographies on enduring writers, musicians, visual and performing artists, dramatists, filmmakers, and others who have left an indelible impression on the cultural landscape of the United States.
Episodes (12)
1. Decoding Watson
Aired 2 January 2019 • 90 min
Meet James Watson, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist behind the double helix as he confronts his complex legacy. With unprecedented access to Watson and his family, "American Masters: Decoding Watson" explores his life, achievements, controversies and contradictions.
2. Sammy Davis, Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me
7.0Aired 19 February 2019 • 90 min
Sammy Davis, Jr. had the kind of career that was indisputably legendary, so vast and multi-faceted that it was dizzying in its scope and scale. And yet, his life was complex, complicated and contradictory. Davis strove to achieve the American Dream in a time of racial prejudice and shifting political territory.
3. Charley Pride
Aired 22 February 2019 • 90 min
Raised in segregated Mississippi, country performer Charley Pride proves artistic expression can triumph over prejudice and injustice.
4. Holly Near: Singing for Our Lives
Aired 1 March 2019 • 90 min
For 40 years, singer and activist Holly Near works on global social justice coalition-building in the women's and lesbian movements.
5. Joseph Pulitzer: Voice Of The People
Aired 12 April 2019 • 90 min
Hungarian immigrant Joseph Pulitzer becomes one of America's most feared and admired newspaper moguls and a crusader for freedom of the press.
6. Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable
Aired 19 April 2019 • 90 min
A documentary about an important American still photographer who captured New York City in the 1960s (his work there is said to have influenced the TV show Mad Men) and later the West in Texas and Los Angeles.
7. Terrence McNally: Every Act of Life
Aired 14 June 2019 • 90 min
Playwright, librettist, scriptwriter and outspoken LGBTQ activist Terrence McNally has long believed in the power of the arts to transform society and make a difference. The film lifts the curtain on the life, career and inspirations of the complicated and brilliant Emmy- and four-time Tony Award-winning writer.
8. Robert Shaw -- Man of Many Voices
Aired 21 June 2019 • 90 min
A profile of the conductor, his work with the civil rights movement, and his musical legacy.
9. Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin
Aired 2 August 2019 • 90 min
Explore the remarkable life and legacy of late feminist author Ursula K. Le Guin whose groundbreaking work, including “The Left Hand of Darkness,” transformed American literature by bringing science fiction into the literary mainstream.
10. Raúl Juliá: The World’s a Stage
Aired 13 September 2019 • 90 min
American Masters and Latino Public Broadcasting’s VOCES join forces to present the first documentary about Raúl Juliá, the versatile Puerto Rican actor whose work on stage and screen took the world by storm. Raúl Juliá: The World’s a Stage premieres Friday, September 13, 2019 at 9 p.m. ET on PBS, pbs.org/americanmasters and the PBS Video App in honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month.
11. Rothko: Pictures Must Be Miraculous
Aired 25 October 2019 • 90 min
Explore the life of the celebrated artist whose luminous color field paintings helped define the abstract expressionist movement, which shifted the art world epicenter from Paris to New York.
12. N. Scott Momaday: Words From a Bear
Aired 18 November 2019 • 90 min
Delve into the enigmatic life and mind of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and poet N. Scott Momaday, best known for “House Made of Dawn” and a formative voice of the Native American Renaissance in art and literature.