It is no surprise, then, that Thomas’s presentation was critically acclaimed, as the amount of photography and pictures that Thomas managed to acquire was all but unprecedented for its time, and served as a perfect way to further establish his authority over the Orient. Overall, the presentation had 240 lantern slides, 30 film segments, and aerial photographs of locations that people had never been able to see before (Hodson, "Lowell Thomas" 51). The presentation was just over two hours long, but Thomas’s script was over 60 pages in length (Hodson, Lawrence of Arabia 32). The amount of information and the length of his presentation served, in a sense, to make his statements seem more and more true—and it grabbed the attention of the audience, to the point where many people began to see the presentation more than once (Hodson, "Lowell Thomas" 51). …show more content…
Joel Hodson’s research is thorough at disproving this claim, demonstrating that this occurrence would be all but impossible given Thomas’s itinerary and what Thomas wrote about—especially how he neglected to mention this occurrence in any of his travel journals (Lawrence of Arabia 24-25). Lawrence himself, in fact, protested often to both his own personal friends and Thomas’s publishers about these “red hot lies” that Thomas was printing about him (300-302). Essentially, these stories that Thomas created can safely be discredited. Essentially, Thomas created a very interesting, romantic, exciting figure out of Lawrence—as if he were straight out of an action movie. With the fantastic tales and exotic titles Thomas bestowed on Lawrence, amplified by Thomas’s public speaking ability and use of special effects, he created what he called “The Matinée Idol of Arabia” out of Lawrence, and transformed him into a cultural figure (Thomas, “The Matinée Idol of Arabia”). This figure was all too easily brought—along with its Orientalist context—into