All upcoming Popular Culture programs

For roughly a decade beginning in the late 1940s, NBC and CBS offered viewers live original dramas. These anthology programs, such as “Kraft Television Theatre” and “Ford Television Theatre,” launched the careers of directors like Arthur Penn and John Frankenheimer, actors like Paul Newman and James Dean, and playwrights like Paddy Chayefsky and Rod Serling. Media historian Brian Rose looks at the forces that made this golden age such an intriguing chapter in TV history.

Barbara Walters was a force from the time TV was exploding on the American scene in the 1960s to its waning dominance in a new world of streaming services and social media. Drawing from her new biography of Walters, Susan Page, Washington bureau chief of USA Today, examines the woman behind the legacy—one whose personal demons fueled an ambition that broke all the rules and finally gave women a permanent place on the air.

From the late 1920s through the end of World War II, Hollywood studios dominated film production throughout the world. Despite the economic problems posed by the Depression, several studios produced more than 50 movies a year, including some of the best-loved and most significant films ever made. Media historian Brian Rose examines the forces that made Hollywood the giant of global filmmaking and the special nature of its achievements during its Golden Age.

Baseball has always been a symbol as much as a sport, offering a sunny rendering of the American Dream—both the hard work that underpins it and the rewards it promises. Film, which mythologizes all it touches, is the ideal medium to glorify this aspirational idea. Film critic Noah Gittell sheds light on classics and overlooked gems while exploring how baseball cinema creates a stage upon which the American Dream is born, performed, and repeatedly redefined.

More than 50 years after its debut in April 1968 at Broadway’s Biltmore Theatre in New York City, HAIR continues to celebrate the hippie counterculture of the 1960s. Discussing its ongoing relevance is a panel including theater critic Peter Marks, original Broadway cast members Shelley Plimpton and Dale Soules, and longtime HAIR publicist Merle Frimark, moderated by arts journalist Patrick Pacheco. Following the panel discussion, attendees have the rare opportunity to see objects from the National Museum of American History’s HAIR collection that are not on public display and hear from curators Ryan Lintelman and Krystal Klingenberg about collecting the objects. The program also includes a special performance by members of the cast of Signature Theatre’s current production of HAIR.

Cary Grant pursued by a menacing biplane. Ominous crows on a jungle gym. Janet Leigh’s fateful shower. With indelible moments like these, director Alfred Hitchcock shocked, thrilled, amused, and delighted movie and TV audiences for a half century. Film historian Max Alvarez traces Hitchcock’s professional and artistic development through electrifying film clips and rare behind-the-scenes archival material illustrating how key Hitchcock productions evolved from page to screen.