A Curious Man: The Strange and Brilliant Life of Robert Believe It or Not! Ripley

by Neal Thompson

  “Go to Hell!” Ripley advised his readers. “I mean it.”

  The Evening Post admen had a field day. Not only had he visited fifty-three countries, Ripley had been to Hell and back.

  M. Lincoln “Max” Schuster was a savvy editor and marketer, with a nose for the public’s tastes. With his equally acute partner, Richard L. “Dick” Simon, he’d published the first-ever book of crossword puzzles in 1924, inspired by Simon’s aunt, a fanatic crossworder who wanted more than her newspaper’s one-a-day puzzle.

  BELIEVE IT!

  Joseph Pulitzer’s pioneering World introduced the first crossword puzzle on December 21, 1913—a diamond-shaped puzzle created by an English journalist, who called it a “word-cross.” Later renamed “crossword puzzle,” it become a regular World feature, and other newspapers quickly copied the idea.

  With only a shared secretary between them, Simon & Schuster published The Cross-Word Puzzle Book, which came with a cute little pencil attached. It was an instant bestseller and within a year the duo published three more crossword-puzzle books, selling more than a million. After a few flops (including a failed Joseph Pulitzer biography), they signed popular gossip writer Walter Winchell to a book deal, and by 1928 Simon & Schuster had established itself as a serious publishing house.

  Now Max Schuster wanted Ripley to put a collection of Believe It or Not cartoons and essays between hardcovers. Schuster had been wooing Ripley since his 1926 start at the Evening Post. He often wrote with praise or suggestions, sometimes promising to dig up curiosa for Ripley if he’d only stop by Schuster’s office.

  “Renewed congratulations on the way your work grips the popular imagination,” Schuster wrote in late 1927. “I never miss an issue.”

  Schuster knew it might be tricky to sell Ripley in book form. “The big problem now will be to consider Ripley as a writer as well as an artist,” he said in one of his letters, while insisting that a Believe It or Not collection could be a hit.

  For many months, Ripley demurred, claiming that he was just a newspaperman, “just a two-cent man,” not an author.

  In time, Ripley realized that, with Pearlroth often providing more than he could use, a book might be the perfect place for his backlog of material. So, to Schuster’s great relief, he finally signed a two-page contract.

  In the book’s introductory chapter, Ripley wrote that his humble sports-cartooning career now relied solely on the idea that “truth is stranger than fiction.” He thanked a few of the groupies he’d attracted, folks who mailed in Believe It or Not suggestions, but he failed to mention Norbert Pearlroth. In fact, throughout Ripley’s entire career it seems as if he never once credited Pearlroth in print, having decided that he would be the solo explorer, Pearlroth the invisible staffer geek.

  Ripley submitted the final pages to Schuster in late 1928, including a quote from Thomas Moore at the end of his introductory chapter:

  This world is all a fleeting show,

  For man’s illusion given.

  RIPLEY’S 188-PAGE BOOK went on sale in January of 1929, for $2.50. The response was immediate, widespread, and uniformly laudatory.

  Reviewers of all journalistic tiers declared it an instant classic and crowned Ripley “the Marco Polo of our time.” The Akron Beacon Journal called it “an odyssey of oddities,” and the Sioux City Journal declared it perfect “for anyone who likes the queer and the unusual.”

  Compared to Ripley’s “repertory of freaks,” said one writer, carnival barker P. T. Barnum looked like a schoolboy stamp collector. According to Vanity Fair, Ripley had resuscitated “the dying art of dinner conversation.” The most glowing review came from William Bolitho, writing in Pulitzer’s World:

  Such books are rare. It pricks the sluggish mind and coaxes the doubtful one to a true realization that the world, and life, is miraculous and interesting. Read Ripley and see with what wild eccentricity, what infinite good spirits, what fantastic jokes the world is administered. This is a pamphlet for truth, for the incontrovertible truth that life is miraculous, breathless and good to live.

  Bolitho compared Ripley to such iconic explorers as Marco Polo, Sir John Mandeville, or Herodotus, calling him “the equal of them all.”

  “He is not merely retailing empty wonders to make yokels gape. His research is for the very highest type of curiosity, the unbelievably true,” Bolitho continued, predicting a long shelf life: “It will drift about the world, second-hand, wherever curiosity and English occur together … It will automatically make the eye stop and the hand reach out.”

  On the advice of such raves, readers bought Ripley’s book in vast quantities. It flew off bookstore shelves and via mail order. Kids and adults loved it; cartoon aficionados and history buffs loved it—all drawn to the promise of the enticing subtitle, “A Modern Book of Wonders, Miracles, Freaks, Monstrosities and Almost-Impossibilities.” Ripley wisely mailed scores of autographed copies to former colleagues, reporters, and editors, which earned even more press.

  Rube Goldberg praised Ripley’s “striking innovation,” telling him, “You have no peer.” The wildly influential Walter Winchell devoted a full column in the Evening Graphic to “the sort of tome you cannot put down.” Everywhere, reviewers hailed “a book that should be bound in leather and saved for future generations to read,” as The Chattanooga Times put it. Philadelphia’s Public Ledger compared Ripley’s “eye of the child” to that of Voltaire, while the Saturday Review of Literature likened him to Poe. The esteemed Daily News critic Mark Hellinger said Ripley amused and startled readers in “one of the most interesting books I have ever read.”

  One reviewer, after reading a hundred pages, dropped the book into his lap and wondered aloud, “What sort of mind has the man who collects so much freak data?” The question was asked again and again—Who is this guy?—and the Evening Post went so far as to enlist a group of professors to attempt an answer in a series of promotional articles. Ripley’s cartoons “are thrill pills,” explained Professor Rudolph Pinter. “They give us a quick vicarious thrill.” And Professor Clyde Miller said Ripley’s Believe It or Not drawings “are a blessing to everyday people. In contrast to humdrum life, they are an emotional tonic.”

  Simon & Schuster kept printing copies and was soon into a fifth printing, then a ninth, eventually reaching forty.

  BELIEVE IT!

  Over the next twenty years, Ripley’s books would sell more than two million copies.

  SUCH SUCCESS INEVITABLY inspired copycat efforts, such as Ed Wolff’s Why We Do It, which explained the stories behind why people throw rice at the bride, why men tip their hats, why women wear rouge, and how barber poles began. One critic complained that Wolff’s book too closely resembled Believe It or Not, and that publishers were rushing to cash in on “the fascination of blobs of knowledge.”

  In truth, Ripley’s imitators had been multiplying for years. Bernarr Macfadden’s True Story magazine (tagline: “Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction”) had been around for a decade, and in 1928 a talented young artist named John Hix launched his syndicated Strange as It Seems cartoon.

  But the competition hardly compared with the original. As Ripley’s book climbed the bestseller lists, fans clamored for more of the curious author and Ripley was showered with offers. Collier’s invited him to contribute a regular cartoon feature to the magazine. A company called Famous Speakers Inc. offered a lecture series, and Ripley signed a contract that would give him half the proceeds from those lectures. He was even offered a nationwide vaudeville tour, and was soon being wooed by radio networks looking for ways to capture the Believe It or Not magic on the airwaves.

  After twenty years in the newspaper business, he was finally in league with men such as Peter Kyne: an author, a lecturer, a world traveler, a celebrity.

  While some fans wrote letters marveling at how he “keeps it going” for so many years, Ripley was finding it easier by the day, thanks to Pearlroth, his staff, and his fans. One Evening Post contest earned thousands of mailed-in reader
submissions, including celebrity entries from Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jack Dempsey, and New York Giants manager John McGraw. With so much assistance, the supply of cartoon material seemed inexhaustible.

  Believe It or Not was a self-perpetuating machine, and Ripley was suddenly being wooed by the biggest names in newspapers.

  ROBERT L. RIPLEY and Believe It or Not were now entwined, indivisible. His cartoons weren’t just some widgets he manufactured, they had become extensions of his personality. Yet, the real Ripley remained a mystery. In person and onstage, he seemed jovial and fun, though hardly at ease in public, often coming across as unrehearsed, a bit awkward and clumsy. He had a singsongy, faux-aristocratic voice (not unlike Hearst’s), but his buckteeth hampered his articulation. He still stuttered—or, with too much nerve-calming booze, slurred—and his hands seemed to be constantly waving about. Such foibles only endeared him further to fans.

  Ripley knew he needed to make himself available to readers and fans, or at least show a version of himself. He hired an assistant to manage his schedule and financial affairs. With a crew of employees toiling behind the scenes, he began spending more time as the public face of Believe It or Not, some days only working for an hour on the cartoon and the rest of his day managing offers from those wanting him to sign books or speak to their organization. Requests poured in for product endorsements or charitable donations, and Ripley had a hard time saying no. With an affinity for boys’ and orphans’ groups, he donated cartoons and cash to the Boys’ Work Committee of the Rotary Club, the National Tuberculosis Association, and the Orphans Automobile Day Association.

  When the publicity demands slowed, in the late spring of 1929, Ripley felt he could take time off to travel once again. He planned a two-month tour of Central America, but the trip was delayed when Bugs Baer’s wife fell ill, and Ripley stayed with his longtime pal in New York. When Marjorie “Cass” Baer died of pneumonia, Ripley attended the funeral, serving as a pallbearer.

  Finally, in late May, he sailed to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. Pearlroth had read about an ancient and primitive Central American civilization that an aviator had recently discovered in Guatemala and, though he hated the idea of flying, Ripley decided to search for the tribe himself. He hired a pilot who told Ripley that he always brought weapons when flying into the wilderness—a shotgun, a machete, and a blackjack—as precautions against the swarms of curious natives who always surrounded his plane. (It’s unclear whether Ripley found the tribe he was seeking.)

  In Mexico, he traveled deep into the Yucatán Peninsula to tour the Chichen Itza ruins, and would later claim to have “discovered” the origins of basketball there.

  BELIEVE IT!

  Pre-Columbian tlachtli ball courts discovered at Chichen Itza and elsewhere in Central America featured stone hoops built into the walls. Using heavy rubber balls, players competed in a mash-up of soccer and basketball, a game later called ulama.

  In the blistering Yucatán heat, Ripley’s exploration was cut short when he contracted an inner-ear ailment and was rushed to Cuba for treatment. By now he had visited dozens of countries, and friends found it remarkable that Ripley never got sick, an accomplishment he attributed to his miles-long New York walks, his rounds of handball, and his steady intake of germ-killing alcohol. Plus, he always traveled with a jar of disinfectant.

  When he was released from the hospital and sailed from Havana toward home, Ripley was suddenly eager to get back to work. While traveling, word had leaked of the new job he’d been offered. Reporters and photographers would be waiting for him, having learned that their colleague was about to join the big leagues.

  MONTHS EARLIER, Max Schuster had wisely sent one of the first copies of Ripley’s book to William Randolph Hearst. When Hearst finally got around to reading it, he sent one of his men to tempt Ripley with a hard-to-ignore offer.

  Hearst, like Ripley, had started his newspaper career in San Francisco, taking charge of his father’s struggling four-page San Francisco Examiner in 1887. Over the next forty years, Hearst amassed thirty-four other newspapers and assorted magazines, and by 1929 employed twenty thousand people. At age sixty-four, he still put in twelve-hour days tending to his massive journalistic empire. His personal fortune, The New Yorker magazine had recently estimated, “mounts into nine figures.”

  Although Hearst’s legacy would become that of a spoiled son who squandered his family’s fortune in a maniacal quest for acquisition, he was actually a forward-thinking newsman obsessed with hiring the best of the best. “Your search for talent must be incessant and sleepless,” Hearst told his editors. He pioneered global syndication and new methods of advertising, such as running ads for his publications in rival newspapers. An early supporter of moving pictures, he had partnered with the Vitagraph company as early as 1915 to distribute newsreels, and later turned a few of his newspapers’ cartoons into animated short films. Ripley knew that Hearst had lifted many cartoonists’ careers, not only paying them well but bringing their art to animated life on-screen.

  To be sure, they had their differences. Hearst never drank, for example, and had stayed married and fathered five sons, despite an imperfect relationship with his wife and a longtime mistress (Marion Davies, Ripley’s ex-wife’s former Ziegfeld contemporary). But in many ways the two men shared a professional kinship. Hearst had an uncanny sense of public opinion, an ability to predict what the masses wanted to see in his pages. He must have sensed that Ripley knew something about mass appeal too, that he “understands the popular mind,” as author Stephen Crane once said of Hearst.

  In the spring of 1929, Hearst had sent a two-word telegram to one of his editors in New York: “HIRE Ripley.”

  THE RECIPIENT OF Hearst’s directive was Joseph V. Connolly, head of King Features Syndicate, the world’s largest purveyor of comic strips, columns, and assorted newspaper features. Connolly’s first stop was the New York Athletic Club. Striding up to the front desk, he asked the receptionist, “Where can I find Bob Ripley?”

  At that exact moment, Ripley was exiting the elevator, about to step into the lobby. One glimpse of the grim-looking Connolly, who looked like a lawyer or a cop, told him he didn’t want to meet the man. (He’d later say he was worried about an ex-girlfriend’s threatened lawsuit.) Ripley slipped out a side exit and disappeared into Central Park. Connolly returned days later, cornered Ripley, and explained that “Mr. Hearst” wanted to hire him.

  Due to the huge success of his book, Ripley had met with others like Connolly, men in suits bearing offers from newspapers and syndicates. This time, he sought advice from Bugs Baer, who wrote for Hearst’s New York American and whose columns were syndicated by King Features. Baer told Ripley that Hearst’s kingdom was the best place for him. He retold the story about his overnight stay at San Simeon, Hearst’s castle on the California coast: “I left my shoes outside the door and they were gold-plated in the morning.” Baer’s advice: “Stick to Hearst, Bob.”

  At the time, nearly one in four Americans read a Hearst newspaper.

  WHILE STANDING in the lobby of the NYAC, just before leaving for Central America, Ripley signed a three-page contract, good for three years. The terms required him to produce six daily Believe It or Not cartoons for King Features, starting July 9, plus a new full-page Sunday cartoon. At the time, Ripley was still earning about $10,000 a year. Hearst offered Ripley a base salary worth six times as much. But that was just part of it.

  Ripley would also get 70 percent of the net proceeds of Believe It or Not sales to non-Hearst newspapers, plus a 50 percent cut of Sunday cartoon sales, with a written guarantee that his share of the profits would be no less than $400 a week. Ripley stood to make at least $100,000 a year.

  Walter Winchell, who had recently signed his own contract with Hearst, announced the deal in his new “On Broadway” column in Hearst’s Daily Mirror. Winchell said Ripley’s new six-figure salary “must have made his competitors’ heads swim.” At the time, the influential gossip columnist was making $50
0 a week at Hearst’s Mirror—an impressive salary, but still just over a quarter of what Ripley would be earning.

  Ripley’s new editor and boss would be one of Hearst’s most trusted managers, and one of the more powerful men in news syndication.

  Joseph V. Connolly had been a reporter before serving in World War I. He started at King Features as a promoter in 1920 and within three years was running the show. Sensing that postwar readers wanted to know more about the world, but also be entertained, Connolly encouraged Hearst to expand the number of syndicated news and feature stories—and comics. Connolly also played a hands-on role with his cartoonists, helping new artists develop their strips and counseling veterans on how to keep their cartoons fresh. Earlier in 1929, Connolly noticed a new character in Elzie Segar’s ten-year-old strip, Thimble Theatre, an illiterate, tattooed, and muscle-bound sailor with a good heart whom Segar called Popeye. Connolly advised Segar: “Feature the sailor.”

  Connolly was also assistant manager of Hearst’s other syndicates, International News Service, International Features Service, and Universal Service, whose deep roster of cartoonists included George Herriman (Krazy Kat), George McManus (Bringing Up Father), Billy DeBeck (Barney Google), and Ripley’s pal Rube Goldberg, who must have told Ripley that working for Hearst and King Features was as good as it got for a cartoonist.

  Ripley had once dreamed of becoming the next Goldberg or Tad, who’d died that May, and whom Ripley called “the greatest influence on my professional life.” Though his ascent had been slow, and his path rocky, Ripley was now outearning them all.

  WHEN RIPLEY ARRIVED home from Cuba on July 1, after his abbreviated trip to Central America, word had already spread that he’d be leaving the Post for King Features. He was greeted on a Manhattan pier by a crowd of reporters and photographers who clotted around him on the deck of the SS Orizaba.