This is an amazing story of a by-gone era of entertainment.
Before the Internet, cable television, and video, people packed auditoriums to see travelogue films hoping to learn about places they wanted to visit and relive memories of past trips abroad. At its peak, there were thousands of live-lecture travelogue film series in the United States and Doug Jones was one of the stars. He gave over six thousand travelogue lectures and he got to his shows by flying a twin-engine Cessna, logging over three thousand hours in the air and sixty coast-to-coast flights.
Growing up in Kansas City, he traveled the world on his father’s flight privileges as a Trans World Airlines engine inspector. College trips took him to Bangkok, Bombay, London, Cairo, Honolulu, Paris, Hong Kong; all the destinations TWA flew. He put himself through university playing banjo in Kansas City jazz clubs.
He shot film in sixty-eight countries, sailed around the world on the Queen Elizabeth 2, and traveled on every form of transportation. His film The Great Canadian Train Ride drew sell-out crowds in auditoriums and theaters and sold over 1, 000, 000 copies on home video and DVD.
This very personal memoir is filled with fascinating stories of filming around the world and includes an array of observations about everything from travel to aviation to show business.
Grab your passport, sit back, relax, and come along with Doug Jones as he travels the world, camera in hand, filming travelogues.
“The quality of the Doug Jones travelogues is first-rate.” The Los Angeles Times
Tabella dei contenuti
Introduction
Prologue
Chapter 1 A Boy From Kansas City
Chapter 2 New York and the World’s Fair
Chapter 3 The Travelogue Business
Chapter 4 Trans World Airlines to London
Chapter 5 24 Hours to Bombay
Chapter 6 The Clock Was Ticking
Chapter 7 College Days
Chapter 8 My First Camera, a Super 8
Chapter 9 Filming Belgium
Chapter 10 My Big Break in Travelogues
Chapter 11 Paris and The Parisians
Chapter 12 New York, Hawaii, and Venice
Chapter 13 Royal London
Chapter 14 Off to Egypt
Chapter 15 Filming the National Parks
Chapter 16 San Francisco
Chapter 17 The World Cruise of the QE2
Chapter 18 Sailing Down Under on the QE2
Chapter 19 Filming Great Cities of Europe
Chapter 20 North to Alaska
Chapter 21 Learning to Fly
Chapter 22 The Canadian Train Ride
Chapter 23 New Technology
Chapter 24 Bermuda & American Trains
Chapter 25 Flying the Cessna 310
Chapter 26 Shooting Stock Footage
Chapter 27 Mother Russia
Chapter 28 Sailing Down to Rio
Chapter 29 One Last Film
Postscript
Travelogue Makers of Another Time
Doug Jones Travelogue Filmography
Acknowledgements
Circa l’autore
Doug Jones has been producing travel films since 1968. He was born and raised in Kansas City and graduated from the University of Missouri-Kansas City with a degree in Radio and Television Broadcasting. Today he lives in Los Angeles and New York City. His personal travels have taken him around the world and into sixty-eight countries on six continents.
He has produced twenty-two feature-length travel films and has appeared on every important auditorium travelogue-lecture series in the United States and Canada including the National Geographic Society series at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.
Doug Jones’ films have been released on home video and DVD and include ‘The Great Canadian Train Ride’ with over one million copies sold worldwide. He operates an active stock footage business and his material is regularly seen in prime time television shows and national commercials.
In addition to his work in producing travel films, he is an avid pilot having made over sixty coast-to-coast flights in his twin Cessna airplane to show his travelogues in every state of the nation.
He is past president of the International Travel Film Guild and the International Motion Picture and Lecturers Association. He is listed in Who’s Who in Entertainment and he was given the ‘Film Lecturer of the Year’ award by the International Platform Association for his outstanding work in the field of travelogue production.