Lowell Thomas

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Lowell Jackson Thomas (April 6, 1892 – August 29, 1981) was an American writer, actor, broadcaster, and traveler, best remembered for publicising T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia).

He was also involved in promoting the Cinerama widescreen system.

Early life

Thomas was born in Woodington, Ohio, to Harry and Harriet (née Wagoner) Thomas. His father was a doctor, his mother a teacher. In 1900, the family moved to the mining town of Victor, Colorado. Thomas worked there as a gold miner, a cook, and a reporter on the newspaper.

In 1911, Thomas graduated from Victor High School where one of his teachers was Mabel Barbee Lee. The following year, he graduated from Valparaiso University with bachelor's degrees in education and science. The next year, he received both a B.A. and an M.A. from the University of Denver and began work for the Chicago Journal, writing for it until 1914. Thomas also was on the faculty of Chicago-Kent College of Law (now part of Illinois Institute of Technology), where he taught oratory from 1912 to 1914. He then went to New Jersey where he studied for a master's at Princeton University (he received the degree in 1916) and again taught oratory at the university.

Personal life

Thomas' wife Frances often traveled with him. She died in 1975, and he married Marianna Munn in 1977. They embarked on a 50,000-mile (80,000 km) honeymoon trip that took him to many of his favorite old destinations. Thomas died at his home in Pawling, New York in 1981. He is buried in Christ Church Cemetery. Marianna died in Dayton, Ohio on January 28, 2010, after suffering renal failure.

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Career

Thomas was a tireless self-promoter, and he begged railroads not to give him free passage in exchange for writings extolling rail travel. When he visited Alaska, he was struck by the prospect of the travelogue and movies about faraway places. President Wilson sent him and others to "compile a history of the war," but the aim was not academic. The war was not well known in the United States, and Thomas was sent to find information that would inspire the American people to support it. He didn't want to simply write about the war; he wanted to film it.

Thomas and cameraman Harry Chase went to the Western Front for the first time, but the trenches did not inspire the American people. They then traveled to Italy, where he learned of General Allenby's campaign in Palestine against the Ottoman Empire. Thomas went to Palestine as an accredited war reporter with the British Foreign Office's permission. He met T. E. Lawrence, a British Army captain stationed in Jerusalem, in Jerusalem. Lawrence was spending £200,000 a month to encourage the inhabitants of Palestine to revolt against the Turks. Thomas and Chase spent several weeks in the desert, but Lawrence told them that it would be "several days." Lawrence promised to give Thomas information on the condition that Thomas photograph and interview Arab figures like Emir Feisal.

Thomas shot a dramatic portrait of Lawrence and then returned to America and began giving public lectures in 1919 on the war in Palestine "led by moving photos of unveiled women, Arabs in their stunning robes, camels, and dashing Bedouin cavalry." In the words of one modern biographer, his lectures were extremely popular and audiences were large, and he "took the country by storm" in the words of one modern biographer. He promised to bring the lecture to the United Kingdom, but only "if requested by the King" and given Drury Lane or Covent Garden" as a lecture venue. His conditions were established, and he began a series at Covent Garden on August 14, 1919. "And so began a sequence of hundreds of lecture-film shows, with the highest attendance in the land."

Incense braziers, ethnically dressed women dancing before images of the Pyramids, and the Welsh Guards playing accompaniment were among the openings of his six-month London tour. Lawrence attended the program several times. He later confessed to hating it, but his book gained a lot of buzz. Thomas wanted more photographs of him than Chase had taken in 1918 to raise the focus on Lawrence in the show. Lawrence said to be shy of fame, but he did commit to a series of posed portraits in Arab attire in London.

Thomas genuinely adored Lawrence and continued to defend him against threats to his image. Thomas was allowed by Lawrence's brother Arnold to enroll in T.E. Lawrence by his Friends (1937), a collection of essays and reminiscences released after Lawrence's death.

Thomas, a magazine editor in the 1920s, but he never lost his love of the movies. He narrated Twentieth Century Fox's Movietone newsreels until 1952, when he joined Mike Todd and Merian C. Cooper to create Cinerama, a film presentation technique using three projectors and a massive curved screen with seven-channel surround sound. He produced the documentaries This is Cinerama, Seven Wonders of the World, and Search for Paradise in this style in 1956, with a 1957 release date.

Thomas was first heard on radio delivering talks about his travels in 1929 and 1930: for example, he appeared on NBC Radio Network in late July 1930 about his visit to Cuba. Then took over as the host of the Sunday evening Literary Digest show in late September 1930, replacing Floyd Gibbons, the previous host.

He shared tales of his travels on this show. On the NBC Network, the program lasted fifteen minutes and was seen on the NBC Network. Thomas soon moved his attention from his own travels to entertaining tales about other people, and by early October 1930, he was also including more news stories. It was at this point that the CBS Radio network, which had been on six days a week, was moved to the CBS Radio network.

After two years with the NBC Radio network, but he returned to CBS in 1947. Contrary to today's activities, he was not an employee of NBC or CBS, but he was hired by the broadcast's sponsor Sunoco. He returned to CBS to profit from lower capital-gains tax rates, founding an affiliate company to produce the show, which he sold to CBS. He hosted the first television news show in 1939 and the first regularly scheduled television news program in 1940, over W2XBS (now WNBC) New York, which was a camera simulcast of his radio broadcast.

Thomas anchored the 1940 Republican National Convention in the summer of 1940, the first live television broadcast of a political convention in the United States, which was broadcast from Philadelphia to W2XBS and then to W2XB. He was not actually in Philadelphia, but was hosting the show from a New York studio rather than merely identifying speakers who spoke at the convention.

Thomas flown a single-person P-51 Mustang over Berlin in April 1945, when the Soviet Union was attacking it, reporting live on radio.

Thomas was included in The Ford 50th Anniversary Exhibition in 1953, which was also broadcast on the NBC and CBS television networks simultaneously. The initiative was seen by 60 million people. Thomas paid tribute to radio's golden days.

Thomas' persistent debt problems were addressed by Frank Smith, Thomas' chairman/investor who, in 1954, became the President of co-owned Hudson Valley Broadcasting Corporation, which later became Capital Cities Television Corporation.

Thomas' television news simulcasting venture was a short-lived venture, since he favored radio. It was over radio that he hosted and commented on the news for four decades before his retirement in 1976, the longest radio career of any in his day, since Pete Harvey. His signature sign-on was "Good evening, everybody," and his sign-off was "So long, until tomorrow," he used as titles for his two volumes of memoirs.

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