Travelogue: Forty Years Filming the World

This is the story of a by-gone era of entertainment. Before 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, all of which he narrated live from the stage. He got to his shows by flying his own 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, and he put himself through university playing banjo in Kansas City jazz clubs.

Over four decades 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.

He lived his life openly as a gay man and was a part of the LGBT rights movement from Stonewall, through the AIDS crisis, to his own marriage in 2008. His story includes the many ups and downs of his personal relationships as he pursued a very public professional career.

This new memoir, with over a hundred photographs, covers a remarkable life story and includes an array of observations about everything from world travel to Broadway, aviation to show business, and the many different relationships and colorful people he has known.

It is told with honesty and humor: a life well lived.

“The quality of the Doug Jones Travelogues is first rate.” The Los Angeles Times

BONUS FEATURE: the eBook edition of Travelogue: Forty Years Filming the World contains thirty-one video clips from the Doug Jones Travelogues.