Season 1
As a battle raged… an era roared
Synopsis
Prohibition (2011), Season 1 — watch online on iFILM: Ken Burns' three-part documentary on the Eighteenth Amendment and the era it produced (1920–1933).
The first episode follows nearly a century of temperance campaigning — Carry Nation's hatchet, Frances Willard's WCTU, the Anti-Saloon League's long march to a constitutional ban. Episode two counts the costs: speakeasies replaced saloons, women crossed a threshold that had always been closed to them, and tainted bootleg liquor killed. The Volstead Act turned ordinary Americans into lawbreakers without changing what they thought about a drink. Episode three watches the experiment collapse — Al Capone famous, criminal syndicates flush, and wealthy socialite Pauline Sabin organizing the women's repeal movement that finally pulled the plug.
Tom Hanks, Jeremy Irons, Samuel L. Jackson, and a dozen other voices bring the letters and testimony to life. Burns' argument is quiet but pointed: the country spent thirteen years trying to legislate morality and learned something permanent about itself. Stream Prohibition Season 1 online on iFILM.
3 episodes
S1·E1A Nation of Drunkards
The start of the temperance movement in the 19th century under the stewardship of such leaders as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frances Willard and Carry Nation; and the Anti-Saloon League, which pushed for a constitutional amendment that would ban the sale and manufacture of alcohol.
S1·E2A Nation of Scofflaws
The problems that the Volstead Act and Prohibition caused, including a possible increase in alcoholism due to women frequenting the illicit speakeasies that replaced male-only saloons; adulterated liquor that poisons some drinkers; and civil-rights violations by overzealous federal agents anxious to make arrests. Despite the public's growing opposition to the ban, few politicians dare to speak against it due to the political might of the Anti-Saloon League.
S1·E3A Nation of Hypocrites
The factors that led to the end of Prohibition. The criminalizing of alcohol feeds large profits into the coffers of criminal organizations and turns such gangsters as Al Capone into celebrities. Wealthy Pauline Sabin encourages the repeal of the 18th Amendment; and brings together women from all classes who support her position. The 21st Amendment, which repeals the 18th, is adopted after Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1932 election and by late 1933 people can again legally buy drinks.
1 seasons
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