Lowell (Jackson) Thomas - Lawrence of Arabia, Later career, Lowell Thomas Award, Books

News commentator and writer, born in Woodington, Ohio, USA. After earning two MAs (University of Denver, and Princeton), and working as a reporter and teacher, he took a trip to Alaska (1915). His resultant travelogue led President Woodrow Wilson to commission him to film and record ongoing World War 1 events, which led to his contacts with Colonel T E Lawrence in the Middle East and eventually to his best-selling book, With Lawrence in Arabia (1924). Immediately after the War he began a career as a lecturer and as a world traveller; his encircling the entire globe by aeroplane (1926–7) was one of the first promotions of the potential of aviation. During 1930–76 he was a radio newscaster, but he managed to travel to exotic places around the world, narrate Movietone newsreels (1935–52) and travelogues for Twentieth Century-Fox, and write many books. He broadcast from many combat zones during World War 2, and in 1949 he was invited to Tibet by the Dalai Lama. He profiled outstanding historical figures on Public Broadcasting System's Lowell Thomas Remembers (1976–9), and published a two-part autobiography, Good Evening Everybody (1977) and So Long Until Tomorrow (1978).

Lowell Jackson Thomas (April 6, 1892 – August 29, 1981) was an American writer, broadcaster, and traveller best known as the man who made Lawrence of Arabia famous. So varied were Thomas's activities that when it came time for the Library of Congress to catalog his memoirs they were forced to put them in "CT" in their classification--biographies of subjects who don't fit into any other category.

He was born in Woodington, Ohio, in Darke County, the son of Harry and Harriet (Wagner) Thomas. The war was not popular in the United States and Thomas was sent to find material that would encourage the American people to support the war. Thomas did not just want to write about the war, he wanted to film it. (He had done them a favor by exposing someone who was blackmailing them without the damaging material becoming public.)

Lawrence of Arabia

He, and a cameraman called Harry Chase, firstly went to the Western Front but the trenches had little to inspire the American public. With the permission of the British Foreign Office as an accredited war-correspondent, Thomas met T. Thomas and Chase spent several weeks with Lawrence in the desert, though Lawrence said "several days".

Thomas shot dramatic footage of Lawrence and after the war toured the world narrating his film, With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia making Lawrence--and himself--household names. At the opening of Thomas's six-month run in London, there were incense-braziers, exotically dressed women danced in front of images of the Pyramids and the band of the Welsh Guards played to provide the accompaniment. However to strengthen the emphasis on Lawrence in the show, Thomas needed more photographs of him than Chase had taken in 1918. Thomas later said of Lawrence that "He had a genius for backing into the limelight". Thomas and Lawrence's initially friendly relationship grew colder as Thomas's show grew in popularity, with Thomas ignoring several personal requests from Lawrence to stop the show.

The shows gave Lawrence a degree of publicity that he had never previously experienced. However Lawrence said that he never forgave Thomas for exploiting his image, and called him a 'vulgar man'.

About four million people saw the show around the world and it made Thomas $1.5 million. Thomas would also later write a book, With Lawrence in Arabia (1924), about his time in the desert and Lawrence's exploits during the war.

Later career

During the 1920s, he was a magazine editor. Bowen in Lowell Thomas: The Stranger Everyone Knows (1968).

Thomas never lost his fascination with the movies. Because of both the cost and technical issues in synchronizing the projectors, Cinerama never caught on, but a quarter-century later, Thomas was still raving about it in his memoirs and wondering why someone wasn't trying to revive it.

"The world's foremost globetrotter" took his radio show on his travels, broadcasting from the four corners of the globe. Once on the Spanish Steps in Rome he was asked by a fellow American, "Lowell Thomas, don't you ever go home?"

Thomas's most amusing on-air gaffé occurred during one of his daily CBS news broadcasts in the early 1960's. The line came out of Thomas's mouth as "She suffered a fatal fart attack".

He was a successful businessman, helping to found Capital Cities Communications, which in 1986 took over the American Broadcasting Company, and developed the Quaker Hill community in Dutchess County, New York, near Pawling, where Thomas resided when not on the road. Among his neighbors there was Thomas E. In 1976, President Gerald Ford awarded Thomas the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Thomas was fictionalized in David Lean's film Lawrence of Arabia as American journalist Jackson Bentley, played by Arthur Kennedy. When he heard this film was being produced, Thomas offered to give producer Sam Spiegel a large amount of documentation about Lawrence to use for the film, but was rejected. Thomas died at his home at Pawling at the age of eighty-nine.

His only child, Lowell Thomas, Jr., was Lieutenant Governor of Alaska in the 1970s.

Lowell Thomas Award

Since 1980, the Explorers Club, which Thomas was a member of, annually presents the Lowell Thomas award to "honor men and women who have distinguished themselves in the field of exploration".

Books

Among Thomas's books are:

With Lawrence in Arabia, 1924 The First World Flight, 1925 Beyond Khyber Pass, 1925 Count Luckner, The Sea Devil, 1927 European Skyways, 1927 The Boy's Life of Colonel Lawrence, 1927 Adventures in Afghanistan for Boys, 1928 Raiders of the Deep, 1928 The Sea Devil's Fo'c'sle, 1929 Woodfill of the Regulars, 1929 The Hero of Vincennes, 1929 The Wreck of the Dumaru, 1930 Lauterbach of the China Sea, 1930 India--Land of the Black Pagoda, 1930 Rolling Stone, 1931 Tall Stories, 1931 Kabluk of the Eskimo, 1932 This Side of Hell, 1932 Old Gimlet Eye: The Adventures of General Smedley Butler, 1933 Born to Raise Hell, 1933 The Untold Story of Exploration, 1935 Fan Mail, 1935 A Trip to New York With Bobby and Betty, 1936 Men of Danger, 1936 Kipling Stories and a Life of Kipling, 1936 Seeing Canada With Lowell Thomas, 1936 Seeing India With Lowell Thomas, 1936 Seeing Japan With Lowell Thomas, 1937 Seeing Mexico With Lowell Thomas, 1937 Adventures Among the Immortals, 1937 Hungry Waters, 1937 Wings Over Asia, 1937 Magic Dials, 1939 In New Brunswick We'll Find It, 1939 Soft Ball! So What?, 1940 How To Keep Mentally Fit, 1940 Stand Fast for Freedom, 1940 Pageant of Adventure, 1940 Pageant of Life, 1941 Pageant of Romance, 1943 These Men Shall Never Die, 1943 Out of this World: Across the Himalayas to Tibet (1951) Back to Mandalay, 1951 Great True Adventures, 1955 The Story of the New York Thruway, 1955 Seven Wonders of the World, 1956 History As You Heard It 1957 The Story of the St. Lawrence Seaway, 1957 The Vital Spark, 1959 Sir Hubert Wilkins, A Biography, 1961 More Great True Adventures, 1963 Book of the High Mountains, 1964 Famous First Flights That Changed History, 1968 (ISBN 1-59228-536-8) Burma Jack, 1971 (ISBN 0-393-08647-X) Doolittle: A Biography, 1976 (ISBN 0-385-06495-0) Good Evening Everybody: From Cripple Creek to Samarkand, 1976 (ISBN 0-688-03068-8) So Long Until Tomorrow, 1977 (ISBN 0-688-03236-2)