Leigh nailed the role, sizzled with co-star Clark Gable, and proved curtains could be utterly glamorous.

The sequel,Elizabeth: The Golden Age, followed QEI through her twilight years.

Mad Men (2007-present)

The times they were a-changin'.

Despite a rotating set of directors and controversy over the decision to cast English actress Vivien Leigh to play feisty, fussy Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara,

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(Thatstory is retold inRKO 281: The Battle Over Citizen Kane.)

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

An epic in every sense of the word.

David Lean’s sumptuous, 216-minute look at the life of T.E.

Ten episodes follow the path of the U.S. Army’s Easy Company from D-Day preparations to the aftermath of Hitler’s defeat during World War II. Fresh

Good Night, and Good Luck.

Senator Joseph McCarthy’s 1950s anti-Communist bullying, which seeped out of political halls and into the entertainment industry.

The times they were a-changin'. As America underwent a cultural and moral revolution in the 1960s, Don Draper & Co. swam against the current, helped

Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC

Focusing on a story long kept under wraps from the 443-day 1979 Iran hostage crisis — that of six hostages who fled to the Canadian

Warner Bros

The historically tight 2000 presidential election between the Republican candidate, Texas governor George W. Bush, and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Al Gore, triggers a

Gene Page/HBO

Orson Welles reinvented the wheel, employing cinematography and narrative innovations as he depicted early 20th-century America’s changing political and journalistic landscape through the life of

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A dependable ensemble takes viewers through the beats of the economically, ethically complex 2008 financial meltdown, which trickled down from Wall Street to Main Street.

Macall B. Polay/HBO

An epic in every sense of the word. David Lean’s sumptuous, 216-minute look at the life of T.E. Lawrence features many standouts, including Peter O’Toole

Everett Collection

This sweeping look at the life and legacy, both historical and genetic, of a single slave remains one of the most-watched programs in U.S. history.

ABC/Getty Images

Steven Spielberg’s film about Oskar Schindler, the German factory owner who saved more than a thousand Jews from the concentration camps in World War II,

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Eight hours and 56 years pass in what feels like a matter of minutes in the biographical miniseries about America’s brilliant, if irritable, Founding Father

Kent Eanes/HBO

Chronicling the indomitable spirit of William Wallace (played by director Mel Gibson), who became the blue-striped face of the resistance in the First War of

Based on Randy Shilts' trailblazing history of the AIDS epidemic, the docudrama tracks Patient Zero before zooming out on a tapestry of characters whose lives

In stark, poignant black and white, George Clooney secured his triple-threat status as director, co-writer, and co-star of the story of legendary TV newscaster Edward

Melinda Sue Gordon

Denzel Washington won his first Oscar as Private Trip, a member of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry — the first formal unit of the U.S.

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Detailing the 28-year backwater feud between two American families, the 286-minute miniseries gives faces and texture to storied patriarchs Hatfield (Kevin Costner, shown) and McCoy

Chris Large/History Channel

In five vignettes, Sergei Eisenstein’s landmark silent film presents the 1905 revolt by sailors on the Russian battleship Potemkin against their Tsarist officers. A compact,

Courtesy of BFI

There have been many, many adaptations of Jane Austen’s 1813 novel about the culture of manners and courtship in 19th-century England, but how many of

Like Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (the film’s inspiration), director Francis Ford Coppola admitted he was nearly driven insane when his dream project