Filter By Subjects
American literature 19th century History and criticism American literature 20th century History and criticism American literature 21st century History and criticism American literature History 20th century American literature History 21st century Authors Authorship Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott) 1896-1940 Hemingway, Ernest 1899-1961 Henry, O 1862-1910Filter By Subjects
American literature 19th century History and criticism American literature 20th century History and criticism American literature 21st century History and criticism American literature History 20th century American literature History 21st century Authors Authorship Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott) 1896-1940 Hemingway, Ernest 1899-1961 Henry, O 1862-1910Summary: Anthropologist, teacher, first black student to attend Barnard College, author associated with the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston is best known for her acclaimed novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. This program follows Hurston’s biography, beginning with her childhood in a subtropical paradise in the South that inspired her throughout her life. This documentary includes interviews with...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: The Civil War. A nation torn apart. A war fought in great battles, and a war fought on a much smaller scale…within the minds and hearts of a nation’s young men. On a lonely bridge, a group of soldiers prepare for the somber task of hanging one of their countrymen, now an enemy, for sabotage. This classic retelling of Ambrose Bierce’s acclaimed story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” from...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1962
View online at AVOD
Summary: Amy Tan is the author of several bestselling novels, including the The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, and the beloved Joy Luck Club, which has been translated into 35 languages and became a commercially successful film in 1993. Tan has said in the past that "books were my salvation. Books saved me from being miserable." In this TEDTalk, she speaks further on the human response...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: “One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.” And so we begin O. Henry’s best-known and timeless story. It’s a wonderful romantic tale of a young married couple who have little money to buy each other Christmas presents - with a charming surprise ending. Starring Rosemary Deleonardis, Kiah Gordon, David A. Silverstein, Linda Stiegler, and Adrienne Storrs.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2001
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this introduction to Eugene O'Neill's life and work from the Famous Authors series, viewers are given a close look at O'Neill's theatrical family and mother who developed a morphine addiction. He struggled with this and his renouncement of Catholicism, a blow to his Irish parents, and escaped into reading voraciously. He went to Princeton, but was unfocused and left for a life of drinking...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2011
View online at AVOD
Summary: Flannery O’Connor is a writer with a keen sense of observation for the subtle cruelty that comes from fear of the unknown, and a case in point is her story “The Displaced Person.” Set in Georgia during the late 1940s, the displaced person is Mr. Guizac (Noam Yerushalmi), a Polish refugee who’s relocated by a priest (John Houseman) to work on Mrs. McIntyre’s (Irene Worth’s) farm. Quickly the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1976
View online at AVOD
Summary: Traveling from town to town during the summer of 1919, young Andy (Ron Howard) has left his Ohio home in search of adventure and romance as a horse trainer on the country fair racing circuit. More than a little “wet behind the ears,” Andy learns a bittersweet lesson about life when he meets Lucy (Amy Irving,) the girl of his dreams, at the racetrack one day. Ashamed of his occupation, Andy...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1976
View online at AVOD
Summary: Lost in a world of fantasy, young working-class Paul dreams of escaping his dreary existence in turn-of-the-century Pittsburgh. As fate would have it Paul gets his chance by stealing some money and subsequently running off to glamorous New York City. Once there, Paul experiences everything he ever dreamed of, from a luxurious hotel suite to his first taste of champagne. However, when reality...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1980
View online at AVOD
Summary: Abe Snopes (Tommy Lee Jones) is a Southern tenant farmer whose unrelenting and violent nature proves to be his undoing in William Faulkner’s Barn Burning. Snopes sets his employer’s barn on fire when he thinks he’s been treated unfairly, and his son, Sarty, is horrified. Snope escapes justice for lack of proof, but he and his family are told to move on. No sooner do they move than Snopes is...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1980
View online at AVOD
Summary: This overview of the biography and writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald from the Famous Authors series traces Fitzgerald’s life and influences from his birth in St. Paul, Minnesota, to his university days at Princeton and literary celebrity and frivolity in New York, to his status as social purveyor of modernists in Paris, and his tumultuous marriage to the talented but troubled Zelda Sayre...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: It’s 1920 and romance is in bloom at the Biltmore Hotel under its famous clock. For Myra Harper, age 21, it’s time to stop “playing around” and find a husband - and the unsuspecting, handsome, shy, and quite wealthy Knowlton Whitney is the perfect target. Romance, it seems, will work quite well with Myra and Knowlton, for they fall in love… And then it’s time to meet his outrageously eccentric...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1984
View online at AVOD
Summary: A small New York apartment was a favorite location for an O. Henry story. He is reported to have said, “I would like to live a lifetime in each street in New York. Every house has a drama in it.” Here, just around the corner from the turn of the century, in Greenwich Village, we find two young struggling artists who’ve become the best of friends only to have one stricken with deadly pneumonia....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2001
View online at AVOD
Summary: Charley Tate (James Whitmore) is an old windbag, often a braggart, but somehow always lovable. Married more than 50 years to his ever-patient wife Lucy (Teresa Wright), the two of them are on their golden honeymoon in Florida. Everything goes perfectly until Lucy meets her former fiancée who’s also vacationing with his wife. Suddenly there’s a comic competition between Charley and the old...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1980
View online at AVOD
Summary: Decades after his death, Ernest Hemingway is still one of the most widely studied American authors. His major works are still in print-some in as many as 20 languages-including The Old Man and the Sea, A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, and For Whom the Bell Tolls. It is the art of Hemingway's storytelling that forms the heart of this program from the American Masters series, the point of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Harold Krebs (Richard Backus) went off to fight World War I, “the war to end all wars.” Then he came home…and found himself wishing it had never ended. Harold finds he doesn’t fit in anymore. He’s outgrown his old life and now needs peace and quiet to work things out for himself. Yet he’s pressured by his loving but misunderstanding mother (Nancy Marchand) to rejoin a community in which he...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1976
View online at AVOD
Summary: Granny Weatherall (Geraldine Fitzgerald) is a spunky old lady of 80 who bosses her doctor and her children. She seems so strong and in control. Yet she has never had the upper hand in her destiny. One morning, a flood of long-forgotten memories bring her to the realization that of all her accomplishments, she cannot console herself for the shame-filled day she was left standing at the altar....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1980
View online at AVOD
Summary: It’s the hot summer of 1919. Visiting her cousin Marjorie (Veronica Cartwright), sweet-but-dull Bernice (Shelley Duvall) is transformed into a smooth-talking man-trap by her vampish kin. However, the makeover works too well; Bernice becomes the belle of the ball, captivating every boy’s interest - including Marjorie’s boyfriend, Warren (Bud Cort) The now worldly Bernice has the last laugh…a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1976
View online at AVOD
Summary: From the pen of Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Updike (Witches of Eastwick, Rabbit Run) comes the story of a young man’s exploration of the questions of life and death, and the wondrous discovery of living in the soaring beauty of one of nature’s simplest creations. Starring Christopher Collet and Caroline McWilliams.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1987
View online at AVOD
Summary: A St. Louis summer in the 1950s. A great summer for the coming-of-age of a 16-year-old boy. A great summer to learn a little about love and a lot about life. Through the eyes and heart of Ben, our story follows his mother’s need for his sister to “marry well.” His sister’s ambivalence toward her rich suitor intertwines with the bloom of Ben’s own romantic yearnings as he discovers in that...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1989
View online at AVOD
Summary: Only the off-beat humor of writing great James Thurber could bring to life a “hero” like Jack Smurch, played by Brad Davis (Midnight Express) Fortified only with a gallon of gin and a salami, Smurch bests even Lindbergh with the first non-stop around-the-world flight. During the four days he’s airborne, this unknown kid becomes a world hero. But on the ground a young reporter, anxious to tell...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1980
View online at AVOD
Summary: Mix together a small town community theater’s shy leading man and the lovely telephone worker who moves into town and you have a perfect recipe for a delightful romantic comedy. Academy Award-winners Susan Sarandon and Christopher Walken star as the couple who discover that affairs of the heart on the stage may be a bit less complicated than continuing the romance off the stage. Director...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1981
View online at AVOD
Summary: William Sydney Porter in his colorful lifetime became a licensed pharmacist. He would also become a bank teller, a bookkeeper, a clerk, an illustrator, a draftsman in the General Land Office, a newspaperman, an editor, a reporter, a columnist, and a cartoonist. He also learned to break a stubborn bronco, lasso cattle, and shear sheep, and he could rope and ride and shoot a gun. “Will,” as his...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2001
View online at AVOD
Summary: Imagine a summer that would never end; imagine a boy who would never group up; imagine a small town, the kind you just don’t find anymore… Enter a mysterious stranger. A man who calls himself Charles Dickens (Fred Gwynne), a writer by trade and a spinner of stories, whirls through town, and somewhere in the wide-eyed imagination of a 12-year-old boy and the loving eyes of a lady who would...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1981
View online at AVOD
Summary: Mabel Lederer has spent her life denying her talent for the supernatural - and her stodgy husband Hughie wouldn’t even acknowledge it. But when Hughie dies, even his continued complaining from the grave cannot stop Mabel’s determination to break away and rediscover her life. Estelle Parsons plays this whimsical character who makes up her life as she goes along. Also starring Barbara Baxley,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1981