Lowell Thomas

In his own lifetime Lowell Thomas was most famous as the pioneering news broadcaster who began each of his daily shows with his distinctive "Good evening, everybody" and ended it with the equally distinctive "So long until tomorrow!" Later and for the 1950's television baby boomers, et. al., he was the host of High Adventure, a weekly television series that allowed Lowell to travel about the world introducing the home viewers to everything from life among New Guinea headhunters to the sights and scenes of Alaska (one of Lowell's favorite states). Although Lowell was also the first television news anchorman, he soon left the small screen to return to radio where he could broadcast from anyplace he could haul his portable broadcasting equipment. Lowell finally retired at age 84 on May 14, 1976.

Lowell's first professional job was as a reporter for the Victor [Colorado] Daily Record. Although he was born in Ohio, his physician father moved the family to Victor where there was a demand for a doctor in the mining boom town high up the slopes of Pike's Peak. Dr. Thomas thought Lowell might also want to be a physician and once had his son suit up in operating clothes to see first hand what a doctor's work was like. One of the nurses suggested Lowell might want to get up close so he could see better. But after the first incision, Lowell crashed to the floor in a dead faint. Later, his dad later suggested Lowell might want to study law.

By temperament Lowell was not really cut out for the adversarial nature of the legal profession either, but history has certainly shown his ability was in oratory. His skills were encouraged early, and from time to time, father and son would repair to the local church where Lowell would recite poems and speeches while Dr. Thomas listened and called out advice. Lowell became such an effective speaker he impressed not only his teachers but his fellow students to boot. Then after graduating as valedictorian of Victor High School, he headed off to the Midwest to attend college.

Lowell's university education is complex and we must admit rather confusing. Depending on what you read, he earned up to five university degrees either bachelors or masters. But regarding exactly what degrees he obtained, Lowell himself seem to be surprisingly mum.

According to Lowell's own account, he attended Valparaiso University. But even then he didn't get the name correct. He incorrectly said that "good old Valpo" was the University of Northern Indiana at Valparaiso. There is no such name on record. In any case when Lowell attended, it was officially Valparaiso University.

Lowell tells us he signed up for the entire degree in one year. For this effrontery he was called to task by one of the deans. But on looking at his grades, the dean was impressed. But he told Lowell he would complete his degree in a single year.

"Then I'll stay for two and take a masters," Lowell said.

Once more we ask. Exactly what degrees did Lowell earn? What did he study? Lowell never says.

Then in one of his last interviews, Lowell elaborated on his time at Valpo. But he left us with more questions than answers:

Lowell:	I worked my way doing part-time jobs and enjoyed it. Then I doubled up my courses, and finished my first two degrees in two years. I'm not sure this was wise, because I neglected my studies. I usually sat in the front row, appearing to be enthralled by what the prof was saying. And I somehow managed to get by.
Interviewer:	Appearing to take an interest?

Hm. Here Lowell says he "neglected his studies" and he "somehow got by" only by sitting in the front row and pretending to be enthralled by the lecture.

And this impressed one of the deans?

Now here's what's odd. In the interview Lowell was asked specifically about his goals in college. His reply, at best, was rather vague.

Interviewer:	When you enrolled at the University of Northern Indiana [sic], did you have any particular goal in mind?
Lowell:	I suspect my thoughts on that changed from time to time - gold mining, the law, but mainly something to take me to all parts of the world. Looking back I think what I wanted when I went away to college was to get away from my father; out from under his thumb.

And now for what's really strange. The interviewer finally asked out right what exactly Lowell studied.

Interviewer:	What sort of subjects did you study in college?
Lowell:	My father was a rather remarkable scholar, and associating with him was enough to cause any boy to want to study all subjects. My father was a near expert in almost everything, which is unusual. I've only encountered a few people in the world who had as broad an education as my father.

So when asked specifically what he studied in college, Lowell talks about his dad.

Lowell then continued.

So I went down to the University of Denver where I got two more degrees and worked on the Denver Times. After the year in Denver, still not certain what I wanted to do, I decided to go on to Chicago and study law.

Now we know that Lowell was smart. But working as a reporter, he got another bachelors and masters in one year?

The interviewer then asked about Lowell's time after he left Denver.

Interviewer:	In Chicago, you continued what seems to be a lifelong habit of doing a number of different things simultaneously.
Lowell:	Too many things. A full day's job on a newspaper and law school at night should have been enough. But after I had been at the Chicago-Kent College of Law for only two weeks, the dean called me in and said they had lost the head of their speech department. He asked me to fill in until they could find a replacement, which they never did.

So now we have Lowell working full time during the day as a reporter while attending night school law classes and teaching speech - presumably again at night.

Just how many law classes could Lowell have been taking? It couldn't have been many

Lowell then went to Princeton. He was given a scholarship which appears to have come from his friendship with Silas Strawn, a big name Chicago attorney whose firm Lowell's reporting had helped out of an embarrassing situation. Silas also had written a most favorable recommendation for Lowell.

Official biographies also seem to struggle with Lowell's educational background. The Encyclopedia Britannica said Lowell earned a bachelors of science at Valpo (no mention of a masters), a bachelors of arts and masters of arts and Denver, and a masters of arts at Princeton. There was no mention of any time at Chicago and so we suspect he did not complete any formal degree there. But again in all of this, we get not a hint of the actual fields of study.

And if this isn't confusing enough, another writer stated that Lowell did indeed have four degrees. But one was from from Valpo, another from Denver, a third from Kent, and the fourth from Princeton. But nothing about the twice earning two degrees in two years as Lowell claimed.

So what, as Flakey Foont asked Mr. Natural, does it all mean?

There's no doubt Lowell attended the universities as he claimed and he is listed as a famous alumni by the universities. The University of Denver even had a Lowell Thomas Building.

Furthermore, the Princeton Alumni Association mentions that in 1945 three alumni, Donald L. Stone (1914, History and Politics), E. Baldwin Smith (1915, Art and Archaeology), and Lowell Thomas (1916, History and Politics) organized "Princeton Graduate College Pioneers". This was, we learn, "an organization of graduate alumni, particularly those who had lived in the Graduate College, to foster occasional meetings for purely social purposes."

Still more questions than answers. If he lived in the Graduate College, does that mean he completed a degree?

But at least now we have a mention of Lowell as a graduate student. If there was a degree from the graduate school and Lowell never mentioned a Ph. D., that leaves us with the conclusion Lowell received a masters in History and Politics in 1916.

But did Lowell really do all that he said?

We have to remember that pre-WWI colleges were still groping to define the shift from curricula composed largely of Greek and Latin to educating young people in a way they could make a living. Some degrees now requiring four and five years could be completed in three or even two. College professors even at major universities (including Oxford) sometimes had no higher degree than a bachelors.

Besides we should remember - as we will see later - that Lowell was not beyond stretching things a bit.

Despite his youth and the time taken for his education (whatever it was), Lowell had visited Alaska with film and camera and while at Princeton had prepared a slide show about America's relatively new northern wilderness. The talk proved popular among the lecture circuit and came to the attention of Secretary of Interior Franklin Lane. Franklin invited the young Princeton instructor to speak at a symposium in Washington. Lowell's presentation was so successful that the Secretary asked Lowell to be part of a government sponsored "See America First" campaign. Lowell was agreeable.

But then World War I came to America, and the See America First campaign had to be scrapped. Instead, Franklin asked Lowell to use his reportorial and speaking skills to go to Europe with his camera (and cameraman, Harry Chase). Lowell and Harry would tour the battle fronts and bring back stirring stories of the Battle for Democracy to get American's fired up for what might be a lengthy engagement.

The secretary, though, asked if Lowell could raise his funding privately. That wasn't such a formidable task as you might think. It turns out when he was a reporter in Chicago, Lowell had exposed a trickster and con man who had been blackmailing the clients of prominent Chicago attorney, Silas Strawn. Silas had personally expressed his appreciation for Lowell's investigative journalism and said if Lowell ever needed any assistance to come see him.

So now Lowell went to Silas who donated $2000 of his own money and gave him a list of other rich local magnates to visit. None of them turned Lowell down and one even chipped in $10,000. More than amply funded, Lowell and Harry headed off for Europe. A point to remember is that the monies were not loans, but were private donations to Lowell, not to the government and had no strings attached.

Unfortunately, the war in Europe wasn't going so hot - or at least stalemated trench warfare wasn't something likely to arouse patriotic fervor back on the home front. However, there was a much more exotic theater of operations in the Middle East. There Britain was fighting Germany's ally, the Ottoman Empire, which was centered in Turkey. So Lowell and Harry packed up their equipment and sailed east for the Palestine.

Of course, by the time Lowell arrive Jerusalem had fallen. But as a semi-official representative of the US government, found a lot of doors were opened. He had no problem interviewing Field Marshall Edmund Allenby and getting the famous soldier to pose for his cameras.

While in Jerusalem Lowell had also paid a visit to Sir Ronald Storrs, the British officer who had been assigned with the job of getting the ethnic Arabs to rebel against their Turkish (but fellow Muslim) overlords. Sir Ronald was persuasive and Hussein ibn Ali, the sharif of Arabia's Hijaz region which contained the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, declared Arab independence and himself King of the Hijaz. His son, Feisel, was leading the Arab armies.

Lowell was aware of the Arab revolt, of course, and when he arrived in Jerusalem, Lowell had heard rumors of some mysterious desert fighter. All Lowell had learned was the man was not an Arab although he was with their army. So during his talk with Sir Ronald, Lowell asked about story. Without a word, Sir Ronald crossed the room and opened a door leading to an anteroom. There was sitting a small, blue eyed Englishman decked out in Arab garb. "I want you to meet the uncrowned king of Arabia," Sir Ronald joked introducing Lowell to T. E. Lawrence.

Lowell spent some time talking with T. E. He said he thought the desert campaign should be reported and would like to come and film him and the Arab armies. T . E. said he had no objection but it would be too dangerous for the Americans to return with him directly through the Turkish lines. So Lowell and Harry took a circuitous route down the Nile and across the Red Sea to Arabia.

Here the mystery begins. In the 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia there was a character named Jackson Bentley who was clearly modeled after Lowell. Jackson went around with Peter O'Toole and Alec Guinness, taking photographs of their raids and the bombed out trains. Since it was Lowell's accounts that transformed Colonel T. E. Lawrence of the Cairo Bureau into the iconic Lawrence of Arabia, it is a fair enough question to ask just how much of the real Lowell Thomas was in the fictitious Jackson Bentley. In other words, how much did Lowell actually witness first hand of the Arab Revolt?

In his 1924 book about Lawrence, Lowell wrote about his riding with T. E. on what reads like a military mission (or at least a trek across the desert). Then in a later essay from the 1930's Lowell stated unambiguoulsy he spent "days, weeks, and "months" with T. E. So from Lowell's tellings it sounds like he was with T. E. for an extended stay.

T. E. on the other hand flatly denied any prolonged contact with Lowell. "Lowell Thomas was ten days in Arabia," he wrote, "and was with me for two of those." He added that he and the others in Feisel's army posed for the American's cameras and then "sent him packing." Later he said they had tea once or twice in London. Lowell's accounts, said Lawrence, were silly and inaccurate, at time intentionally so. The whole story was a house of cards which he could knock down at any time. "He meant well", conceded T. E.

So what is the truth? T. E.'s, almost certainly. If you carefully read Lowell's own books - either in the first book or in his later autobiography - there are only limited passages of his dealings with T. E. He wrote more about having lunch with Edmund Allenby or "Black Jack" Pershing than his "days, weeks, and months" with T. E., and there are perhaps two or three direct quotes when T. E. spoke to Lowell. John Mack, the author of The Prince of Our Disorder, the Pulitzer Prize winning biography of T . E., interviewed Lowell closely when researching the book. He said the Lowell's total time in Arabia was two weeks, which itself seems like a rounding up of T. E.'s account. The conclusion certainly seems inescapable that in his entire life Lowell saw T. E. no more than over the course of a few days.

Still, we need to cut Lowell some slack. He himself said his book was a product of an inexperienced and young reporter. T. E., although himself decrying the publicity, always gave Lowell permission to write books and articles about him. T. E. even took in Lowell's show at least five times when it was in London. Whenever Fran, Lowell's wife, would catch T. E.'s eye after the show, T. E. would laughed nervously and hurry out. T. E. kept Lowell informed of his doings by correspondence and that included the time of his secret enlistment into the army under the name Ross and later less secret enlistment in the R. A. F. under the name of Shaw. For all his life, Lowell retained a very positive attitude toward T. E. and realized that his own success and prosperity was directly due to the shy reclusive Englishman he had met by chance.

After touring the world With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia Lowell settled on Quaker Hill, an extremely well to do neighborhood outside of Pawling, New York. After investing his earnings quite wisely and successfully, Lowell began writing a series of popular true life adventure books. These started out (of course) with the first book about T . E., With Lawrence of Arabia in 1924, and continued with a series of titles that covered topics as varied as the life of a British soldier in India, a trip through the Khyber pass to the then forbidden country of Afghanistan (still not a nice place to visit), the exploits of Count Felix Von Luckner who was the German sea captain whose wartime exploits resulted in a number of sunken Allied vessels but absolutely no casualites on either side, and the story of a man named Fred Harmon who introduced himself by asking whether Lowell would like to write the story of the time when he and other members of the merchant ship Dumaru were cast adrift after the ship was struck lightning and when they ran out of food they ate the chief engineer.

Then in 1930, the now well known author and lecturer was sitting at his desk at his home when he got a call from the program director at NBC asking him to come in. NBC had been looking to replace their newscaster, Floyd Gibbons, whose personality and behavior had run afoul of NBC upper management propriety. The director had heard Lowell speak and thought he would be the man for the job. When Lowell arrived at NBC he was taken to a room, placed in front of a microphone, and told to talk about about anything for ten minutes. Afterwards, he was offered the job as NBC's nightly news broadcaster. So on September 29, 1930 "Lowell Thomas and the News" began and ran until March 14, 1976.

Lowell was also briefly a TV news anchorman but hated being tied down to a studio. Soon he returned to radio. Then CBS contacted him about doing a TV show. Lowell, as he told it, wasn't really interested doing any more TV and said he would only if he could have an unlimited budget and do anything he wanted. CBS finessed him by agreeing and so began the weekly show, High Adventure where Lowell went and did whatever he wanted. The first show was told of his meeting with New Guinea headhunters and he later ended up traveling to Tibet. In addition to breaking his leg in eight places in a fall (from which he recovered completely), Lowell was also the first westerner to interview the Dalai Lama who as of this writing is alive and well.

Despite whatever his politics may have been, he never mixed his own personal views or politics with his broadcasts and was refreshingly impartial in his telling of the news. His job was to report and entertain, he felt, not to preach or influence. Never a fan of censorship, he saw nothing wrong with an occasional variant of "hell" and "damn" on the radio, despite the mild flack received from the listeners.

But you can't, he said, toot the same horn for fifty years and not hit a blue note. Inevitably Lowell made the occasional slip that sent his audience, his own staff, and himself into hysterics - and probably the network management into fits of panic.

Many people have heard Lowell's famous blooper about how in Hershey, Pennsylvania you have all the people who make chocolate "with and without nuts." Or how he was intending to say a lady suffered a near fatal heart attack elided the phrase to the lady having a "near fart." Both bon mots broke Lowell up. He devoted a whole chapter to his verbal faux paux in Fan Mail or Making Millions Mad, one of his more amusing and humorous books.

But the biggest whopper was when he told the story of a hunter's daughter. The punch line was to be "Ok, kiddo!" and it's hard to see how you could cause a flap with such an innocuous phrase. But the story being about the hunter stuck in Lowell's mind and when delivering the line he elided the "kiddo" with "hunter". For those who have to have it spelled out, say the first letter of "kiddo" with the first syllable of "hunter" and you have Lowell's blooper. It didn't help that the announcer then had to give a commercial about how important it was to choose the right words. Gasping for air, the announcer could barely finish the ad.

Lowell's extremely active lifestyle kept him extremely fit and trim and he was an avid skier well into old age. In mid-August 1989, he took a visit to his old home town of Victor, Colorado. The old town was peacefully nestled on the slopes of Pikes Peak. His boyhood home was still a private and well maintained residence, and the building that housed his old newspaper office was standing. There was even a small museum about someone named Lowell Thomas. He returned to Quaker Hill where two weeks later on August 29, 1981, he died at age 89.

References

Good Evening, Everybody: From Cripple Creek to Samarkand, Lowell Thomas, William Morrow and Company, (1976). The first volume of Lowell Thomas's very well written and entertaining autobiography. This covers Lowell's life up until the beginning of World War II and so naturally has quite a lot of his dealings with T. E.

Again and even at this book's late date - forty years after Lawrence died - Lowell was still vague and reticent on his first hand dealings with T. E. Only one or two quote first hand quotes from T. E to Lowell are given, and once more there's no indication of why spending "days, weeks, and months" with T. E. was dealt with in such a sketchy fashion. So as good as this book is (and it really is a great book), we are still forced to conclude that what T. E. said was correct. He and Lowell did not spend more than a few days together.

So Long Until Tomorrow: From Quaker Hill to Kathmandu, Lowell Thomas, William Morrow and Company, (1977). Part 2 of Lowell's biography, this covers his life from World War II until the time of writing. Equally interesting but in a different way, this book goes into detail of his various and many business dealings (including financing and producing the precursor of IMAX theaters known as Cinerama), his continuing broadcasting career (including his brief foray as a televison news anchorman), his much more enjoyable foray into producing High Adventure, and the trip to Tibet.

With Lawrence in Arabia, Lowell Thomas, Dutton (1924). You have to ignore T. E.'s bio in this book as he's traced back to some famous English Lawrence's. Of course, Lawrence was a name assumed by his parents, Sir Thomas and Sarah Chapman (who never were legally married) and had nothing to so with Sir Thomas's heritage. Sarah, who was also illegitimate and registered as Sarah Junner, had taken her father's surname which was Lawrence.

This not very rare book is readily available from various used bookshops. So if you want a copy of what was probably one of the most influential books written in the 20th Century (although very little read today) you can easily add it to your home library. But if you want to check out the contents first, you can also consult an online copy at the Internet Archives (http://www.archive.org/). The actual reference for the book - either a .pdf or a text file - is at http://www.archive.org/details/withlawrenceinar00thomuoft

"Good Evening, Everybody: An Interview With Lowell Thomas", Robert S. Gallagher, Volume 31, Issue 5, August/September 1980.

"Lowell Thomas", Encyclopedia Britannica.

Lowell Thomas' Victor: The Man and the Town, Brian Levine. Century One Press, (1982). The author took Lowell and his second wife Marianna around Victor on his last trip there in 1981. Although there is a good chapter on Brian's talks with Lowell during the visit, the book mostly covers the history of Victor during its mining boom days. There was a lot going on but it was also surprisingly civilized. The rough and genteel existed side by side in surprising harmony as it did in most - quote "Wild West" - unquote - towns.

Lowell Thomas and Lawrence of Arabia: Making Legend - Creating History, http://www.cliohistory.org/thomas-lawrence/. This site discusses the theatrical lectures of Lowell Thomas about T. E. Regardless of what T. E. said about Lowell - such as the famous "reporter scooping" comment - T. E. attended the performances in London possibly as many as five times. Fran, Lowell's wife, said if she spied T. E. in the crowd, he would laugh a bit shamefacedly and then hurry out. That T. E. could wander in the theater and sit down completely unnoticed says something about the difference between the iconic Lawrence of Arabia and Col. Thomas Edward Lawrence (ret).

"History: 1950 - 2000", Association of Princeton Graduate Alumni, princeton.edu.

"Lowell Thomas: Multimedia Personified", Rob Carrigan, Focus on Weeklies, December, 2003.