Before he whispered about happy little trees on PBS, Bob Ross was a U.S. Air Force master sergeant in Alaska whose job as first sergeant of a base clinic required him to bark orders and enforce discipline. This episode follows his unlikely transformation, from a ninth-grade dropout working in his father's Florida carpentry shop, where an accident severed part of his left index finger, to a 20-year military career that left him vowing never to raise his voice again. We look at how the Alaskan landscape became his artistic blueprint, how a bartending side gig led him to Bill Alexander's wet-on-wet oil technique on television, and how he practiced on novelty gold mining pans sold to tourists until the side business outearned his military salary in 1981.

The second half examines the business machine behind the gentle persona. Annette and Walt K ...