Yesterday's Witness
Yesterday's Witness in America
A series of four programmes
A Very Public Private Affair
Few men in America lived a more public life than newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. Press lord, multi-millionaire and would-be politician, he bestrode the American scene for over 60 years. Yet, at the end of the First World War, he left his wife and family for a chorus-girl called Marion Davies. Never a man to do anything by halves, Hearst was determined to transform his mistress into a Hollywood star. In this programme the story of that 30-year very public private love affair is told by some of the people who were closest to them, including movie stars Ben Lyon and Eleanor Boardman, Hearst journalist Adela Rogers St Johns and Hollywood writers Sam Marx and Anita Loos.
Gold Rush at Cripple Creek
In 1891 a cowboy struck gold high in the Rockies not far from Colorado Springs. It was the start of a gold-mining boom that was to last for an amazing 30 years. The cattle ranch at Cripple Creek became a city of 30,000 people. They called it 'The World's Greatest Gold Camp'. Every day in the summer you can see thousands there again - mainly holiday-makers - all lapping up the tour guides' stories. But search a little further, as this film has done, and meet some of Cripple Creek's old-timers who were there, as children, in the gold rush boom days. They'll tell you what life really was like.
A Question of Loyalty
After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 there was a period of unprecedented disruption for the 100,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast of America. For, despite the fact that many of them were American citizens, the United States Government felt uncertain whether their loyalty to their adopted country could be counted on in the event of a Japanese invasion. So they were moved into ten huge internment camps. The first hurriedly-built camp was at a desolate place called Manzanar, 250 miles from Los Angeles. In this programme seven of the Manzanar internees tell their story.
The Long March of the Suffragists
The women in the United States who fought for the vote called themselves ' suffragists '. For years they paraded, lobbied, petitioned and argued for their cause. Then a break-away group introduced British suffragette tactics and gained considerable publicity by picketing the White House, being imprisoned, going on hunger-strike and being forcibly fed. Six American suffragists who strongly disagreed then about suffragist strategy - and who still disagree-tell of the final few years of their long, hard battle for the vote, a battle they finally won in 1920.
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