Doug Jones has been producing travel films since 1968. He was born and raised in Kansas City and graduated from the University of Missouri - Kansas City with a degree in Radio and Television Broadcasting. Today he lives in Los Angeles and New York City.
Before cable television, and video, people packed auditoriums to see travelogues hoping to learn about places they wanted to visit and relive memories of past trips abroad. At its peak, there were over five thousand live-lecture travelogue series in the United States, and Doug Jones was one of the stars in the field. He gave over six thousand travelogue lectures, all of which he narrated live from the stage. He made sixty coast-to-coast flights in his own twin-engine Cessna, logging over three thousand hours in the air.
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. He put himself through university playing banjo in Kansas City jazz clubs.
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. He operates an active stock footage business and his material is regularly seen in prime time television shows and national commercials.
He lived his life openly and observed the gay rights movement from Stonewall, through the AIDS crisis, to his own marriage in 2008.
Doug Jones is past president of the International Travel Film Guild and the International Motion Picture and Lecturers Association. He is listed in Who's Who in Entertainment and he was given the "Film lecturer of the Year" award by the International Platform Association for his outstanding work in the field of travelogue production.
His story covers an array of observations about everything from travel to Broadway, aviation to relationships, and the colorful people he has known.