“Good evening, everybody!” This was the salutation Lowell Thomas (1892–1981) gave every weeknight for more than 45 years. Thomas was the voice tens of millions of people listened to on the radio to find out what was happening in the world. Lowell, however, didn’t live his life behind the microphone. He lived more broadly than almost any person of the 20th century, and he broadcast his exploits and those of others whenever he got the opportunity.
Born in 1892, Lowell came into the world at the perfect time for harrowing adventure and incredible danger. After earning his master’s degree from the University of Denver in 1913, Lowell became a reporter in Chicago, where he also pursued a law degree at the Chicago-Kent College of Law. His writings included rail travel, as well as investigative pieces.
He received a fellowship to continue his studies at Princeton in 1915, but that same year, he was drawn to the Alaska Territory to create what became one of his many “travelogues.” When he presented his travelogue lecture in Washington D.C. in 1917, Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane was in attendance and was so impressed that he offered Lowell an opportunity to conduct lectures for a domestic tourism campaign called “See America First.”
When they arrived, Lowell was taken aback and depressed by the trench warfare. When the chance arose to transfer to the Eastern Front where Sir Edmund Allenby, the British general, was leading the Allies toward Jerusalem, Lowell wasted no time. Little did he know, of all the travelogues and subjects he would cover, this moment would present him with his most consequential.
While on the Eastern Front, Lowell made the acquaintance of T.E. Lawrence, soon to be known around the globe as “Lawrence of Arabia.” He and Chase were invited to Prince Feisal’s desert camp, where they captured video and photography of the area, the people, and most importantly, a Brit bedecked as if he were an Arabian prince. He sent Chase back to the States to produce the film, while he went to Germany to witness the postwar revolution, in which he was nearly killed by gunfire.
When the World War I images, especially that of Allenby and Lawrence, were shown to the West, specifically London and New York City, they were an instant sensation. Lowell continued his presentation circuit into Australia and New Zealand. He also continued his travelogue adventures with Chase into India, Malaya, and Burma to create his documentary “Through Romantic India.” Though Lowell made a large financial sum from the visual presentations, he soon decided it best to write down his adventures. These works, though based in reality, were often quite embellished. Of his more than 50 books, he wrote “With Lawrence in Arabia,” “Raiders of the Deep,” and “Old Gimlet Eye: The Adventures of General Smedley D. Butler.” Much of Lawrence’s fame and folklore is accredited to the efforts, whether with or without Lawrence’s blessing, to Lowell.
“I’m not a journalist, but an entertainer,” he once admitted, “just as Bob Hope and Bing Crosby are entertainers.” And he was handsomely paid for his entertaining renditions of the news, averaging approximately $400,000 annually.
Before Lowell died in 1981, he was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Gerald Ford. He also earned the Peabody Award for his multi-decade radio work. The organization fondly referred to Lowell as the “twentieth-century Marco Polo.” Lowell was also inducted into the Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame in 1966, and posthumously into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1989.
In 1959, the former president, Herbert Hoover, wrote to Lowell, stating, ‘‘If I have to have a reincarnation, I would prefer it to be Lowell Thomas above all others. It would be an eternal life of adventure, of courage and of public service.’’
