Re: Lowell Thomas and the First World War in Palestine - New Online Exhibit

From: Gregory P. Wiedeman [[email protected]]
Apologies for cross-listing

The Marist College Archives & Special Collections is proud to
present a new online exhibit: Journey to the Land of Our Past with
the Lowell Thomas Travelogues.

http://library.marist.edu/archives/lttravelogues

The multimedia interactive exhibit presents the rare documents,
photographs, film, and audio from the Lowell Thomas Papers. The
stunning images from the collection are matched to Thomas’s original
1919 travelogue script to reenact the famous performance of “With
Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia.” Visitors also learn
about the 1917-1918 Palestine Campaign and the experiences of Frances
Ryan Thomas serving with the Red Cross on the Italian Front.

Lowell Thomas was an up and coming American journalist and lecturer
when America entered the First World War in 1917. Thomas traveled to
Europe with his wife, Frances Ryan Thomas, and innovative cameraman
Harry Chase to seek the scoop of a lifetime. Thomas soon found the
bloody war of attrition in Europe unappealing to his prospective
audiences, but when he heard of General Edmund Allenby’s campaign in
Palestine he jumped at the opportunity and left for Jerusalem. There
he met the young British archaeologist-turned-army officer T. E.
Lawrence in early 1918 and followed him to his desert camp. Thomas and
Chase took almost a thousand still images and innovative aerial film
footage of soldiers, locals, and landmarks like the Pyramids of Giza
and Petra.

Thomas’s travelogue became an immediate success in New York at the
Century Theater and Madison Square Garden. A British promoter soon
brought him to London to perform at the Royal Opera House at Covent
Garden where he lectured to Queen Mary, David Lloyd George, Georges
Clemenceau and many other notables. The London performances drew a
total audience of about 1 million from all over the British Empire.

After another decade of traveling, lecturing, and writing, Thomas
settled down in Pawling, New York as a radio news broadcaster for both
NBC and CBS. His daily regular show, “Lowell Thomas and the News,”
lasted for almost five decades before going off the air in 1976.

The 36,000 images from the Lowell Thomas Papers were digitized in
2011 with a grant from the National Historical Publications & Records
Commission. All of the images can be found online at
http://library.marist.edu/archives/LTP/LTP.xml

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