GOOD EVENING EVERYBODY: From Cripple Creek to Samarkand

A showboat autobiography by the 84-year-old network news perennial, which is as hypnotically garrulous and energetic as its subject. They cheered in 1907 when Lowell sat down after a high school elocutionary performance--one of the many turning points for this doctor's son raised in the rough mining town of Cripple Creek. There followed--as he tells it--a dazzle of four academic degrees, a period of teaching law and speech, and a stint of newspaper reporting in Chicago where bad boy Gene Fowler remembered his ""fruity voice."" But Thomas' big break came after a public lecture series on Alaska led to an assignment in Europe during WW I. His reports on Allenby's capture of Jerusalem, Lawrence of Arabia, and the German upheaval--with films by cameraman Harry Chase--provided material for his record-breaking ""concert tour"" in the US, Europe, and Australia: ""Come with me to lands of history, mystery, and romance. . . ."" Between that first glissande and his radio debut in 1930, he journeyed to India, forbidden Afghanistan, the Spanish Main, you name it. Thomas races through reminiscences about FDR, interviews with just about everyone, more ""fluffs and scoops,"" and the birth of the network news service. Continuous PathÉ entertainment for those who remember when or those who are just tuning in on public TV. So long until the next.