KCET

A musical play based on the early years of actor Paul Muni.

The story of a gentle, unsure young woman who grows in maturity and self-reliance as she travels across the American plains in 1848 in a wagon train with her young husband and his family.

Trouble brews as Charlie Horse's campaign for class president leads him to invite the whole class to Shari's for Passover... a fact he conveniently forgets to pass on to Shari until the eleventh hour. Meanwhile, everyone else is getting in on the action... Dom Deluise gets an education on the Seder plate and the significance of each item it holds, and neighbor Robert Guillaume delivers a song and dance explanation of the history of Passover.

a vivid look at the teenage subculture of South Bronx.

This powerful one-person show stars William Marshall (Blacula) as abolitionist and trusted Lincoln advisor Frederick Douglass. Based on Douglass’ essential writings, Sylvia Jarrico’s teleplay dramatizes the highly influential thinker’s life from the period surrounding his birth as an enslaved person through Reconstruction. Dixon trains his incisive video lens directly on Marshall as he addresses the audience, channeling Douglass’ profound insights on slavery, emancipation, suffrage and equal rights for all.

The Bergers, a blue-collar Jewish family living in an overstuffed tenement and undone by the Depression, struggle through hard times and dream of a better future in this 1972 production of Clifford Odets' pungent play. Personalities and politics clash as Odets' mélange of characters try to survive on pennies a day. Walter Matthau plays cynical World War I amputee Moe Axelrod, and Leo Fuchs portrays the family's iron-willed leftist grandfather.

Sing! is a 2001 American short documentary film about the Los Angeles Children's Chorus, directed by Freida Lee Mock. How do squeaky-voiced 8 year olds become amazing singers? Sing! tells the story of how a community group, amid severe cutbacks in the arts, is able to develop a children's chorus that is one of the best in the country. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

Arthur is asked to pick up a bird for Thanksgiving dinner, so he brings home a 266-pound chicken named Henrietta. The family welcome her with open arms, but the neighbors are not so sure and then Henrietta escapes.

Conducted by Leonard Bernstein, this is an historic performance marking the fall of the Berlin Wall. Performed on Christmas Day 1989 in the former East Berlin, a concert that unites an cast former eastern and western Berlin musicians and vocalists, among with an international cast of musicians, for a moving performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

Originally staged by the East West Players, pioneering author Wakako Yamauchi's adaptation of her award-winning play, “And the Soul Shall Dance,” for KCET’s Hollywood Television Theatre is a poetic, haunting drama that reveals the hardships Japanese Americans faced during the Great Depression. Set in California’s Imperial Valley, Yamauchi's moving work explores the lives of two farming families as they struggle to make ends meet and assimilate in a so-called land of opportunity defined by systemic racism. - Mark Quigley, UCLA Film & Television Archive

Portrays the Chicano experience, from its roots in pre-Columbian history to the present, by dramatically recreating key events in Mexican history and by presenting interviews with Chicano leaders, Dolores Huerta, Reies Lopez Tijerina, Rodolfo Gonzalez, and Jose Angel Gutierrez, who discuss solutions to the oppression of Chicanos.

This musical adaptation of the Studs Terkel book examines the average worker's viewpoint--showing that he or she is anything but average. Based on a series of interviews with real working people--construction workers, waitresses, firemen, secretaries, and cleaning women, Working is both an exploration of the individuals' occupations and a lament for lost hopes and dreams.

Based on true events which took place in the mill town of Graniteville, South Carolina in 1876, the story follows the rich Greggs, who run the mill, and the poor McEvoys, who work there. The animosity between their sons leads to tragedy.

A fascinating account of the presidency of Andrew Jackson, who was both one of America's great presidents and a borderline tyrant. The seventh president shook up the glossy world of Washington, DC with his "common-man" methods and ideals, but also oversaw one of the most controversial events in American history: the forced removal of Indian tribes, including the Cherokees, from their homes.

a cross between impressionist documentary, music video and live-action photo-essay

The Last of Mrs. Lincoln depicts the final seventeen years of Mary Todd Lincoln's life, following her husband's assassination.

Walter Lee Younger is a young man struggling with his station in life. Sharing a tiny apartment with his wife, son, sister and mother, he seems like an imprisoned man. Until, that is, the family gets an unexpected financial windfall.

With his parents about to celebrate their wedding anniversary, a middle-aged husband agrees to renew his vows to his longtime wife. But as they assess their relationship, the couple discovers that their marriage no longer has any meaning. A televised production of Robert Anderson's thoughtful play, this fascinating drama deftly examines the institution of marriage and the nature of love.

Gallo Morales is the proud patriach returning home after a seven-year stint for manslaughter. Seeking to re-establish his legendary status as a champion breeder, he comes back for the rooster bred by his father. But it is Hector, his son who inherits the prize-winning bird and neither are about to give in. The fall-out from their conflict has consequences for the whole family, especially for Angela, the sensitive 14-year-old daughter unable to cope with the brutal world that surrounds her and her own emerging womanhood, despite the best efforts of Juana, her strong but long-suffering mother.

A penniless heiress, a disillusioned nun, the suicidal playwright they both love, a hapless art forger and the playwright's wife converge on the empty Long Island home of an aging matriarch and squabble among themselves about their relative success or failure.