Robert LeRoy Ripley (December 25, 1890 - May 27, 1949) was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
cartoonistA cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. Traditionally much of this work was, and still is, humorous, and is intended primarily for entertainment purposes...
,
entrepreneurAn entrepreneur is a person who has possession of an enterprise, or venture, and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome. It is an ambitious leader who combines land, labor, and capital to often create and market new goods or services. ... The term is a loanword...
and amateur anthropologist, who created the world famous
Ripley's Believe It or Not!Ripley's Believe It or Not! is a franchise, founded by Robert LeRoy Ripley, which deals in bizarre events and items so strange and unusual that readers might question the claims...
newspaper panel series, radio show, and television show which feature odd 'facts' from around the world.
Subjects covered in Ripley's cartoons and text ranged from sports feats to little known facts about unusual and exotic sites, but what ensured the concept's popularity may have been that Ripley also included items submitted by readers, who supplied photographs of a wide variety of small town American trivia, ranging from unusually shaped vegetables to oddly marked domestic animals, all documented by photographs and then depicted by Ripley's drawings.
Biography
Robert Ripley was born in
Santa RosaSanta Rosa is the county seat of Sonoma County, California, United States. As of January 1, 2008, the population of Santa Rosa was approximately 161,496 residents...
,
CaliforniaCalifornia is the most populous state in the United States, and the third largest by area. California is the second most populous sub-national entity in the Americas, behind only São Paulo, Brazil...
on December 26, 1890. It has also been rumored that he changed his own birthday from December 26 to Christmas Day in order to accentuate his eccentricity. While trying to make a career of his original passion,
baseballBaseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The goal is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot square, or diamond...
, he found steady work as a cartoonist at the
San Francisco BulletinThe San Francisco Call was a newspaper that served San Francisco, California. Because of a succession of mergers with other newspapers, the paper variously came to be called The San Francisco Call & Post, the San Francisco Call-Bulletin, San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, and the News-Call Bulletin...
and later at the
San Francisco Chroniclethumb|right|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireSan Francisco Chronicle is Northern California's largest newspaper, and one of the largest in the United States, serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area, but distributed throughout...
. He moved to
New YorkNew York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
in 1912, where he published his first comic for the
The New York Globe-First New York Globe:The first, an African-American newspaper, was published weekly from at least 1880 to November 8, 1884. Co-founded by editor Timothy Thomas Fortune, a former slave, it became The [New York] Freeman from November 22, 1884 to October 8, 1887, published six times weekly...
and simultaneously tried out for the
New York GiantsThe New York Giants are a professional American football team based in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The team plays its home games at Giants Stadium, which also serves as its headquarters, and trains at an adjacent practice facility within the Meadowlands Sports Complex...
baseball club.
After an injury put an end to his athletic hopes in 1913, Ripley turned to a full-time career as a professional cartoonist and writer. He later expanded his work into other media as well. His background in sports contributed to his interest in featuring sports contest records in his graphical work. In 1918, he developed a series of articles for the
New York Globe called
Champs and Chumps and produced feature material about the 1920 Summer
OlympicsThe 1920 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the VII Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was celebrated in 1920 in Antwerp, Belgium....
in
Antwerp||-||-||-||}Antwerp is a city and municipality in Belgium and the capital of the Antwerp province in Flanders, one of Belgium's three regions. Antwerp's total population is 472,071 and its total area is , giving a population density of 2,308 inhabitants per km²...
,
BelgiumThe Kingdom of Belgium is a country in northwest Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts its headquarters, as well as those of other major international organizations, including NATO...
. The title
Champs and Chumps did not fit well with the limited focus on sports oddities and was soon replaced by the more general title,
Believe it or Not!. With this change of name and focus, Ripley's career began to take off.
In 1919 Ripley married
Beatrice RobertsAlice Beatrice Roberts was an American film actress. She was briefly married to the cartoonist and showman Robert L. Ripley and a mistress of Louis B. Mayer....
. He made his first trip around the world in 1922, delineating a travel journal in installments. This ushered in a new topic for his cartoons: unusual and exotic foreign locales and cultures. Because he took the veracity of his work quite seriously, in 1923, Ripley hired a researcher and
linguistLinguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning...
named
Norbert PearlrothNorbert Pearlroth was the primary researcher for the Believe It or Not! cartoon panel from 1923 until 1975....
as a full-time assistant. That same year his feature moved from the
New York Globe to the
New York PostThe New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
.
Throughout the 1920s, Ripley continued to broaden the scope of his work and his popularity increased greatly. He published both a travel journal and a guide to the game of handball in 1925 and, in 1926, became the New York state handball champion and wrote a book on boxing. With a proven track record as a versatile writer and artist, he attracted the attention of publishing mogul
William Randolph HearstWilliam Randolph Hearst was an American newspaper magnate and leading newspaper publisher.Hearst was born in San Francisco, California, to millionaire mining engineer George Hearst and Phoebe Apperson. Following preparation at St...
, who managed the
King Features SyndicateKing Features Syndicate, a print syndication company owned by The Hearst Corporation, distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editorial cartoons, puzzles and games to nearly 5000 newspapers around the world...
. In 1929, Hearst was responsible for
Believe It or Not! making its syndicated debut in seventeen papers worldwide. With the success of this series assured, Ripley capitalized on his fame by getting the first book collection of his newspaper panel series published.
On November 3 1929, he drew a panel in his syndicated cartoon saying "Believe It or Not, America has no national anthem." In 1931,
John Philip SousaJohn Philip Sousa was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era, known particularly for American military and patriotic marches...
published his opinion in favor, stating that "it is the spirit of the music that inspires" as much as it is Key’s "soul-stirring" words. By a law signed on March 3 1931 by President
Herbert HooverHerbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted government intervention under the rubric "economic...
, "The Star-Spangled Banner" was adopted as the national anthem of the United States.
The 1930s saw Ripley expand his presence into other media. In 1930, he began an eighteen-year run on radio and a nineteen-year association with the show's producer, Doug Storer. Funding for his celebrated travels around the world were provided by the Hearst organization, and Ripley recorded live radio shows from underwater, the sky, caves, snake pits and foreign countries. The next year he hosted the first of a series of two dozen
Believe It or Not! theatrical short films for Warner Brothers
VitaphoneVitaphone was a sound film process used on features and nearly 2,000 short subjects produced by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1930. This was not the original process. The first process was called Fuchessound. Vitaphone was the last, but most successful, of the...
, and King Features published a second collected volume of
Believe it or Not! panels. He also appeared in a Vitaphone musical short,
Seasons Greetings (1931), with
Ruth EttingRuth Etting was an American singing star and actress of the 1920s and 1930s, who had over sixty hit recordings and worked in stage, radio, and film...
,
Joe PennerJoe Penner , was a Hungarian-born American 1930s-era vaudeville, radio and film comedian. He was born Pintér József in Nagybecskerek, Hungary . He passed through Ellis Island as a child when his family emigrated to New York City...
,
Ted HusingEdward Britt Husing was an American sportscaster and was among the first to lay the groundwork for the structure and pace of modern sports reporting on television and radio.-Early life and career:...
,
Thelma WhiteThelma White was an American radio and film actress. White is best known from her role in the 1936 exploitation film Reefer Madness.-Early life and career:...
,
Ray CollinsRay Bidwell Collins was an American actor in film, stage, radio, and television. One of Collins' best remembered roles was that of Lt. Arthur Tragg in the long-running series Perry Mason.-Biography:...
, and others. After a trip to
AsiaAsia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.6% of the earth's total surface area and with approximately 4 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population.Asia is traditionally defined as part of the...
in 1932, Ripley opened his first museum, the Odditorium, in Chicago. The concept was a success, and by the end of the decade, there were Odditoriums in
San DiegoSan Diego , named after Saint Didacus , is the second-largest city in California and the ninth largest city in the United States, located along the Pacific Ocean on the west coast of the United States. The US Census Bureau estimates the city's population at 1,279,329 as of 2008...
,
DallasDallas , with a population of 1,279,910, is the third-largest city in Texas and the 8th-largest in the United States. The city is the main economic center of the 12-county Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metropolitan area that according to the March 2009 U.S. Census Bureau release, had a population of...
,
ClevelandCleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The municipality is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately 60 miles west of the Pennsylvania border...
,
San FranciscoSan Francisco is the fourth most populous city in California and the 12th most populous city in the United States, with a 2008 estimated population of 808,976. It is the eighth most densely populated city in the U.S. and is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the larger San...
, and
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
. By this point in his life, Ripley had been voted the most popular man in America by the
New York Times, received an honorary degree from
Dartmouth CollegeDartmouth College is a private, coeducational university located in Hanover, New Hampshire, USA. Incorporated as "Trustees of Dartmouth College," it is a member of the Ivy League and one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution...
, and visited 201 foreign countries.
During
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Ripley concentrated on charity efforts rather than world travel, but after the war, he again expanded his media efforts. In 1948, the year of the 20th anniversary of the
Believe it or Not! cartoon series, the
Believe it or Not! radio show drew to a close and was replaced with a
Believe it or Not! television series. This was a rather bold move on Ripley's part because of the small number of Americans with access to television at this early time in the medium's development. Ripley only completed thirteen episodes of the series when he became incapacitated by severe health problems. He reportedly passed out during the filming of his final show. His health worsened, and on May 27, 1949, at age 58, he succumbed to a
heart attackMyocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, is the interruption of blood supply to part of the heart, causing some heart cells to die...
. He was buried in his home town of
Santa RosaSanta Rosa is the county seat of Sonoma County, California, United States. As of January 1, 2008, the population of Santa Rosa was approximately 161,496 residents...
, in the Oddfellows Lawn Cemetery, which is adjacent to the Santa Rosa Rural Cemetery.
Ripley is often regarded as an extraordinary individual. His cartoon series was estimated to have 80 million readers worldwide and it was said that he received more mail than the President of the United States. He became a wealthy man, with homes in New York and Florida, but he always retained close ties to his home town of Santa Rosa, California, and he made a point of bringing attention to The Church of the One Tree, a church built entirely from the wood of a single 300 ft (91.4 m) tall
redwoodSequoia sempervirens is the sole living species of the genus Sequoia in the cypress family Cupressaceae . Common names include Coast Redwood and California Redwood...
tree, which stands on the north side of Juilliard Park in downtown Santa Rosa.
Some have called Ripley a liar and accused him of exaggerating the facts, but throughout the years, he always gave appropriate sources. He claimed to be able to "prove every statement he made.", and the major reason he could make such a claim was that behind him stood the work of the indefatigable professional fact researcher,
Norbert PearlrothNorbert Pearlroth was the primary researcher for the Believe It or Not! cartoon panel from 1923 until 1975....
, who assembled
Believe it or Not!s vast array of odd historical, geographical, and scientific facts and also verified the small-town claims submitted by readers. Pearlroth, who spoke 11 languages, spent 52 years as the feature's researcher, working in the New York Public Library ten hours a day, six days a week, finding and verifying unusual facts for Ripley and, after Ripley's death, for the King Features syndicate editors who took over management of the Believe it or Not!' panel.
Other employees who researched the newspaper cartoon series over the years were Lester Byck and Don Wimmer. Others who drew the series after Ripley's death include Joe Campbell (1946‚1956), Art Slogg at, Clem Gretter (1941‚1949), Carl Dorese, Bob Clarke (1943‚1944), Stan Randall,
Paul FrehmPaul Frehm is a cartoonist who worked on the comic strip Ripley's Believe It or Not. He received the National Cartoonist Society Newspaper Panel Cartoon Award for his work on the strip in 1976....
(1938‚1978) - who became the panel's full time artist in 1949) and his brother Walter Frehm (1948&x20 1A;1989).
Ripley's ideas and legacy live on in Ripley Entertainment, a company bearing his name, which, since 1985 has been owned by the
Jim Pattison GroupThe Jim Pattison Group is Canada’s third largest privately held company and, in a recent survey by the Financial Post, The Jim Pattison Group was ranked as Canada’s 62nd largest company. Jim Pattison, a Vancouver-based entrepreneur is the Chairman, President, CEO, and sole owner of the Jim Pattison...
, Canada's 3rd largest privately held company. Ripley Entertainment airs national television shows, features publications of oddities, and has holdings in a variety of public attractions, including Ripley's Aquarium, Ripley's Believe it or Not! Museums, Ripley's Haunted Adventure, Ripley's Mini-Golf and Arcade, Ripley's Movie Theater, Ripley's Sightseeing Trains, Great Wolf Lodge overlooking
Niagara FallsThe Niagara Falls are voluminous waterfalls on the Niagara River, straddling the international border between the Canadian province of Ontario and the U.S. state of New York...
, Guinness World Records Attractions, and Louis Tussaud's Wax Museums.
Trivia
- Ripley's last TV segment was on the song "Taps", traditionally played at military funerals. Shortly afterwards, he died during a physical in a doctors office due to a heart attack.
- He once attempted to join The Society in Dedham for Apprehending Horse Thieves
The Society in Dedham for Apprehending Horse Thieves is "the oldest continually existing horse thief apprehending organization in the United States, and one of Dedham’s most venerable social organizations." The club claims that since its founding there have been more than 10,000 members including...
but was rejected because he did not live in the DedhamDedham /ˈdɛdəm/ is a town in and the county seat of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 23,464 at the 2000 census. It is located on Boston's southwest border...
, MassachusettsThe Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. Most of its population of...
area.
- In the 1930s he was introduced to competitive sport of white water river rafting, which he did a segment on for his radio show. The river rafter who took Ripley on his rafting trip was Barry Goldwater
Barry Morris Goldwater was a five-term United States Senator from Arizona and the Republican Party's nominee for President in the 1964 election. He was also a Major General in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. He was known as "Mr...
.
- A little boy wrote a letter to him, with a drawing of his dog. He explained the amazing facts that the pointer ate shards of glass and other sharp objects, with no apparent harm to him. Ripley published the drawing and the story. The boy was a very young Charles Schulz, decades later the creator of the comic strip Peanuts
Peanuts is a syndicated daily and Sunday comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz, which ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000 , continuing in reruns afterward...
, and the beagle was the inspiration of the dog SnoopySnoopy is a fictional character in the long-running comic strip Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz. He is Charlie Brown's pet beagle. Snoopy began his life in the strip as a fairly ordinary dog, but eventually evolved into perhaps the strip's most dynamic character — and among the most recognizable...
. This appearance in Ripley's book was the very first time Schulz's art work was published in comic pages worldwide.
- Ripley had one of the largest automobile collections in the world, yet he never knew how to drive. He also owned a large collection of beer steins, but preferred to drink gin.
Chronology
- 1890 Born in Santa Rosa, California
- 1901 Receives his formal education
- 1906 Becomes a semi-pro in baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The goal is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot square, or diamond...
and sells first artwork
- 1908 Quits baseball briefly to support mother and sells first cartoon to Life
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
- 1909 Moves from the San Francisco Bulletin
The San Francisco Call was a newspaper that served San Francisco, California. Because of a succession of mergers with other newspapers, the paper variously came to be called The San Francisco Call & Post, the San Francisco Call-Bulletin, San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, and the News-Call Bulletin...
to the San Francisco Chroniclethumb|right|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireSan Francisco Chronicle is Northern California's largest newspaper, and one of the largest in the United States, serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area, but distributed throughout...
- 1912 Creates his last drawing for the San Francisco Chronicle and moves to New York
New York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
that winter
- 1913 On January 2, writes his first comic for the New York Globe and tries out for the New York Giants
The San Francisco Giants are a Major League Baseball team based in San Francisco, California who currently play in the National League West Division. One of the oldest baseball teams, the Giants hold the honor of having won the most games of any team in the history of baseball...
, but an injury ends his baseball hopes
- 1914 Takes his first trip to Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
- 1918 On December 19, publishes Champs and Chumps in the New York Globe
- 1919 Marries Beatrice Roberts
- 1920 Takes his first solo trip to Europe to cover the Olympics
The 1920 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the VII Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was celebrated in 1920 in Antwerp, Belgium....
, held in Antwerp||-||-||-||}Antwerp is a city and municipality in Belgium and the capital of the Antwerp province in Flanders, one of Belgium's three regions. Antwerp's total population is 472,071 and its total area is , giving a population density of 2,308 inhabitants per km²...
, BelgiumThe Kingdom of Belgium is a country in northwest Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts its headquarters, as well as those of other major international organizations, including NATO...
- 1922 On December 3, takes first trip around the world; writes in installments in his travel journal
- 1923 On April 7, returns to the U.S. and hires researcher and linguist
Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning...
Norbert PearlrothNorbert Pearlroth was the primary researcher for the Believe It or Not! cartoon panel from 1923 until 1975....
; the Globe ceases publication and the series moves to the New York Evening News
- 1925 Writes travel journal, handball guide
- 1926 Becomes New York handball champion and writes book on boxing score
- 1929 On July 9, William Randolph Hearst's
William Randolph Hearst was an American newspaper magnate and leading newspaper publisher.Hearst was born in San Francisco, California, to millionaire mining engineer George Hearst and Phoebe Apperson. Following preparation at St...
King Features SyndicateKing Features Syndicate, a print syndication company owned by The Hearst Corporation, distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editorial cartoons, puzzles and games to nearly 5000 newspapers around the world...
features Believe It or Not! in seventeen papers worldwide
- 1930 Begins an eighteen-year run on radio and a nineteen-year association with show producer Doug Storer; Hearst funds Ripley's travels around the world, where Ripley records live radio shows from underwater, the sky, caves, snake pits and foreign countries
- 1931 Releases movie shorts for Vitaphone
Vitaphone was a sound film process used on features and nearly 2,000 short subjects produced by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1930. This was not the original process. The first process was called Fuchessound. Vitaphone was the last, but most successful, of the...
, second book of Believe it or Not!
- 1932 Takes trip to the Far East
The Far East is a term used in English mostly equivalent to East Asia and Southeast Asia, sometimes to the inclusion of South Asia for economic and cultural reasons."Far East" came into use in European geopolitical discourse in...
- 1933 First Odditorium opens in Chicago
- 1934 Does the first radio show broadcast simultaneously around the world and purchases 28-room home in Mamaroneck, New York
Mamaroneck, New York may refer to two places in the United States:*Mamaroneck , New York, a town in Westchester County*Mamaroneck , New York, a village partially within the town...
- 1935 Odditorium opens in San Diego
San Diego , named after Saint Didacus , is the second-largest city in California and the ninth largest city in the United States, located along the Pacific Ocean on the west coast of the United States. The US Census Bureau estimates the city's population at 1,279,329 as of 2008...
- 1936 Odditorium opens in Dallas
Dallas , with a population of 1,279,910, is the third-largest city in Texas and the 8th-largest in the United States. The city is the main economic center of the 12-county Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metropolitan area that according to the March 2009 U.S. Census Bureau release, had a population of...
; Ripley voted most popular man in America
- 1937 Odditorium opens in Cleveland; Peanuts
Peanuts is a syndicated daily and Sunday comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz, which ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000 , continuing in reruns afterward...
creator Charles Schulz's first published drawing appears in Believe it or Not!
- 1939 Odditoriums open in San Francisco
San Francisco is the fourth most populous city in California and the 12th most populous city in the United States, with a 2008 estimated population of 808,976. It is the eighth most densely populated city in the U.S. and is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the larger San...
and New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
; Ripley receives honorary degree from Dartmouth CollegeDartmouth College is a private, coeducational university located in Hanover, New Hampshire, USA. Incorporated as "Trustees of Dartmouth College," it is a member of the Ivy League and one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution...
- 1940 Purchases a 13-room Manhattan
Manhattan is one of the five boroughs of New York City, located primarily on Manhattan Island at the mouth of the Hudson River.New York County, which has the same boundaries as the Borough of Manhattan , is the most densely populated county in the United States, with a 2008 population of 1,634,795...
apartment; receives two more honorary degrees; number of foreign countries visited through funding by Hearst reaches 201
- 1945 Stops foreign travel to do World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
charity work
- 1946 Purchases a Chinese junk, the Mon Lei (万里)
- 1947 Purchases third home, at Hi Mount, Florida
- 1948 Radio program ends; the 30th anniversary of Believe it or Not! is celebrated at a New York costume party
- 1949 Ripley dies on May 27, shortly after thirteenth telecast of first television show and is buried in Santa Rosa; auction of his estate is held; estate is purchased by John Arthur.
External links