About this season
The Twentieth Century is a long-running CBS documentary television series that aired from 1957 to 1966, sponsored throughout its run by the Prudential Insurance Company and narrated by Walter Cronkite. Drawing on the resources of CBS News, the series produced both historical compilation documentaries and originally photographed contemporary reports, presenting major political, cultural, scientific, and social developments that shaped the modern world. Episodes combined newsreel footage, eyewitness testimony, and on-location reporting, covering subjects ranging from global conflicts and political change to arts, science, and international social transformation. Popular with audiences and critically respected, the series functioned as a formative model for later American television documentary programming and helped establish the compilation-documentary format as a central mode of broadcast nonfiction.
Episodes (27)
1. October Classic
Aired 28 September 1958 • 30 min
2. The Red Sell: The Propaganda Mill
Aired 26 October 1958 • 30 min
3. The Red Sell: Report from the Targets
Aired 2 November 1958 • 30 min
4. Rockne of Notre Dame
Aired 9 November 1958 • 30 min
5. The Russo-Finnish War
Aired 16 November 1958 • 30 min
6. Peron and Evita
Aired 23 November 1958 • 30 min
7. The Addicted: Profile of a Young Addict
Aired 30 November 1958 • 30 min
8. The Addicted: Criminal or Patient?
Aired 7 December 1958 • 30 min
9. Revolt in Hungary
Aired 14 December 1958 • 30 min
10. Mission Outer Space
Aired 21 December 1958 • 30 min
11. Woodrow Wilson: The Fight for Peace
Aired 28 December 1958 • 30 min
12. The Remagen Bridge
Aired 4 January 1959 • 30 min
13. Jet Carrier
Aired 11 January 1959 • 30 min
14. The Delinquents: A Boy Named Bob
Aired 18 January 1959 • 30 min
15. The Delinquents: The Highfields Story
Aired 25 January 1959 • 30 min
16. Liberation of Paris
Aired 1 February 1959 • 30 min
17. The Frozen War
Aired 8 February 1959 • 30 min
18. The Incredible Turk
Aired 15 February 1959 • 30 min
19. Freedom for the Philippines
Aired 22 February 1959 • 30 min
20. Generation Without a Cause: Self Portrait
Aired 1 March 1959 • 30 min
21. Generation Without a Cause: The Searchers
Aired 8 March 1959 • 30 min
22. Burma Road and the Hump
Aired 15 March 1959 • 30 min
23. The Silent Sentinel
Aired 22 March 1959 • 30 min
24. The Times of Teddy Roosevelt
Aired 29 March 1959 • 30 min
25. From Kaiser to Fuehrer
Aired 5 April 1959 • 30 min
26. Submarine
Aired 12 April 1959 • 30 min
27. Stalingrad
Aired 19 April 1959 • 30 min