The Best Episodes of American Experience Season 17

#1 Fan Favorite
7.9/10(82 votes)
#1 - RFK (Part 1 & 2)
S17:E110/4/2004
A shy, if driven man, Robert Kennedy "wasn't built for the spotlight, he was built for the wings," says journalist Jack Newfield. While John Kennedy was alive, that's where Bobby stayed -- making certain that JFK remained in the spotlight.
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7.9/10(161 votes)
#2 - The Fight
S17:E21/24/2005
"The Fight" recalls the June 1938 heavyweight title bout between Joe Louis and the German Max Schmeling, and assesses its political and social ramifications. "It was going to pit whole nations and whole ideologies against each other," says narrator Courtney B. Vance. Producer-director Barak Goodman also explores Louis's place in America's racial divide as well as the genial Schmeling's ties to Hitler.
Director:Barak Goodman
Writer:Unknown
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Director:Barak Goodman
Writer:Unknown
7.5/10(133 votes)
#3 - Kinsey
S17:E52/14/2005
Profiling Dr. Alfred Kinsey, the Indiana University zoologist whose "revolutionary picture of American sexuality" rocked the country in the late 1940s and early '50s. Filmmakers Barak Goodman and John Maggio interview Kinsey colleagues and biographers, along with people took part in his studies, to paint a portrait of an "unyielding" proponent of sexual freedom who practiced what he preached. Says sexologist Paul Gebhard, a Kinsey assistant: "He was a rebel."
Directors:Barak Goodman, John Maggio
Writer:Barak Goodman
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Directors:Barak Goodman, John Maggio
Writer:Barak Goodman
7.5/10(73 votes)
#4 - The Carter Family: Will the Circle Be Unbroken?
S17:E105/9/2005
Recalls "the first family of country music" in interviews with Carter relatives, music writers, and singers Gillian Welch, Joan Baez, Marty Stuart and Rodney Crowell. The tough early lives of A.P. Carter, his sister Maybelle and wife Sara were lightened by music, and their 1927 RCA audition proved to be "the big bang of commercial country music." But A.P. and Sara's marriage couldn't survive the turmoil that followed.
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7.4/10(47 votes)
#5 - Guerilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst
S17:E115/23/2005
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7.3/10(117 votes)
#6 - Mary Pickford
S17:E64/4/2005
Profiling Mary Pickford, the silent-screen "sweetheart" who blazed the trail to Hollywood and became "America's first superstar." Pickford (1893-1979) was also an astute businesswoman: She founded United Artists with Charlie Chaplin and her husband-to-be Douglas Fairbanks. But, as filmmaker Sue Williams stresses here, there was no glorious sunset. As Pickford biographer Eileen Whitfield puts it, she was "the first has-been created by film."
Director:Sue Williams
Writer:Sue Williams
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Director:Sue Williams
Writer:Sue Williams

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7.3/10(47 votes)
#7 - The Great Transatlantic Cable
S17:E74/11/2005
Cyrus Field's struggle to lay telegraph cables across the Atlantic in the 1850s and '60s is chronicled. When Field finally succeeded, in 1866, it marked "the annihilation of space and time," says historian David Czitrom. But the 13-year effort -- recalled here in re-creations and comments from historians and engineers -- included many false starts and one spectacular failure. Still, says Czitrom, "he never let up."
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7.3/10(19 votes)
#8 - Victory in the Pacific
S17:E95/2/2005
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7.2/10(42 votes)
#9 - Building the Alaska Highway
S17:E42/7/2005
Recalls the construction of the 1500-mile "shortcut to Tokyo" through Canada in 1942 by 11,000 U.S. troops (4,000 of them black). It wasn't the Army's greatest World War II triumph, but it was one of the first, and it gave Americans, who feared a Japanese buildup in the Aleutians, a needed morale boost. This hour is light on military and engineering detail, and packed with proud GIs recalling mud, cold and toil.
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6.9/10(217 votes)
#10 - The Massie Affair
S17:E84/18/2005
"The Massie Affair" chronicles a 1931 Honolulu rape case involving a young white Navy wife that became even more serious when one of the acquitted Hawaiian defendants was later kidnapped and murdered. Although marital discord and social "honor" play into the story, it's mostly about stark racial injustice that touched even the White House. It uncovers "cold, hard truths about America and the people who ruled it."
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6.5/10(55 votes)
#11 - Fidel Castro
S17:E31/31/2005
Fidel Castro's march through Cuba and the second half of the 20th century is chronicled by filmmaker Adriana Bosch. Here, Cuban exiles and former Castro confreres, foreign-policy experts, a former Castro brother-in-law and his daughter Alina Fernandez paint a portrait of a dictator, a social reformer -- and a survivor.
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