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About Griffin daily news. (Griffin, Ga.) 1924-current | View Entire Issue (July 14, 1973)
The Lowell Thomas story goes on and on It is 7 p.m. The man in the car randomly turns the dial of his radio. He stops at a sound from out of the past: “Lowell Thomas brings the news. From Washington (bee de beep de beep), from Rio de Janeiro (bee de beep de beep), from Capetown, South Afri ca — as reported by America’s foremost newscaster, Lowell Thomas.” The driver smiles. He remembers himself, years ago, a boy at the dinner table listening to the same broadcasting over an outsized Firestone Deluxe. “Gad, he chuckles, feeling strangely good, “Is Lowell Thomas still around?” By Tom Tiede NEW YORK - (NEA) - Indeed, Lowell Thomas is. Forty-three years after he began his nightly news saluta tion to the nation — “Good evening, everybody” — the legendary Lowell is still at the mike. From Rhodesia (bee de beep de beep), from Rawal pindi (bee de beep de beep), the impeccable, indefatigable adventurer-journalist seems ever as permanent as his datelines. Not that, really, he is still “America’s foremost news caster.” At 81, and still al most exclusively a radio man, Thomas’ effectiveness has been eclipsed by younger and more televised associates. But no matter. Taken as a total, his career remains perhaps the most remarkable in news history. To be sure. Thomas certain ly is news history. He dates to the dinosaur era of the indus try. He was recording events before Walter Cronkite was a seed. He was covering war before Ernie Pyle was through teething. He preceded Gabriel Heatter (“Ah. there’s good news tonight") and H. V. Kaltenborn. Says a CBS exec utive: “I think we've figured that Lowell has had some 70-billion listeners over the years. There was a time in America, you know, when Lowell not only brought the news, he damn well was the news." Being the news, actually, W ■ r i w I f ,ilah , * / , r 1 u / AJ® If war 7/ ' J f / 11 wfl Kt I I* \ Mg 11 UMf . ,1k jgK IMR JSe Jftt; < I fflSr bs bi THERE WAS A TIME when Lowell Thomas not only brought the news, he was the news. was how Thomas got started. Raised during the gold rush days of Cripple Creek, Colo, (“in an ore house" as he now likes to say), Thomas began reporting the brawling West and ended up reporting the brawling world. President Wilson, no less, asked him to record pictorial ly the events of World War I. It was during that endeavor, one day in Jerusalem, that Thomas befriended a short blonde, desert-loving British soldier named T. E. Law rence. Thomas followed the officer s exploits across the sands of one-time Mesopota mia. His book, movies and speeches on the chap — “Lawrence of Arabia" — made millions of dollars and legions of admirers for news man-newsmaker Thomas. In a sense, then, as Thomas made Lawrence immortal, the colonel did the same for his reporter. As Thomas' balloon rose around the world, radio decided it could profit from his celebrity. In September of 1930. CBS executive William S. Paley invited Thomas into a studio, put him behind a microphone and asked him to start talk ing. “What about?” Thomas asked. “Anything, Paley answered. That audition was the beginning of the longest running network show in me dia history. “Good evening, everybody. Thomas said, even that first night. "A procession of Ger man Fascists was attacked today by Communists in the town of Unterbermsgruen —a hot fight followed in which 29 Fascists were injured, four critically." The voice, reson ant then, as now. a bit mono tone, crisp and believable. The words were the first of more than two billion in four decades of scripts. Thomas remembers that “most of the country was tuned in" to his first broad cast. But he adds it was not for him. "I always say Amos n Andy were the reason be hind my early radio good for tune. They came on at seven, you know, and when they did all America listened. I'd say 95 per cent of the nation's ra dio receivers were tuned in for them. Since my news be gan at 6:45 then, and since people usually tuned their ra dios early. I got Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll's audience. How lucky can you get?" But it was not only luck that won Thomas' following It was style. To this day Thomas delivers his news in the manner of a gentle father. He is. at times, when there is need, solemn — but he is nev er grim. He reads the events of the day. regardless of their severity, as he sees the events from the perspective of 81 years: Everything will turn out okay. Even his broadcast. At the end of his 10 minutes (down from the original 15) he bemusedly reports on a bit of jolly fluff: the woman, as example, who got her panty hose caught in a trolley car. “I'm on the air.” he says, “when people are getting ready for dinner or are having dinner or are just finishing dinner 1 don't want to spoil the digestive system of the American people. " Neither does Thomas want to start arguments while on the air. Thus rarely does he editorialize. When I began broadcasting, my sponsor was the Literary Digest. It was a very good magazine of the day and had a format where they would always give both sides of every subject being written about. They asked that I do the same. They wanted me to play it right down the middle, which was the natural thing for me anyhow.' Thomas has not always been able to follow his middle ground philosophy. On his very first broadcast, in fact, he belittled a rising young German named Adolf Hitler: "He has written a book called the German Fascist Bible. In this the belligerent gentleman states that a cardinal policy of his now powerful German par ty is the conquest of Russia. That's a tall assignment. Adolf. You just ask Napol eon.' In later times, on the air. Thomas has also had some brisk things to say about the Soviet Union. There are some who feel, actually. Thomas' impartiality is a synonym for conserva tism. His critics, especially his younger contemporaries, believe the broadcaster is a “little to the right of Atilla the Hun. The charge is that Thomas, an institution him self. is soft on institutions. Thomas has personally known every U. S. president since Roosevelt (no not Franklin — Teddy! ) and some feel his respect for them and his love for country come through unobjectively clear on the air. Watergate is a for instance. Though an army of newsmen, many conservative, are cur rently indignant over the alle- ' ft M \ Jr it “ x / s ! 4" I v . iteJCx Cwjb v ■ THE MOST-TRAVELED JOURNALIST of all time has dined with pygmies, explored the Antarctic and is still on the go. gations of wrongdoings ih the White House, Thomas does not publicly rap either Nixon, an old friend," or Watergate it self. Says he merely: "Were living in an electronic age. Bugging goes on all the time I'm surprised it doesn t hap pen more than it does. For his part. Thomas does not believe it his duty to pon tificate. Nor does he even dis cuss his politics; he says a friend once referred to him as "an anarchist, and lets it go at that. However, he is known to worry about the preponder ance of left-leaning political thought in the mass media. He once told a television in terviewer the industry is about “95 per cent” liberal. He says this is probably una voidable "since most of us are high strung and sensitive peo ple,” but he laments the im- Cact on the public. "I remem er reading a news item about a 105-year-old woman who was asked how she lived so long. She said she did it by not reading a newspaper, listening to the radio or watching TV." Thomas says he understands her sentiment. Politics aside, though, the case of the 105-year-old gal is interesting in that there aren't many people any age in the United States who haven't lis tened to at least Lowell Thomas on radio. Some say that over the years his voice has been heard more often than any other in history. (His broadcasts, a summary of several eras, are contained in 340 leather-bound volumes in Thomas' office.) To be sure, it has often been difficult to escape the voice. From Canberra (bee de beep de beep), from Sitka, from.the Tibet's Forbidden City of Lhasa. Thomas has reported on everything from everywhere. As perhaps the most-traveled journalist of all time, he has dined with pyg mies in New Guinea, explored the Antarctic with Byrd, flown around the world with Hap Arnold. At last count he had visited every region on the globe except Inner Mongolia. , s . . « r ■ . f t.s Griffin Daily News Outer yes. he says. Inner "no. He was the first to broad cast from a ship, first to broadcast from a plane, first to explore a mine with a mi crophone. All of this was on radio, but he also made some history on TV. Shortly before World War 11. Thomas was employed as the first live TV newscaster, a job he recalls mostlv for its unpredictabil ity: “I remember they used to put some of their make-up on me. but I was always arriving at the studio late so I didn't have much time for that. One night I got to the station very late and all they could do was slap me in the face with a large powder puff. Well, a lot of powder stayed on my upper lip and after I had been on the air a minute or two I made another first — the first sneeze in television history. ' There have been few such faux pas in Thomas career. A careful, calculating man. he has been daring but never flamboyant. And it has paid off handsomely. Estimates of his wealth run as high as $l5O million (considerably more than your average journalist): the walls of his memory are decorated with thousands of accomplishments (52 books, two dozen major exploration expeditions, a dozen honorary college degrees): the grounds of his 3,000 acre estate in Pawling. N.Y., have hosted some of the most celebrated men of the last half-century. Some say he's over the hill. Some say he's 20 years behind modern journalism. But Low ell Thomas, of the ageless pencil mustache, insists he still has miles to go and mountains to climb. "My goal for what remains of my life is to try to convince the young people that the world is not as bad as they think — in fact, this is a Golden Age for them." He means it. he really does. And that's why there are still those who. for one reason or another, feel a little better when Lowell Thomas says to them nightly: "Good evening, everybody. 7
