July 2nd, 2014

THE SIXTIES swings a holiday weekend marathon on July 3 and July 6

War.  Peace.  Pop culture.  Politics.  Encore in Back-to-Back Episodes

The first five episodes of CNN’s provocative and compelling Original Series THE SIXTIES will encore in two holiday weekend marathons on Thursday, July 3 and Sunday, July 6.

Executive produced by Tom Hanks and Gary Goeztman for Playtone, and Mark Herzog for Herzog & Co., these first five episodes of THE SIXTIES tell the stories of the golden age of television, the rise of the Berlin Wall, the assassination President Kennedy, Civil Rights, and the war in Vietnam, in back-to-back episodes:

Thursday, July 3 — 7:00pm to 2:00am Eastern

  • Television Comes of Age  (1960 – 1969) – Americans gathered around “the tube,” to be informed and entertained by the news, The Twilight Zone, The Fugitive, I Dream of Jeannie, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, and more.  Tom Hanks, Sally Field, Dick and Tom Smothers, Carol Burnett, Dick Cavett, Diahann Carroll, Carl Reiner, Vince Gilligan, Petula Clark and others describe how the ground-breaking, rule-breaking, norm-bending dramas, historical events, and sitcoms reflected and influenced who we were. (TRT 60min)
  • The World on the Brink (1960 – 1963) – The heady days of Camelot were clouded by the political and military tensions between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.  Marvin Kalb, Richard Reeves, Robert Dallek, Sergei Khrushchev and more explain how close the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis brought us all to World War III – and how two nuclear superpowers moved from near confrontation to the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. (TRT 60min)
  • The Assassination of President Kennedy  (1963 -1969) – Max Holland, Robert Dallek, Mark Lane, Robert Caro, Alexandra Zapruder, Vincent Bugliosi, members of the Warren Commission staff, and others trace the timeline of events leading up to that November day in Dallas, and try to explain why the investigations, media coverage, and personalities associated with the tragedy remain so compelling and controversial. (TRT 120min)
  • The War in Vietnam  (1961 – 1968) – From just several hundred advisors at the start of the decade, to more than 550,000 American troops by the end of it, the escalation of the war in Vietnam – and the fighting and the dying – brought social and political polarization back home.  It was also televised – and, the more Americans saw of the war, the more unpopular the conflict became.  Tim O’Brien, Fredrik Logevall, Karl Marlantes, Neil Sheehan, Andrew Bacevich, George Herring, Tom Hayden, and Philip Caputo discuss the Gulf of Tonkin,  and LBJ, for this most complex of American stories. (TRT 60min)
  • A Long March to Freedom  (1960 – 1968) – Selma, Birmingham, and the March on Washington are reexamined by eyewitnesses to history.  Diane NashU.S. Rep. John Lewis, U.S. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, Rev. C.T. Vivian, Bob Moses, Diane McWhorter, Taylor Branch, David Garrow, and Isabel Wilkerson give critical context to the lunch counter sit-ins, Freedom Rides, Freedom Summer, integration, and the Children’s Crusade for the moral mission of the Civil Rights Movement. (TRT 120min)

Sunday, July 6 — 8:00pm to 2:00am Eastern

  • Television Comes of Age  (1960 – 1969) – Americans gathered around “the tube,” to be informed and entertained by the news, The Twilight Zone, The Fugitive, I Dream of Jeannie, Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, and more.  Tom Hanks, Sally Field, Dick and Tom Smothers, Carol Burnett, Dick Cavett, Diahann Carroll, Carl Reiner, Vince Gilligan, Petula Clark and others describe how the ground-breaking, rule-breaking, norm-bending dramas, historical events, and sitcoms reflected and influenced who we were. (TRT 60min)
  • The World on the Brink (1960 – 1963) – The heady days of Camelot were clouded by the political and military tensions between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.  Marvin Kalb, Richard Reeves, Robert Dallek, Sergei Khrushchev and more explain how close the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis brought us all to World War III – and how two nuclear superpowers moved from near confrontation to the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. (TRT 60min)
  • The Assassination of President Kennedy  (1963 -1969) – Max Holland, Robert Dallek, Mark Lane, Robert Caro, Alexandra Zapruder, Vincent Bugliosi, members of the Warren Commission staff, and others trace the timeline of events leading up to that November day in Dallas, and try to explain why the investigations, media coverage, and personalities associated with the tragedy remain so compelling and controversial. (TRT 120min)
  • The War in Vietnam  (1961 – 1968) – From just several hundred advisors at the start of the decade, to more than 550,000 American troops by the end of it, the escalation of the war in Vietnam – and the fighting and the dying – brought social and political polarization back home.  It was also televised – and, the more Americans saw of the war, the more unpopular the conflict became.  Tim O’Brien, Fredrik Logevall, Karl Marlantes, Neil Sheehan, Andrew Bacevich, George Herring, Tom Hayden, and Philip Caputo discuss the Gulf of Tonkin,  and LBJ, for this most complex of American stories. (TRT 60min)
  • A Long March to Freedom  (1960 – 1968) – Selma, Birmingham, and the March on Washington are reexamined by eyewitnesses to history.  Diane Nash, U.S. Rep. John Lewis, U.S. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, Rev. C.T. Vivian, Bob Moses, Diane McWhorter, Taylor Branch, David Garrow, and Isabel Wilkerson give critical context to the lunch counter sit-ins, Freedom Rides, Freedom Summer, integration, and the Children’s Crusade for the moral mission of the Civil Rights Movement. (TRT 120min)

More information about THE SIXTIES may be found here: www.cnn.com/sixties.

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