LBJ 4x60

LBJ, Lyndon Baines Johnson: Texan, Democrat, political virtuoso. He rises up out of the 1960s like a Colossus, like something from Shakespeare, filling the stage: 10, 12 characters in one. He is admired and he is detested. Everybody who knew him had stories.  Yet Lyndon Johnson was hard for the country to know. He seemed so stiff and colorless on television, not at all himself. The real Lyndon Johnson was a mover, a driver, a charmer, a bully: six feet four inches tall with a size 7-3/8 Stetson hat. He loved food: chili and tapioca pudding. He loved attractive people. He was a good dancer, a brilliant mimic. He was funny, often hilarious. But the real measure of a leader is what he gets done, the size of the problems he faces. Before Lyndon Johnson, the United States was essentially a segregated society. Inequality among black Americans in the South was set in law. Before Lyndon Johnson, there was no Head Start program, no Medicare — and before Lyndon Johnson, very few Americans had even heard of Vietnam. Above all, he was the central character in a struggle of moral importance ending in ruin.

Episode lengths:
Part I: 1×62 minutes
Part II: 1×50 minutes
Part III: 1×62 minutes
Part IV: 1×49 minutes

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