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Playlist From the Archive

From the Archive

Eight Things to Watch and Read on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Daniel Hautzinger

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, and his birthday is honored as a federal holiday. Celebrate the civil rights hero in a variety of stories about his legacy, time in Chicago, and more. 

From the Archive: Chicago Author and Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow

Daniel Hautzinger

"I am an American, Chicago born," Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March famously begins. Watch Bellow discuss winning the Nobel Prize and the sudden overwhelming media attention it brought in a segment from a 1977 WTTW show.

From the Archive: Sidney Poitier

Daniel Hautzinger

The trailblazing actor and director Sidney Poitier, star of A Raisin in the SunThe Defiant Ones, and other films, has died at the age of 94. Listen to two interviews with him conducted decades apart by Studs Terkel.

From the Archive: Joan Didion

Daniel Hautzinger

Revisit an archival interview from 1977 with Joan Didion, the admired writer and dissecter of America who recently died at the age of 87.

Mayor Harold Washington Through the Years, in His Own Words

Daniel Hautzinger

Harold Washington was a frequent guest on WTTW over the course of his political career. Hear him discuss his upbringing, his coalitional politics, the Council Wars when he was mayor of Chicago, and more in archival interviews ranging from 1968 through 1984.

From the Archive: Maria Tallchief

Daniel Hautzinger

Maria Tallchief, a half-Osage dancer considered one of the epitomes of American ballet in the twentieth century, was recently honored in a Google Doodle that featured footage from WTTW's archive, in honor of Native American Heritage Month.

From the Archive: Leontyne Price

Daniel Hautzinger

"It's never been the Black artist's problem, it has been other people's problem," the legendary Leontyne Price told WTTW in 1981 about the lack of Black artists, specifically in opera. "It's so simplistic, it's fairly ridiculous." Watch excerpts of the archival interview. 

From the Archive: 'New Yorker' Writer Jane Kramer

Daniel Hautzinger

New Yorker writer Jane Kramer discusses the myth of the American West, the rise of big agribusiness and its effect on both traditional ranching and cows, and what bringing her daughter along on her reporting could do, in this 1978 interview from the WTTW archives. 

From the Archive: Caroll Spinney, Big Bird's Performer

Daniel Hautzinger

Caroll Spinney, who performed Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street for almost 50 years, died at the age of 85 on Sunday. Revisit a 2003 interview with him on Chicago Tonight where he tells memorable stories, like the time he got in an argument with Mister Rogers. 

From the Archive: Sammy Davis, Jr. on the Civil Rights Movement

Daniel Hautzinger

Watch Sammy Davis, Jr. on the pioneering show "Our People," the first televised weekly forum for black issues, discuss the ongoing empowerment of African Americans in 1968. "Don't let 'em pigeonhole me, man, cuz I will not allow myself as a black individual to be pigeonholed," he says.

From the Archive: Tour a Chicago-Based Candy Factory

Daniel Hautzinger

The Chicagoland-based Ferrara Candy Company has announced that it's moving into the Old Post Office downtown. Take a tour of their factory, where even the air tastes sweet, in a segment from a 2004 episode of Chicago Tonight.

From the Archive: Alex Haley, Author of 'Roots'

Daniel Hautzinger

The author of Roots and The Autobiography of Malcolm X explains the origins of Roots and his difficulty in capturing the experience of being on a slave-ship in a 1976 interview. "The absence of pride changes to a presence of pride" when you know your history, he says.

Nobel Prize-Winning Fermilab Physicist Leon Lederman Has Died

Daniel Hautzinger

Lederman, who won a Nobel Prize in 1988 for demonstrating that there are at least two kinds of particles called neutrinos, coined the Higgs boson's nickname "the God particle," and worked at Fermilab outside Chicago as well as the University of Chicago, has died at age 96.

Chicago's Deadliest Disaster

Daniel Hautzinger

One hundred and three years ago, on July 24, 1915, more than 800 people lost their lives in Chicago's deadliest tragedy, when a top-heavy boat rolled onto its side in the Chicago River only twenty feet from the shore. Watch an archival Chicago Stories episode about the Eastland Disaster.

From the Archive: John Updike

Daniel Hautzinger

"Nobody needs a book much, do they?" It's a surprising sentiment to hear coming from a writer, but in this 1981 interview with WTTW's John Callaway, John Updike discusses his impressively humble views on literature, his existential anxieties, and his goals as a writer.
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