31 Facts About Lowell Thomas

1.

Lowell Jackson Thomas was an American writer, actor, broadcaster, and traveler, best remembered for publicising T E Lawrence.

2.

Lowell Thomas was involved in promoting the Cinerama widescreen system.

3.

Lowell Thomas's father was a doctor, his mother a teacher.

4.

Lowell Thomas worked there as a gold miner, a cook, and a reporter on the newspaper.

5.

In 1911, Lowell Thomas graduated from Victor High School where one of his teachers was Mabel Barbee Lee.

6.

Lowell Thomas was on the faculty of Chicago-Kent College of Law, where he taught oratory from 1912 to 1914.

7.

Lowell Thomas then went to New Jersey where he studied for a master's at Princeton University and again taught oratory at the university.

8.

Lowell Thomas was a relentless self-promoter, and he persuaded railroads to give him free passage in exchange for articles extolling rail travel.

9.

The war was not popular in the United States, and Lowell Thomas was sent to find material that would encourage the American people to support it.

10.

Lowell Thomas did not want to merely write about the war, he wanted to film it.

11.

Lowell Thomas traveled to Palestine as an accredited war correspondent with the permission of the British Foreign Office.

12.

Lowell Thomas agreed to take the lecture to Britain, but only "if asked by the King and given Drury Lane or Covent Garden" as a lecture venue.

13.

Lowell Thomas's conditions were met, and he opened a series at Covent Garden on August 14,1919.

14.

Lowell Thomas later claimed to dislike it, but it generated valuable publicity for his book.

15.

Lowell Thomas genuinely admired Lawrence and continued to defend him against attacks on his reputation.

16.

Lowell Thomas was a magazine editor during the 1920s, but he never lost his fascination with the movies.

17.

Lowell Thomas provided the voice-over for the 1937 ski film Schlitz on Mt.

18.

Lowell Thomas produced the documentaries This is Cinerama, Seven Wonders of the World, and Search for Paradise in this format in 1956, with a 1957 release date.

19.

Lowell Thomas was first heard on radio delivering talks about his travels in 1929 and 1930: for example, he spoke on the NBC Radio Network in late July 1930 about his trip to Cuba.

20.

Lowell Thomas soon changed the focus of the program from his own travels to interesting stories about other people, and by early October 1930, he was including more news stories.

21.

Lowell Thomas was not an employee of either NBC or CBS, contrary to today's practices, but was employed by the broadcast's sponsor Sunoco.

22.

Lowell Thomas returned to CBS to take advantage of lower capital-gains tax rates, establishing an independent company to produce the broadcast which he sold to CBS.

23.

Lowell Thomas hosted the first television news broadcast in 1939 and the first regularly scheduled television news broadcast beginning on February 21,1940, over W2XBS New York, which was a camera simulcast of his radio broadcast.

24.

Lowell Thomas was not actually in Philadelphia but was anchoring the broadcast from a New York studio and merely identifying speakers who addressed the convention.

25.

In 1953, Lowell Thomas was featured in The Ford 50th Anniversary Show that was broadcast simultaneously on the NBC and CBS television networks.

26.

Lowell Thomas presented a tribute to the classic days of radio.

27.

Lowell Thomas died in 1975, and he married Marianna Munn in 1977.

28.

Lowell Thomas died at his home in Pawling, New York in 1981.

29.

The Lowell Thomas Archives are housed as part of the college library.

30.

In 1971, Lowell Thomas received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.

31.

Lowell Thomas has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1989.