NitrateVille.com

Posted: **Tue Jan 11, 2011 11:57 am**

Lowell Thomas was the man who made Lawrence of Arabia a media superstar with his two hour plus programme "With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia" (1919/20). It seems to have consisted of film footage, photographs, music, a lecture. According to Lawrence biographer Michael Korda over 10 Million people saw it in the Twenties.

Wikipedia says:

Thomas shot dramatic footage of Lawrence and, after the war, toured the world, narrating his film, With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia, making Lawrence—and himself—household names. The performances were highly dramatic. At the opening of Thomas's six-month London run, there were incense braziers, exotically dressed women danced before images of the Pyramids, and the band of the Welsh Guards played to provide the accompaniment. Lawrence saw the show several times, and though he later claimed to dislike it, it generated valuable publicity for his own book. However, to strengthen the emphasis on Lawrence in the show, Thomas needed more photographs of him than Chase had taken in 1918. Lawrence therefore agreed to a series of posed portraits in Arab dress in London, though he claimed to be shy of publicity. Thomas later said of Lawrence, "He had a genius for backing into the limelight."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_Thomas

Actually I still find it hard to imagine how it looked like and how it was presented. As for the film footage, how much of it survives? I only found this short clip on Youtube, which claims to show "all known footage":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1L-qEixhXE

A bit more here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78y7jYZ1lnE

But this could hardly have filled an entire two hour "show biz sensation", which according to Korda must have been spectacular. Is this really all there is? Has there been more and got lost?

So, does anyone here know more and can help me? Thanks in advance!

Posted: **Tue Jan 11, 2011 12:02 pm**

This site list the film's length at just 1 minute:

http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/34

Posted: **Tue Jan 11, 2011 12:05 pm**

Here is an announcement of a recreation of the Lowell show which took place last year:

http://www.britishsilents.co.uk/silent/ ... rabia.html

Is there anyone among our British members who has seen it?

Posted: **Tue Jan 11, 2011 12:24 pm**

In the early 1970s I produced a television documentary called "The Moving Picture Boys in the Great War" (it's on an Image DVD with several other silent films of World War I) which was narrated by Lowell Thomas. He offered his Lawrence/Allenby footage for the documentary but when we went to his garage to get it, it had turned to brown powder. However, after the documentary had been completed, I learned that a complete 35mm copy was preserved by the Imperial War Museum in London where it may presumably be found today. Kodak also sold a 16mm Cinegraph of excerpts as a home movie in the 1920s; although I have never seen one, most of these were 200', running about 8 minutes at 16 fps.

David Shepard

Posted: **Tue Jan 11, 2011 1:22 pm**

Einar the Lonely wrote:Here is an announcement of a recreation of the Lowell show which took place last year:

http://www.britishsilents.co.uk/silent/ ... rabia.html

Is there anyone among our British members who has seen it?

Mr. Urbanora was one of the presenters. It looked wonderful, I have hopes the presentation might make it to our shores.

Posted: **Tue Jan 11, 2011 2:17 pm**

I have written about Lawrence and film, including Lowell Thomas, here:

http://bioscopic.wordpress.com/2010/04/ ... -lawrence/

and on the experience of putting on the show here:

http://bioscopic.wordpress.com/2010/04/ ... w-goes-on/

while Lawrence's biographer Jeremy Wilson writes about the challenges involved in recreating the show and the background history here:

http://blog.castlehillpress.com/chpblog ... ogue-2010/

There aren't any plans by Neil Brand and myself to repeat the show. It was an interesting exercise, but ultimately the original Thomas script no longer stands up as entertainment or information source (it is very misleading) in its own right, which it would have to do if the recreation of "With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia" were to work properly.

Posted: **Tue Jan 11, 2011 2:26 pm**

Many thanks, this is exactly what I was looking for! Great!

NitrateVille.com

T.E. Lawrence footage by Lowell Thomas

T.E. Lawrence footage by Lowell Thomas