45 Great Cultural Icons Revisited

It’s no secret. We love to high­light vin­tage video of cul­tur­al icons. This week­end, we showed you the last days of Leo Tol­stoy to com­mem­o­rate the cen­ten­ni­al of the great writer’s death, and you expressed your appre­ci­a­tion. And it led us to think: why not dig through our archive, and revive some of the great trea­sures pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on Open Cul­ture? And so here it goes: Below, you will find 45+ video & audio clips that record the words and actions of major fig­ures from a bygone era. Artists, archi­tects, film­mak­ers, actors, poets, nov­el­ists, com­posers, musi­cians, world-chang­ing lead­ers, and those not eas­i­ly cat­e­go­rized – they’re all here. So close, you can almost touch them. Enjoy the list, and if we’re miss­ing some good clips, don’t hes­i­tate to send them our way…

Video

1. Sal­vador Dali (and Oth­er VIPs) on “What’s My Line?”
2. Arthur Conan Doyle Recounts the Back­sto­ry to Sher­lock Holmes
3. Orson Welles’ Final Moments
4. William S. Bur­roughs Shoots Shake­speare
5. Borges: The Task of Art
6. Jack Ker­ouac Meets William F. Buck­ley (1968)
7. Ing­mar Bergman Vis­its Dick Cavett, 1971
8. Picas­so Paint­ing on Glass
9. Leonard Bern­stein Breaks Down Beethoven
10. Record Mak­ing With Duke Elling­ton (1937)
11. Bertrand Rus­sell on God
12. Mark Twain Cap­tured on Film by Thomas Edi­son (1909)
13. A Young Glenn Gould Plays Bach
14. Rod Ser­ling: Where Do Ideas Come From?
15. Richard Feyn­man: Fun to Imag­ine
16. Rare Inter­view with Alfred Hitch­cock Now Online
17. Miles and Coltrane on YouTube: The Jazz Greats
18. Footage of Nietzsche’s Final Days (May be bogus)
19. Samuel Beck­ett Speaks
20. Jimi Hen­drix Plays Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band
21. Djan­go Rein­hardt at 100
22. When Pavarot­ti Met James Brown, the God­fa­ther of Soul
23. James Dean and Ronald Rea­gan Clash in New­ly Dis­cov­ered Video
24. The Last Czar (1896)
25. Leon Trot­sky: Love, Death and Exile in Mex­i­co
26. Revis­it­ing JFK on YouTube
27. Mahat­ma Gand­hi Talks (in First Record­ed Video)
28. Mal­colm X at Oxford, 1964
29. Helen Keller Cap­tured on Video
30. Anne Frank: The Only Exist­ing Video Now Online
31. Mike Wal­lace Inter­views 1950s Celebri­ties (Frank Lloyd Wright, Pearl Buck, Sal­vador Dali, Rein­hold Niebuhr, Aldous Hux­ley, Erich Fromm, etc.)

Audio:

1. Tchaikovsky’s Voice Cap­tured on an Edi­son Cylin­der (1890)
2. Aldous Hux­ley Nar­rates Brave New World
3. Tru­man Capote Reads from Break­fast at Tiffany’s
4. Kurt Von­negut Reads from Slaugh­ter­house-Five
5. William Faulkn­er Audio Archive Goes Online
6. The John Lennon Inter­views
7. Rare Record­ing of Walt Whit­man Read­ing
8. Vir­ginia Woolf: Her Voice Recap­tured
9. T.S. Eliot Reads The Waste Land
10. Ernest Hem­ing­way Reads “In Harry’s Bar in Venice”
11. F. Scott Fitzger­ald Reads Shake­speare
12. James Joyce Read­ing from Finnegans Wake
13. Rare Ezra Pound Record­ings Now Online
14. William Car­los Williams Reads His Poet­ry (1954)
15. Inter­views with Schoen­berg and Bartók