American Experience | PBS

Follow John F. Kennedy from privilege and wartime service through family ambition, political setbacks and the campaign that carried him toward the presidency.

Long before Paul Newman and Robert Redford immortalized them on screen, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid captivated Americans from coast to coast. In an era in which cold-blooded killers such as Jesse James and the Younger Brothers terrorized the American West, Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid and their Wild Bunch gang took a smart and methodical approach to bank and train robbery. In the 1890s, their thrilling exploits — robbing banks and trains and then seemingly vanishing into thin air — became front-page news and the basis of rumor and myth, captivating Americans from coast to coast. But who were Robert Leroy Parker and Harry Alonzo Longabaugh? What really happened after they formed the Wild Bunch gang? And how did they manage to pull off some of the most spectacular holdups in western history while eluding the Pinkertons, the nation’s largest and most feared private detective force? Separating fact from fiction, BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID explores the last pair of outlaws to flee on horseback into the setting sun of a disappearing West. © 2014 WGBH Educational

The true story of the most famous outlaw couple in U.S. history Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow had been on a year-long crime spree, leaving a trail of dead bodies in their wake, yet were little more than a local curiosity until photos of the couple were discovered at a hastily abandoned hideout in 1933. The image of a beret-clad Bonnie, cigar in mouth, pistol in hand, striking a defiantly provocative pose, would soon achieve near mythic status. Overnight, the country became transfixed by the scandalous images and press accounts of their improbable escapes and illicit romance. Bonnie and Clyde would join the ranks of celebrity gangsters like John Dillinger, ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd, and ‘Baby Face’ Nelson, ‘public enemies’ who emerged during the Great Depression to capture the country’s imagination. But their newfound notoriety would force the outlaw lovers to take even greater risks as the hunt to capture them kicked into overdrive. Told through interviews with cultural historians, the couple’s descendants and those of the officers who captured them, BONNIE & CLYDE tells the story of the infamous duo’s

The orphan teen who became the most wanted man in the West. A fascinating look at the boy behind the myth, BILLY THE KID puts a human face on the legend who in just a few short years transformed himself from a skinny orphan boy to the most feared man in the West to an enduring icon. On April 28, 1881, twenty-one-year-old Henry McCarty, a.k.a. Billy the Kid, just days from being hanged for murder, outfoxed his jailers and electrified the nation with the latest in a long line of miraculous escapes. An outlaw with a deadly reputation, the young man was finally gunned down by the ambitious sheriff Pat Garrett just a few weeks later. The felling of one of the most notorious criminals of the age made front-page news and marked the end of Henry — but it was the beginning of one of the West’s most enduring legends. Demonized by the lawman that killed him, the Kid was soon mythologized by a never-ending stream of dime store novels and big-screen dramas, portrayed by everyone from Paul Newman

It took millions of steps to make one giant leap. CHASING THE MOON, a film by Robert Stone, reimagines the race to the moon for a new generation, upending much of the conventional mythology surrounding the effort. The series recasts the Space Age as a fascinating stew of scientific innovation, political calculation, media spectacle, visionary impulses and personal drama. Utilizing a visual feast of previously overlooked and lost archival material — much of which has never before been seen by the public — the film features a diverse cast of characters who played key roles in these historic events. Among those included are astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Frank Borman and Bill Anders; Sergei Khrushchev, son of the former Soviet premier and a leading Soviet rocket engineer; Poppy Northcutt, a 25-year old “mathematics whiz” who gained worldwide attention as the first woman to serve in the all-male bastion of NASA’s Mission Control; and Ed Dwight, the Air Force pilot selected by the Kennedy administration to train as America’s first black astronaut. PART THREE: MAGNIFICENT DESOLATION covers 1969-1970 and sending Americans to the

Four dangerous, heady years in the space race. CHASING THE MOON, a film by Robert Stone, reimagines the race to the moon for a new generation, upending much of the conventional mythology surrounding the effort. The series recasts the Space Age as a fascinating stew of scientific innovation, political calculation, media spectacle, visionary impulses and personal drama. Utilizing a visual feast of previously overlooked and lost archival material — much of which has never before been seen by the public — the film features a diverse cast of characters who played key roles in these historic events. Among those included are astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Frank Borman and Bill Anders; Sergei Khrushchev, son of the former Soviet premier and a leading Soviet rocket engineer; Poppy Northcutt, a 25-year old “mathematics whiz” who gained worldwide attention as the first woman to serve in the all-male bastion of NASA’s Mission Control; and Ed Dwight, the Air Force pilot selected by the Kennedy administration to train as America’s first black astronaut. PART TWO: EARTHRISE covers 1964-1968, four heady, dangerous years in the history of

Inside the chaotic origins of the space program. CHASING THE MOON, a film by Robert Stone, reimagines the race to the moon for a new generation, upending much of the conventional mythology surrounding the effort. The series recasts the Space Age as a fascinating stew of scientific innovation, political calculation, media spectacle, visionary impulses and personal drama. Utilizing a visual feast of previously overlooked and lost archival material — much of which has never before been seen by the public — the film features a diverse cast of characters who played key roles in these historic events. Among those included are astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Frank Borman and Bill Anders; Sergei Khrushchev, son of the former Soviet premier and a leading Soviet rocket engineer; Poppy Northcutt, a 25-year old “mathematics whiz” who gained worldwide attention as the first woman to serve in the all-male bastion of NASA’s Mission Control; and Ed Dwight, the Air Force pilot selected by the Kennedy administration to train as America’s first black astronaut. PART ONE: A PLACE BEYOND THE SKY begins in 1957 and tracks the