Lowell Thomas

Lowell Jackson Thomas (April 6, 1892 – August 29, 1981) was an American writer, broadcaster, and documentary filmmaker, known as a world traveler. He authored more than fifty non-fiction books, mostly travel narratives and popular biographies of explorers and military men. Between 1930 and the mid-1970s, Thomas appeared regularly on radio and occasionally on television as a travel and news commentator. Until the 1950s, he was a narrator of Movietone newsreels shown in cinemas. Thomas was especially known for the writings and documentary films that turned T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) into an international celebrity. Later in his career, Thomas was involved in promoting the Cinerama widescreen system. In 1954, he led a group of New York City-based investors to buy majority control of Hudson Valley Broadcasting, which, in 1957, became Capital Cities Television Corporation.