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      When Americans Agreed on History, for 60 Seconds

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      Fifty years ago on CBS, the revolution was televised, if only for a minute at a time.From July 4, 1974, through the end of 1976, “Bicentennial Minutes” took 60 seconds in prime time between some of TV’s most popular shows to have celebrities, artists and politicians tell viewers what had happened 200 years ago that day, in the early years of the American Revolution.Charlton Heston kicked off the series, backed by a giant American flag, telling of George Washington’s worries after the Boston Tea Party. Representative Bella Abzug, in her trademark hat and thick New York accent, related a British man-o-war attack on the city’s waterfront. Lucille Ball described “corn-shucking parties” in colonial New England. (Not every day in history can be equally action-packed.) In a twist on the CBS anchor Walter Cronkite’s famous sign-off, each one concluded, “That’s the way it was.”The series was a simple act of civic education — earnest, unflashy, a little corny and mockable. It was not big on geopolitics, gray areas or the moral failings of the home-team rebels. Writing in The New York Times, the TV critic John J. O’Connor called its early episodes “so insubstantial as to be almost meaningless.” (The series nonetheless won an Emmy in 1976.)But a half-century later, as America prepares to celebrate a bigger mouthful of a birthday, the Semiquincentennial, the “Bicentennial Minutes” series is educational in a different way. It’s a time capsule of 20th-century mass civics, a reminder of how — for good, bad or mediocre — TV once formed a kind of public square that is probably irretrievable.Clockwise, from top left: President Gerald Ford, the actress Dina Merrill, Senator Joseph R. Biden and the activist Gloria Steinem in the 1970s educational shorts “Bicentennial Minutes.” CBS, via IMBDPro“Bicentennial Minutes,” like many American inventions, was a creation of commerce. Shell Oil bought each minute of airtime for two years, its logo ending each star-spangled broadcast. (Other sponsors took over after July 4, 1976.) It was a crossover ad for gasoline and America.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How to Watch Hitchcock: 5 Steps to Unlock the Master of Suspense

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      Look up “suspense” in the dictionary, and there should be a little sketch of Alfred Hitchcock’s silhouette next to it. He never won an Oscar — the academy finally gave him an honorary one in 1968 — but the British director is inarguably one of cinema’s most influential auteurs, the kind of filmmaker even a casual movie watcher has heard of.Even if you don’t know his movies, chances are you can recognize the shower scene from “Psycho,” or have seen a spoof of his work on “The Simpsons.” My own introduction to Hitchcock came at the tender age of 3 or 4: In “Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird,” a plane flies over Big Bird in a cornfield to get his attention — a homage to a famous scene from “North By Northwest.”Hitchcock’s work is marked by carefully framed images and a fondness for playing with our emotions, but his greatest talent was making us freak out, and showing other filmmakers how to do that, too. With a selection of his movies now on Netflix, here is a beginner’s guide to understanding how the Master of Suspense creates suspense.‘Rear Window’ (1954)Step Inside a Character’s Point of ViewHitchcock loved to stick us right in the minds of his characters — many of whom are in the throes of obsession and desire — and thus play on our own passions and nerves. “Rear Window” centers on an all-too-familiar pastime for city dwellers: peering curiously, and a tad illicitly, into the neighbor’s window.Jeff (Jimmy Stewart) is a photojournalist who’s stuck in his Greenwich Village apartment because his whole leg, from hip to foot, is encased in a cast. Thus stranded and frustrated, he becomes intrigued by the lives of the people living across the way, an assortment of typical New Yorkers — a composer, a dancer, a lonely single woman, a bickering couple — and he starts to wonder if one of them is a murderer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Hacker Makes Antisemitic Posts on Elmo’s X Account

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      The owner of “Sesame Street” said it was working to restore control of Elmo’s social media account after the cyberattack on the fuzzy red monster, a beloved character on the children’s show.A hacker shared a string of racist and antisemitic posts from the X account of Elmo, the fuzzy red monster from “Sesame Street,” the owner and producer of the children’s show said on Sunday.The posts, on a verified account with more than 600,000 followers, contained racial slurs, antisemitic language and commentary about President Trump and the so-called Epstein files, the remaining investigative documents of the sex-trafficking investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. The posts were removed shortly after they were published on Sunday afternoon.“Elmo’s X account was compromised today by an unknown hacker who posted disgusting messages, including antisemitic and racist posts,” a spokeswoman for Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind “Sesame Street,” said in a brief statement. “We are working to restore full control of the account.”Elmo, the perpetually 3-and-a-half-year-old beloved Muppet character on “Sesame Street,” often teaches his young audience life lessons like kindness and patience.Elmo’s account had not posted any new messages as of midnight. X could not immediately be contacted for comment.The social media platform X, formerly Twitter, has experienced a surge in racist, antisemitic and other hateful speech since Elon Musk took it over in 2022.Last week, Grok, X’s A.I. chatbot, posted antisemitic comments including praising Hitler. The company deleted some of the posts and issued an apology. The chatbot’s posts mirrored the “extremist views” of X’s users, xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company which created Grok, later said.Experts have recorded a surge in antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents since Hamas led an attack on Israel in 2023 that prompted the Israeli military to invade Gaza.The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish advocacy group, recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents across the United States in 2024, the highest number on record and a 344 percent increase over the previous five years. These included online incidents where individuals or groups were harassed on social media or via direct messages, although the organization said it did not attempt to assess the total amount of antisemitism online.“Elevated antisemitism has become a persistent reality for American Jewish communities,” the organization said in its report about the 2024 incidents.In early June, a man threw Molotov cocktails at a Jewish group calling for the release of hostages in Gaza. One of the victims later died of her wounds. Prosecutors charged a man with first degree murder and a hate crime, among other offenses.The previous month, two employees of the Israeli Embassy in Washington were fatally shot outside an event at the Capital Jewish Museum. A man was later charged with crimes that included first-degree murder.And in April, a man set fire to the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion on the first night of Passover, forcing Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, to flee with his family. More

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      ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty,’ Plus 6 Things to Watch on TV This Week

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      The Prime Video show returns with its third and final season — and maybe an answer for Lola’s love triangle.Teenage DreamsTeam Jeremiah? Team Conrad? I’m team “date someone outside the family who aren’t brothers,” but maybe that’s just me. “The Summer I Turned Pretty” follows Lola Tung as Belly, who navigates high school, then college. But the central plot is the will-they-won’t-they relationships between her and two brothers, Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno) and Conrad (Christopher Briney). Based on the young adult novels of the same name by Jenny Han, the series returns with its third and final season, dropping one episode each week — which means we won’t find out whom Belly ultimately chooses until mid-September. Han, who also serves as the creator, co-showrunner, and an executive producer on the show, has teased that the ending of the show might differ from the book’s, so only time will tell. Streaming Wednesday on Prime Video.Musical SpecialsMiley Cyrus at the premiere of “Something Beautiful.”Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images for Tribeca FestivaMiley Cyrus’s visual album movie “Something Beautiful,” which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last month, is now coming to streaming. The film, which has the same name as her new album, features 13 songs with their corresponding visuals, all based on a world of fantasy. Streaming Wednesday on Disney+.Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the rest of the gang seem to be quite busy this summer — they’re on Coach bags, Uniqlo T-shirts, an entire Kith collection, and now they have to save their favorite summer camp. In “Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical,” the first musical in the franchise in over 30 years, the group is headed on an outdoorsy adventure: Sally is nervous as a first-time camper, Snoopy and Woodstock go on a treasure hunt, and Charlie Brown works to keep their beloved camp’s doors open. Streaming Friday on Apple TV+.Missing PersonsIn 1995, Jodi Huisentruit was 27 years old and working as an anchor for the local news station, KIMT, in Mason City, Iowa. On the morning of June 27, she didn’t show up for work, and when the police later went to her apartment to investigate, they found some of her personal items — including car keys and red high heels — strewn near her car in the complex’s parking lot. She was never found and, in 2001, was declared legally dead. The new three-part documentary series “Her Last Broadcast: The Abduction of Jodi Huisentruit” features interviews with family members, detectives, witnesses and friends in an attempt to figure out what happened. Streaming Tuesday on Hulu.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Love Island USA’: The Finale and Season’s Biggest Moments

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      After the finale, here are the big moments and takeaways for the seventh season of the show.After a dramatic six weeks of “Love Island USA” that generated constant headlines and social media controversy, the seventh season wrapped up on Sunday night with a lukewarm outlook on love.The show was a pop culture constant this summer, with Peacock airing six new episodes per week. It became one of the most streamed programs, and its popularity was also reflected in the millions of votes that viewers cast to try to keep their favorite islanders in the villa on the Pacific island of Fiji.Just because the season is wrapped doesn’t mean that “Love Island” will be off our screens for long. Far from it. The show’s host, Ariana Madix, will be joined by Andy Cohen for a reunion special on Aug. 25. And on Sept. 16, Peacock will begin airing “Love Island Games,” a spinoff coming back for its second season. It features contestants from different iterations of the show — U.S., U.K., Australia and others — as they compete in challenges while also trying to date.After the finale, here are the big moments and takeaways for the show’s seventh season.A finale usually celebrating love instead featured a breakup.Though “Love Island” seasons are often unpredictable, finales always tend to follow a set formula. The four final couples go on elaborate dates, film slow-motion make-out scenes and talk about how they will approach their relationship outside the villa.And then, based on viewer votes, a winning couple is crowned.On Sunday night’s finale, most things went according to that blueprint — until the date between Huda Mustafa, 24, and Chris Seeley, 27. Instead of sharing kind words and dreaming about the future, they broke up and decided to go “no-contact” after leaving the villa — a franchise first. While other couples literally rode off into the sunset, Mustafa downed a glass of champagne before walking away from dinner by herself. In the past, couples have broken up shortly after the finale wrapped but never during.Because fans’ votes were locked in before the finale, the noncouple of Mustafa and Seeley took home third place, ahead of Iris Kendall and Pepe Garcia.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kristen Doute’s Path From Villain to the Voice of Reason on ‘The Valley’

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      In 2013, Kristen Doute was working as a server at the West Hollywood lounge SUR and struggling to make it as an actor when one of the restaurant’s owners — Lisa Vanderpump of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” fame — approached her with the opportunity to be cast in a new Bravo reality show.Called “Vanderpump Rules,” the show would follow the personal and professional lives of the young staff members at SUR. The two decided to give it a shot, unaware that one day, Ms. Doute’s boyfriend at the time, Tom Sandoval, would become the most hated man in the United States, and Ms. Doute would be publicly fired for racist behavior.“The worst-case scenario is that it doesn’t do well and no one ever hears about it again,” Ms. Doute, now 42, said of her decision to join the show during a recent interview. “Our IMDB pages are not through the roof right now. I think we’ll be OK.”After agreeing to join the cast, the two immediately went home and binge-watched MTV’s “The Hills,” one of the most popular reality TV shows of the time. “We wanted to learn how to, quote, unquote, do reality TV,” Ms. Doute said.Turns out, she did not need the help. With “Vanderpump,” Ms. Doute quickly became one of the network’s biggest reality stars — for better or worse. Since debuting on Bravo screens more than a decade ago, she has been an insatiable vortex for drama, earning the nickname “Crazy Kristen” for her drunken antics (i.e. throwing a drink on James Kennedy, a castmate), battling with gravity (i.e. tripping over a coffee table on a girls’ trip to Solvang, Calif.), and embarking on tireless quests for the truth — or at least her truth. (Her other cast-given nickname is “Detective Doute.”)In her time on “Vanderpump Rules,” Ms. Doute was known for creating drama wherever she went.Bravo/NBCUniversal, via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Best Mafia Show, According to Morgan Spector of ‘The Gilded Age’

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      The actor, who plays a railroad magnate on HBO’s period drama, is into Russian war novels, “lefty” podcasts and his home gym.Morgan Spector’s character on “The Gilded Age” always seems to have it together, even if, behind the scenes, his business empire is teetering on the brink of collapse.In real life, well — he’s trying.Speaking from his home in Hillsdale, N.Y., where he lives with his wife, the actress Rebecca Hall, he was sleep-deprived because his 7-year-old daughter had been up in the middle of the night. His 1-year-old Rhodesian Ridgeback, Stella, had vomited all over the house. His phone was acting up.“It’s been one of those days,” he said.Spector, 44, has become a fan favorite for his scene-stealing turn as the railroad magnate George Russell on HBO’s period drama about what happens when old money meets new money. His character has a crisis of confidence this season, as he allows himself to be swept along by a marriage plot hatched by his wife, Bertha (Carrie Coon), involving their daughter, Gladys (Taissa Farmiga), and the Duke of Buckingham (Ben Lamb) — a man George knows she doesn’t love.“It causes him to have a kind of existential reckoning,” Spector said. “Because despite all the sort of horrible robber baron-y things he does, he thinks of himself as someone with a moral code, particularly with regard to his family.”He shared his 10 cultural essentials, including the book that “made his entire personality” and the magazine he reads cover to cover. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.MomMy wife and I are both relatively busy working actors, which means our lives are logistically chaotic. That would make it extremely challenging to provide a grounded, consistent experience of childhood for my daughter, were it not for my mom. She jumped on board our crazy train early on and, as a result, it all functions pretty seamlessly.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mark Snow, Who Conjured the ‘X-Files’ Theme, Is Dead at 78

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      It took a misplaced elbow, a quirk of Los Angeles geography and some whistling from his wife to produce one of television’s most memorable melodies.Mark Snow, a Juilliard-trained soundtrack composer who earned 15 Emmy Award nominations, including one for his eerily astral opening theme to “The X-Files,” a 1990s answer to the timeless “Twilight Zone” theme and the basis of a surprising dance hit in Europe, died on July 4 at his home in Washington, Conn. He was 78.The cause was myelodysplastic syndrome, a rare form of blood cancer, his son-in-law Peter Ferland said.Over an extraordinarily prolific five-decade career, during which he tallied more than 250 film and television credits, Mr. Snow excelled in a field that comes with built-in creative challenges.“Some producers describe their musical idea as ‘fast but slow,’” he said in a 2000 interview with Film & Video magazine. “The director might say he wants to hear music that’s ‘blue with a hint of green.’ Now, no one really knows what those terms mean. That’s a big part of my job, interpreting the search for a project’s musical voice.”Mr. Snow provided music for 90 episodes of “Hart to Hart,” which starred Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers as a jet-setting couple who double as amateur sleuths, and 40 episodes of “Falcon Crest,” the 1980s prime-time soap opera.Mr. Snow provided music for 90 episodes of the Robert Wagner series “Hart to Hart.”Columbia Pictures , via Everett CollectionHis many other credits included “Starsky & Hutch,” with David Soul (left) and Paul Michael Glaser.via Everett CollectionWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More