Robert L. Ripley
The phrase "Believe It or Not!" is as much a part of the American psyche as the automobile, the Beatles, or the desktop computer. The man who coined the phrase-Robert Leroy Ripley-is an icon in the world of cartoon art; the first person to be elected to the Trivia Hall of Fame, and the founder of an entertainment empire based on the premise that "truth is stranger than fiction" that includes books, newspaper comics, television shows and international museum attractions.
The details of Robert Ripley's early life are somewhat sketchy, and shaded with controversy. No fewer than five different years, two different months, and four different days have been listed in literary sources for his date of birth. The earliest record of Ripley's existence, a population census taken in June 1900, lists his birthplace as Santa Rosa, California and his birthday as December 1890. Proof of this date, however, can be found nowhere else and according to Ripley he was born Christmas Day 1893. And Ripley's first name really wasn't Robert but Leroy. To his friends in California he was known as Roy, and to those in New York, he was Bob.
At the tender age of 12, he took a job polishing gravestones after his father died. A high school English teacher recognized his artistic talents very early on and encouraged him to create drawings for some of his assignments, illustrations for school programs, and baseball advertising posters for the local team.
Ripley then went on to further develop his artistic talents as well as his knowledge of the game of baseball. At age 14 he sold his first drawing to Life Magazine for the sum of $8. Entitled "The Village Bell Was Slowly Ringing" the illustration depicted a homely girl doing laundry on an old style wringer washing machine. Within a year Ripley left Santa Rose and took a job with the San Francisco Bulletin as a full time sports illustrator earning $8 per week.
He was fired from the Bulletin when he asked for a $2.50 a week raise, but was quickly scooped up by the San Francisco Chronicle who raised his salary to $10 per week. On July 4, 1910 at the "fight of the century" between champion Jack Johnson and Jim Jeffries, Ripley met Jack London, the pride of the West Coast literati, who advised him to go to New York and pursue his baseball dream or a least make more money from his drawings.
On January 2, 1913 Ripley's first illustration for The New York Globe and Commercial Advertiser was published. After settling in at the New York Athletic Club, he set out to fulfill his dream of playing major league baseball. Invited to join the New York Giants spring training camp, he was a victim of bad luck when he broke his arm in his very first game. Ripley's baseball career was over.
Now set on illustrating, he put together a series of small sketches entitled "Champs and Chumps" which included nine sketches such as "A. Forrester of Toronto ran 100 yards Backwards in 14 seconds," "S.D.See hopped 100 yds. In 11 seconds," and renowned skater Ed Lamy "broad-jumped ice 25 ft. 7 in." All nine drawings concerned individuals and their dubious sporting achievements. Disappointed with his day's work Ripley scratched out the original title, and inserted, "Believe It or Not!" across the top. To his amazement, the next day the cartoon was hailed by the public as revolutionary. They wanted more of the same; Ripley was an overnight sensation.
A week after his first Believe It or Not cartoon was published, Ripley was married to Miss Beatrice Carlisle, a Ziegfield Follies showgirl and former State of Massachusetts's beauty queen. They were separated two years later and eventually divorced.
Ripley never talked about his marriage, and occasionally even denied that it ever occurred. He would remain a lady's man all his life, having several women living in his house at once. He never remarried but lived up to his reputation named by several women's magazines as one of "the most eligible bachelors in America."
Ripley spent the last years of his twenties taking up sports such as wrestling, golf, tennis, judo and handball. Handball became such an obsession that he wrote his first book on the subject, entitled The Spalding Athletic Library Handball Guide.
He traveled a great deal and with his growing fame he was getting plum assignments outside of the US. The Antwerp Olympics would be the crowning journalistic achievement of his early career. He also wrote Ripley's Ramble "Round the World"-The Trip 1922-1923 in which he reported on the customs and beliefs of many ancient and contemporary civilizations. He was a powerful educator and first rate reporter on top of his drawing skills. He circumnavigated the globe on the S.S. Laconia, a luxury cruise ship, in 1922. From this trip on, he was seldom ever without a camera. Although his newspaper's publicity department used some of his travel photos to advertise his public appearances, the majority were stashed away for future reference in filing cabinets that Ripley called "his morgue." By the end of his career, Ripley's morgue is said to have contained over 2 million photographs taken in 201 countries.
It is from this collection that many of the archival photos were taken for Ripley's books, all of which are in black and white.
Ripley was considered an eccentric character and his varied styles of clothing revealed a lasting picture: he was never without a hat, either a fedora or a chimney sweep's cap; his jackets never fit correctly; he wore argyle patterned socks with knee length knickerbockers pants whether the temperature was hot or cold; he preferred two tone shoes; he often carried a cane, and favored formal dress for dinner. He was thin on top and had beaver-like protruding teeth. He was also terrified of using the telephone, fearing it would electrocute him. He was the most unlikely celebrity.
Henceforth his life was dedicated to travel which was both an obsession and a means of increasing his fame. He reported and experienced unbelievable things in exotic locales where the majority of his readers would never get to travel, and he would expand his daily cartoon subject matter from sports oddities to Believe it or Nots!.
Upon his return to New York, The Globe newspaper who employed him folded. He briefly changed his name to "Rip Li" in honor of China, his favorite country. He became so famous he could never take a vacation again (so he claimed). He was the first millionaire cartoonist and the most popular man in America.
His cartoons were syndicated in many newspapers across the country. Max Schuster of Simone & Schuster asked him if he would be interested in putting together a collection of Believe It or Nots! for a book. He did two books, simply called Believe it or Not! which sold over 500,000. King Features signed him on for $100,000 in the first year. In the eighteen months following the publication of the first Believe It or Not!, Ripley made over $1 million dollars from the syndicate, the book, movie and radio contracts. He was the first cartoonist to become a millionaire.
The 1930s and 40s were the Golden Age of Ripley. People flocked to concert halls and vaudeville theaters to hear his lectures and see his films. A mainstay of radio, he often broadcast his programs from exotic locations such as the Grand Canyon and the North Pole. He was the first to broadcast via radio from Australia to New York. In 1948, he created a television pilot based on one of his radio shows. The pilot was such a success it became the basis for one of the very first weekly television series. Launched in 1949, Ripley finally ran into bad luck, suffering a heart attack on air of the 13th episode. He died in the hospital three days later on May 27, 1949. He was 55. A memorial to his memory has been created in his hometown of Santa Rosa, California in the church where his family worshipped every Sunday. The church-Believe It or Not!-was made entirely out of a single giant redwood tree.
Reviews
Ripley's Believe It or Not! Expect...The Unexpected
Geoff Tibballs
This hefty volume is trimmed in day-glow orange with most of the front covered in green holographic bars that shift and shimmer. As the reader moves to one side, the holographic bars disappear to reveal a man's face covered in snakes. As usual, "Ripley's Believe It or Not!" features all the claims to the biggest, smallest, tallest, shortest, fattest, thinnest, and fastest. It also highlights some of the most unusual human body stunts and deformities. Quite a few of the entries are just plain bizarre. An artist in China makes gory looking body parts out of bread dough. The accompanying photo shows life-like bread limbs and decapitated bread heads suspended from meat hooks. Red food coloring is carefully painted on the bread. On another page in this book, under the heading "Dining on Toilets," a photo shows a family sitting down to a meal in a restaurant. Everyone sits on a closed toilet as they eat their meal from miniature toilets. Finding this interesting, weird, or just plain disgusting depends upon the reader's taste. The book itself is divided up into eight chapters with very generalized categories. "Strange World," "Weird and Wonderful," and "Simply Unbelievable" are three of the chapter titles. Each chapter has a "Back to the Archives" section showing black and white photos of strange feats and weird events from decades past. Each chapter also has full-page features on particular stunt-artists, sword-swallowing entertainers, fire-eaters, and daredevils. In one of these profiles, Lewis Pugh swims in the frigid waters of Antarctica. Through out the book, special double page spreads highlight the special artifacts on display at the Ripley Museums around the world. There are two Ripley Museums in Florida, and one each in New Orleans, Gatlinburg, Canada, England and Australia. The pages in this book are visually busy, filled with wild, eye-catching photographs. The index in the back is several pages long. This is part of Ripley's "Believe It or Not!" series, which includes the titles Ripley's Believe It or Not!, Ripley's Believe It or Not: Planet Eccentric!, and Ripley's Believe It or Not: Expect...The Unexpected. 2006, Miles Kelly Publishing/Ripley Publishing, Ages 10 to 15, $27.95. Reviewer: Sally J. K. Davies
ISBN: 1-893951-12-X
Added 07/25/06
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