Burton Holmes: Difference between revisions

| name = Elias = Burton Holmes

| imagebirth_name = Elias Burton-Holmes_ca1905.jpg Holmes

| altimage = Burton Holmes, ca. 1905 = Burton-Holmes_ca1905.jpg

| captionalt = Burton Holmes, ca. 1905

| birth_date = {{Birth date|1870|01|08}}

| birth_place = [[Chicago]], [[Illinois]], U.S.A.

| death_date = {{Death date and age|1958|07|22|1870|01|08}}

| death_place = [[Los Angeles]], [[California]], U.S.A.

| nationality = American

| known_forother_names = travelogues

| occupation = travelTravel lecturer

Elias Burton Holmes was born into a middle-class [[Chicago]] family, the son of a banker. His interest in travel was sparked at the age of nine when his grandmother took him to hear a then-famous travel lecturer, [[John L. Stoddard]] (whom Holmes was to meet on a subsequent trip abroad).<ref name="iw"/>

In 1890, Holmes accompanied his grandmother on a trip to Europe and when he returned showed slides of his trip at the Chicago Camera Club, of which he was a member. Holmes wrote of this event: "To take the edge off the silence, to keep the show moving, I wrote an account of my journey and read it, as the [[stereopticon]] man changed slides."<ref name="iw">Wallace, Irving. "Everybody's Rover Boy". In ''The Sunday Gentleman'', New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965, p. 115.<!-- ISSN/ISBN needed --></ref>

Despite the success of this event, which grossed $350 for the club, it wasn'twas not until several years later that Holmes decided to set himself up as a travel lecturer. In 1893, after sending out 20002,000 invitations to a select group of Chicagoanspeople from Chicago, Holmes gave two sold-out talks about a recent trip to [[Japan]].{{cncitation needed|date=March 2018}}

Initially Holmes had only modest success as a travel lecturer. Then in 1897, [[John Lawson Stoddard|John L. Stoddard]] retired, creating something of a vacuum in the field. Around the same time, Holmes began to supplement his hand-colored glass slides with the then excitingly new technology of moving pictures. As the years went on, film came increasingly to dominate his lectures.<ref>[http://www.burtonholmes.org/travelogues/handpaintedslides.html "Burton Holmes, Extraordinary Traveler" website, "Hand-Painted Colored Slides" page.]</ref>

In the years that followed, Holmes traveled extensively: North and South America, Europe, Russia, India, Ethiopia, and Burma (now Myanmar). He lectured about such topics as the Panama Canal, the "Frivolities of Paris," even the adventures of [[Richard Halliburton]], one of his competitors in the travel lecture profession. He visited the first modern Olympics in 1896, rode the first trans-Siberian train, and shot what may be the first movies ever made of Japan, in 1899, as well as the first recorded video footage of Korea.<ref>[https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=332093]{{dead link|date=May 2024|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}</ref> In the course of his travels, he crossed the Atlantic and Pacific oceans more than 50 times. As Holmes became more well-known, he brought along assistants, such as [[Andre de la Varre]], to shoot film and stills while he made notes for his lectures, and he also employed a business manager. With the rise of Hollywood, Holmes began to make short travel films for Paramount and later Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Holmes's talks—which totaled over 80008,000 by the end of his life—drew their largest audiences in cosmopolitan cities like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. He catered especially to the armchair traveler with escapist fantasies, and for this reason he consciously focused his lectures on the most agreeable and scenic aspects of the places he lectured about. He avoided all discussion of politics, poverty, and other social ills.<ref name="iw2">Wallace, Irving. "Everybody's Rover Boy". In ''The Sunday Gentleman'', New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965, p. 113.</ref>

In 1914, Holmes married Margaret Oliver, whom he had met on one of his expeditions. They lived primarily at an estate called "Topside" in the Hollywood Hills that was a former riding club. Holmes also had a duplex, "Nirvana", in New York that was packed with treasures from Southeast Asia; this he eventually sold to [[Robert Ripley]].<ref>[http://www.burtonholmes.org/life/travelersrest.html "Burton Holmes, Extraordinary Traveler"], burtonholmes.org; accessed March 2, 2018.</ref>

* {{cite book|last1=Holmes|first1=Burton|last2=Taschen|first2=Benedikt|last3=Caldwell|first3=Genoa|title=Burton Holmes Travelogues: The Greatest Traveler of His Time, 1892-1952|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=G8PqHAAACAAJ|year=2006|publisher=[[Taschen]]|isbn=978-3-8228-4815-9}}

* {{cite book|last=Caldwell|first=Genoa|title=The Man who Photographed the World: Burton Holmes, Travelogues|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ywFGmgEACAAJ|year=1977|publisher=H.N. Abrams|isbn=9780810910591}}

* {{cite book|ref=harv|last=Roan|first=Jeanette|title=Envisioning Asia: On Location, Travel, and the Cinematic Geography of U.S. Orientalism|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/21042|chapter="To travel is to possess the world": The Illustrated Travel Lectures of E. Burton Holmes|year=2010|publisher=[[University of Michigan Press]]|location=[[Ann Arbor, Michigan]]|pages=27–68| isbn=978-0-472-05083-43|oclc=671655107|subscriptionurl-access=yessubscription |via=[[Project MUSE]]}}

*{{YouTube|2j_DWCJ1B3g|''Scenes at Seoul in 1901/1912''}}

[[Category:American male non-fiction writers]]

[[Category:AmericanFilmmakers filmmakersfrom Illinois]]