PBS' 'American Experience: 1964' review: Smart, eloquent but incomplete

And what a year: It would launch both the national career of Ronald Reagan and the birth of campus activism. The year, 1964, as "1964" so eloquently and often persuasively establishes, had many such contravening cur-rents. Columnist and Goldwater historian Rick Perlstein sums it up best here when he says "the left and right were ready to kill each other over the meaning of the same word -- freedom."

"1964" does a particularly fine job of establishing the importance of the year to the Civil Rights movement -- Dave Dennis, Mississippi director of the Congress of Racial Equality, is superb in recounting the murders of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman in that long-ago summer. But it often feels incomplete elsewhere -- nothing on the Cold War and barely any discussion of Vietnam (The Gulf of Tonkin incident when the USS Maddox had a running battle with three North Vietnamese gunboats is addressed.)

Boomers will be grateful that "1964" includes a fleeting discussion of TV, but the conclusions are laughable ("The Addams Family" as social commentary on neighborhood integration? Puh. Lease.)

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But best of all here is legendary sports writer Bob Lipsyte's recollections of the time The Beatles met Muhammad Ali, then known as Cassius Clay, a few days before he became heavyweight champion. The punchline is worth the whole two hours.