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PHILADELPHIA, PA (October 4, 2007)—His star on the sidewalk of Hollywood Boulevard honors a 60-year reign as America’s most famous travel showman. Burton Holmes (1870 - 1958) began his career during the Belle Époque, a time before radio or air travel, at the brink of a revolution in photography and the beginnings of cinema. The Geographical Society of Philadelphia proudly introduces a new generation to the man who coined the word “travelogue” on Wednesday, October 10th, 6:30 p.m. at the Academy of Natural Sciences. Through an illustrated talk using digital images of vintage hand-painted glass slides from Holmes’s early travels, Genoa Caldwell, long time archivist of the Burton Holmes photo collection in Seattle and editor of Burton Holmes: Travelogues (Taschen, 2006) opens a window on the world of travel and society in the early 1900’s. The book, available for purchase and signing after the presentation, represents the best of the Holmes archive and is brimming with brilliant color photographs not seen in decades.
"We sometimes joke, Holmes turned dear old aunt and uncle’s dreaded globetrotting-slide-show-gathering into a magnificently orchestrated performance and art form, not to mention a lucrative business," explained Ted Burkett, President of the Society. “Holmes had visited Los Angeles for years and had many Hollywood friends. In 1930 he bought a second home there. Regular guests included Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, Jean Harlow, and Pola Negri. He spent weekends at Hearst's San Simeon ranch. Although quite well connected, he possessed a sense of humor about it all. He once teased, ‘You know, one of these days someone will say, strike the set, and this whole town will fall down.’”
During the summers, Holmes roamed the world with his cameras — from the grand boulevards of Paris to China’s Great Wall, Panama, Italy, London, Moscow, Fez, Tokyo, Jerusalem — shooting 30,000 photographs and nearly 500,000 feet of film. Disguised as a diplomat, he attended the coronation of Haile Selassie in Ethiopia. In winter, he crisscrossed the United States presenting his stylish travelogues. Regular stops included Carnegie Hall in New York, Symphony Hall in Boston, and Orchestra Hall in Chicago. As early as 1902, Philadelphia’s Academy of Music was on the circuit, and in 1912-1913, the popularity of the Panama Travelogue had management arranging for repetition after repetition in all the scheduled cities. “It was in Philadelphia that we broke an all-time record…while the great ditch was being dug and all Americans were eager to know more about it…The old Academy of Music seats thirty-one hundred persons. We gave The Panama Canal twelve times to overflowing houses, not a vacant seat…and all permissible standing room sold out twelve times in the same season."
The consummate storyteller, Holmes wove entertaining anecdotes into his lectures and wrote colorful prose, now illuminating Taschen’s book. After an 1892 trip to Japan, he adopted the kimono as at-home wear. He admitted, “I found on returning home from that early trip to Japan, that it was not only pleasant but economical to wear Japanese dress when at work indoors. One morning, manuscript in hand, memorizing a lecture, pacing up and down my studio where many golden Buddhas gazed down on me, my wife suddenly interrupted my dramatic rehearsal by introducing an Irish maid who had applied for a position. She never came back to take the job. We later learned that she had expressed herself to the agency in no uncertain terms: 'Niver on earth would I wurruk in such a flat with haythen idols all over the place and a man wandering around in a kimony.'”
In the 1940’s Holmes jousted with Philadelphia’s rigid board of censors. In On The Road With Travelogues, author Thayer Soule reveals, “BH objected to the principle ‘of some old maids who never had an adventure in their life sitting behind a big desk and telling me what is right and what isn't, and telling my audience what they can see, or can't see. In a film on Sweden the board brought down BH's wrath in all its wit and fury. Up to the age of four or five, Swedish children wear nothing at the beach. In one scene, a little girl… walked away from the camera…at the end of the scene, turned around for a fraction of a second. The censors insisted the scene be cut. When I told Holmes, he jumped from his chair. ‘What?’ he shouted. ‘Why?’ Well, BH, they said it was sex. BH turned purple. He shook his cane and bellowed, ‘You go back and tell them that won't be sex for ten years.’”
Although Holmes "retired" from the stage in 1949, he continued to present shows until health problems forced him to stop at 81. By this point he had delivered more than 8000 lectures.
Author and editor Genoa Caldwell has been a photo researcher for the London Sunday Times and editor with prominent New York City photo agencies, including Black Star and Magnum. While operating her own photo agency in Los Angeles in the 1970s, Caldwell was introduced to the work of Burton Holmes and became private archivist for the extensive and unique photographic collection. For 30 years she has maintained this unique anthology while lecturing and publishing about the life and work of Burton Holmes.
Tickets are $15 for the public, $12 for Society members and available by mail, telephone, or online at www.geographicalsociety.org. Tickets are also sold at the door 45 minutes prior to the lecture. For more information, please call 610-649-5220.
The Academy is located at 19th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Meter parking is free after 5:00 p.m. except on posted rush hour streets, which are free after 6:30 p.m.
• Wheelchair accessible
• Assisted listening devices available
Founded in 1891, The Geographical Society of Philadelphia focuses on exploration, travel, adventure, and the environment. Each season, the Society presents distinguished Connoisseur Program speakers and a series of seven Travelogue Film programs (full-length films narrated in person by international producers) at the Academy of Natural Sciences Auditorium for members and the public. An Annual Dinner, Explorers’ Dinner, and special Magellan Circle member events are offered. Grants for polar exploration and research continue a long tradition. For further background and history on the Society, visit www.geographicalsociety.org
Posted October 5th, 2007 by wednights
