A Curious Man

by Neal Thompson

  His patriotic, pro-athlete cartoons earned approving letters to the editor. In response to one of Ripley’s athlete/soldier profiles, a reader named Frank Seng wrote, “That kind of cartoon does more to mobilize the sentiments and feelings of the people than any number of stories. It gives us a victorious attitude, which is essential.”

  On November 11, 1918, Armistice Day arrived, and with it peace. Though he had avoided serving overseas, Ripley had loved the wartime assignments, traveling to Army bases and Navy ships, mingling with interesting new people and playing his part. World War I had stoked Ripley’s competitive spirit (war is athletics) and presented a challenging artistic diversion. But in late 1918 he went back to being just a sports cartoonist. Compared to the real war, baseball and boxing seemed a tad boring.

  WORLD WAR I had transformed the pages of American newspapers into daily adventure stories. Afterward, readers’ hunger for drama and intrigue in their daily paper lingered. Readers also now wanted to know more about the world, particularly the strange-sounding places they’d heard about—obscure lands such as Luxembourg and Romania, the exotic corners of Europe, the Balkans, and the Ottoman Empire.

  At the same time, soldiers returned home with a taste for the adrenaline and dangers they’d been exposed to in war. In pursuit of such thrills, some began attempting risky feats—scaling the world’s peaks, flying airplanes long distances—striving to accomplish something bold, to be first, fastest, or best.

  All of which provided Ripley with cartoon fodder. The aftermath of war would slowly alter the trajectory of his cartooning, and his life.

  Before the war, he had experimented with various serials that celebrated impressive sports feats and the overlooked Everyman. Wartime took him in a different direction, allowing him to give readers dramatic life-and-death scenarios. Those cartoons felt more thoughtful than anything else he’d done. “The ability to think is perhaps a greater asset to the cartoonist than the ability to draw,” he’d one day write, in a manuscript he titled How to Draw.

  After the war, Ripley resumed his search for a niche cartoon that combined all of his skills and interests. The “unusual records” concept had been headed in the right direction, except that it focused almost exclusively on sports. What he really wanted was to indulge his desire to learn about the wonders of the world, to share that curiosity with readers, and to find a consistent and unique artistic style that would “please the great majority.”

  World War I had allowed him to abandon typical “cartoon” drawings and create newspaper art. In his How to Draw book (which was never published), Ripley revealed how much thought he gave during his early New York apprenticeship to the craft of pen-and-ink cartooning, to the importance of facial features and muscle and bone structure. Ripley also felt an obligation to get the details of his drawings just right. During the war, he made sure he put foreign soldiers in their correct uniforms, to avoid complaints from readers miffed by imperfections. If he couldn’t conjure the details from memory, he’d call down to the Globe’s “morgue,” the library where old articles and photos were stored. He relied heavily on those photos for accuracy, calling the morgue “an invaluable aid.”

  He also continued assembling his own morgue, pasting more clipped-out newspaper articles and magazine photos into his scrapbooks. During and after the war, these clippings began veering away from sports, becoming more reflective of the postwar fascination with dangerous places and extreme activities. He truly believed that this hodgepodge of quirky scraps might someday “prove of the utmost assistance.” In other words: You never know when scraps will make a meal.

  IN MOST VERSIONS of Ripley’s breakthrough moment, the original Believe It or Not cartoon (which wouldn’t adopt its exclamation point with any consistency until the 1930s) came about on a sluggish winter afternoon in late December 1918. With the war ended, football season over, and baseball season a few months away, Ripley allegedly found himself at a loss for a cartoon topic.

  “I was bereft of ideas,” he would later claim.

  So he dug into his rainy-day notebook collection, sifting through clippings of ambitious athletic endeavors. He chose nine such feats and drew a miniature cartoon for each. Ripley would later claim that “Believe It or Not” was the original title idea. Other times he’d concede that his first idea for a title—“Champs and Chumps”—was not good enough and he offered editors “Believe It or Not” as an alternative title.

  Years later, looking back on that day, he said he wasn’t entirely sure whether his choice of those four words was “sudden inspiration” or “unconscious accident.”

  Either way, Ripley was not thrilled with the result and he left the office that night “very disgusted.” He considered the cartoon a throwaway and “a stinker.” (In other retellings, he’d claim he was in a hurry to get out the door—he and Bugs Baer had a double date.)

  Ripley’s editor, Walter St. Denis, had different recollections, later insisting that not only were “believe it or not” his words, but the cartoon had been his idea in the first place, that he had thrown a stack of clips about odd sports feats onto Ripley’s desk and instructed him to come up with a catchy compilation.

  Neither recollection was quite right. The original “Believe It or Not” cartoon appeared in the December 19 Globe, and it was unequivocally titled “Champs and Chumps.” It wasn’t an entirely new concept, since it resembled the “unusual records” compilations Ripley had been experimenting with in recent years. Still, something about the layout, the choice of oddball feats, and the appreciative tone Ripley used in describing them seemed quirky and fresh.

  Among the nine champs and chumps were J. Darby of England, who jumped backward twelve feet, eleven inches; M. Pauliquen of Paris, who stayed underwater for six and a half minutes; and an unnamed “chap” who walked backward across America. Three of the odd feats involved variations on the hundred-yard dash: one man ran it backward in fourteen seconds; another hopped it in eleven seconds; two men finished in eleven seconds in a three-legged race.

  Regardless of who originated the idea, St. Denis agreed with Ripley that it wasn’t one of his better cartoons, calling it “just guys who did some screwy athletic stunts.” When a few readers wrote in to praise the cartoon, however, St. Denis told Ripley to keep collecting ideas and produce another champ-chump compilation once he had enough material.

  According to subsequent legend, another “Believe It or Not” appeared a week later, followed by another, and soon it was appearing twice a week, then a daily feature—and the rest was history…

  In truth, Ripley’s screwy-stunt cartoons were hardly an overnight success, and there was no sudden change in his fame, income, or prospects. He was still a sports cartoonist, covering fights, ball games, and dog shows. In fact, the second “Believe It or Not” cartoon—the first with that exact title—wouldn’t appear for another ten months, in October of 1919. A third “Believe It or Not” wouldn’t appear until 1920, and only sporadically after that.

  Ripley had found his niche, he just didn’t know it yet, and wouldn’t fully realize what he had stumbled across for at least two more years. Until then, he would continue to view cartooning as a hard grind. “There is no shortcut to success in the field of cartooning,” he wrote in his unpublished book. “It is only by hard work and constant practice that [the cartoonist] can hope to prepare himself to conquer the difficulties that will constantly besiege his path.”

  Indeed, such difficulties were coming, not least of which was an ill-advised marriage to a beautiful teenaged dancer.

  Bucktoothed LeRoy Ripley, age eight. “Everyone at school picked on him because he was so different,” a classmate would later say. “Not one of the guys,” said another.

  Though he’d later claim to have sold his first drawing at age fourteen, Ripley was actually eighteen when this cartoon was published in LIFE magazine, in June of 1908. He was paid $8, which inspired him to pursue cartooning as a career.

  At far right with the San Francisco Ch
ronicle art staff, 1912. After moving to San Francisco in 1909, Ripley was fired from his first newspaper job, at the San Francisco Bulletin—“My work was poor,” he admitted—but was quickly hired at the Chronicle.

  Having played in California’s bush leagues after high school, Ripley dreamed of playing professional baseball. While covering the New York Giants’ 1913 spring training in Texas, he was invited to suit up and try out for the team. An injury would put an end to his baseball career.

  At the drawing board, 1915, working for the New York Globe, which would be his home for a decade.

  A model and a Follies Girl, Beatrice Roberts sang and danced with the Ziegfeld Follies. A week after her eighteenth birthday, she married Ripley in Newark, New Jersey, and the couple honeymooned in Atlantic City. The smiles would not last.

  Ripley the handball player, showing off his athlete’s physique.

  In late 1922, Ripley began his life-changing “Ramble ’Round the World” voyage, a four-month adventure that exposed Ripley to the country that would become his favorite: China—“the vast, old decaying land of the Celestial.”

  At the Taj Mahal, during his Ramble. Ripley found India to be fascinating and revolting. “Nowhere on earth can you see such a weird cross-cut of human life,” he wrote, after a visit to the holy city of Benares. “All this pagan panorama.”

  ABOVE: In April 1923, Ripley returned from his circumnavigation a changed man. Having witnessed the “demented, delusioned, diseased, and devout” of the world, his cartoons grew stranger, more gruesome and eccentric—and more popular.

  With his best friend, the writer, humorist, and cartoonist Bugs Baer, mid-1920s. The two Mutt-and-Jeff pals would become rich and famous together.

  At the railway station in Hell, Norway, 1928. “It has frequently been suggested that I come here,” Ripley wrote in a column for the Globe, describing Hell as “delightful!” and advising his readers, “Go to Hell! I mean it.”

  Ripley forcing a smile—in truth, he hated to fly.

  Ripley’s one-eyed dog, Cyclops. A habitual collector, Ripley collected pets, too. Some visitors to his mansion felt he seemed more at ease with his dogs than with people.

  Outside his mansion on BION Island.

  Ripley with some of his lady friends, paddling in one of his many boats on the pond behind his mansion. Associates would refer to his collection of girlfriends as his “harem.”

  With a mummified fetus known as “Atta Boy,” featured on the jacket of his second book, 1931. Through the 1930s, Ripley became more interested in human deformities and sideshow freaks, displaying a P. T. Barnum–like obsession with grotesquerie.

  During an extensive 1932 journey through the South Seas and Asia, Ripley insisted on visiting with a tribe of alleged cannibals in Fiji. He proudly managed to bring home a “cannibal fork,” which he would display in his museums and exhibitions.

  In Port Moresby, New Guinea, with members of a tribal dance troupe, March 1932.

  In a dug-out canoe at Waikiki Beach with the love of his life, Ruth Ross, whom he called “Oakie,” February 1932. In his travel journal, he described how much they drank—and how little clothing they wore—during their South Seas cruise.

  With Oakie and Olympic swimming star Duke Kahanamoku, considered the godfather of modern surfing. Ripley first met Kahanamoku at the 1920 Olympics.

  At his peak, Ripley received more than a million letters a year. In 1930, the U.S. postmaster general issued a directive: “Postal clerks have had to devote too much time recently to deciphering freak letters intended for Ripley.”

  With Arjan Desur Dangar, one of the performers at Ripley’s Odditorium exhibition at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. Just before the fair started, Dangar fought with his manager, who ripped off half his mustache. Ripley sent them back to India.

  With lion mask from Bali, 1932. Ripley amassed many crates of collectibles during his years of world travel, and in 1934 he finally bought a home to display his masks, weapons, beer steins, artwork, and other strange collections—including his erotica.

  For $100, Ripley bought his first shrunken head from a tribe in Bolivia in 1925. Such heads would become Believe It or Not emblems. (The head in the photo was stolen from a Ripley’s museum in the 1980s and has never been recovered.)

  On a ship with his friend, the writer and radio personality Will Rogers. Ripley once ran into Rogers in the middle of the Syrian Desert at a fortress called Rutbah Wells, on his way to Baghdad, and later sailed home from Europe with Rogers and his wife.

  His years as a sports cartoonist led to friendships with boxers (left to right) Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney, and Floyd Gibbons. Ripley also befriended Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

  Ripley with child movie legend Shirley Temple, mid-1930s.

  After traveling from Jerusalem to Damascus to Baghdad to Tehran, Ripley entered Soviet territory for the first time. En route from Azerbaijan to Georgia, he insisted on a foolhardy crossing of the Caucasus Mountains—by car. Incredibly, two farmers with oxen were coming across from the other side and pulled Ripley’s car free.

  Another risky mountain crossing—this one traversing Khyber Pass, from Afghanistan into Pakistan (then northern India), 1936. Ripley eventually had to abandon the car and make the next portion of the trip by camel.

  With a Hindu holy man in India, 1936. Ever since his 1922–23 trip around the world and his visit to the holy city of Benares, India, Ripley had been obsessed with the strange things mankind did in the name of their various gods.

  Ripley’s beloved statue of Hananuma Masakichi on display at the New York Odditorium in 1939. The sculptor, working in the nude and surrounded by mirrors, painstakingly re-created every muscle, wrinkle, and sinew of his body.

  One of the See America First with Bob Ripley radio shows, this one airing from 850 feet underground in Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico, June 1939. Left to right: James White, who discovered the caverns as a young boy; New Mexico governor John Miles; Ripley; Carlsbad National Park superintendent Colonel Thomas Boles.

  Descending into the Grand Canyon—with a young Barry Goldwater—for another technically challenging See America First radio show.

  During a 1936 live broadcast from Silver Springs, Florida, Ripley and his snake-handling, crocodile-wrestling host Ross Allen entered a pit full of poisonous snakes. When the lights suddenly went out, Allen yelled, “Let’s get the hell outa here!”

  First underwater radio broadcast—from the bottom of the shark tank at Marineland in St. Augustine, Florida. One shark got too close and knocked Ripley on his bottom.

  Posing with the inaugural 1918 Believe It or Not cartoon (originally titled “Champs and Chumps”). He hung the cartoon behind a backlit mirror above the massive fireplace in his mansion and loved to flip the light switch that illuminated the hidden cartoon.

  With a customs agent and a collection of masks after his 1940 travels through South and Central America. World War II would curtail Ripley’s global travels.

  A King Features Syndicate publicity photo shows Ripley at work on a cartoon. Owned by William Randolph Hearst, the syndicate exposed Ripley to a global audience.

  Ripley and his staff, rehearsing a radio show in his Manhattan apartment overlooking Central Park. To the right of Ripley are the two long-time employees who were crucial to his career: Doug Storer and Norbert Pearlroth (on couch).

  With close friend Li Ling-Ai (on Ripley’s right) in Ripley’s China-themed New York apartment, called Nirvana, which he had purchased from famed travel photographer Burton Holmes.

  Visiting Hiroshima, during his somber postwar journey through Asia, which would be one of his last adventures.

  The Ripley family tombstone in the Odd Fellows Cemetery in Santa Rosa, California. Like his parents, Ripley died before reaching sixty.

  Orphaned by parents who died young—Isaac at fifty, Lillie at forty-six—Ripley, nearing thirty, thought constantly of his health.

  As a child he used to read Physical Culture magazine, published by eccent
ric fitness guru Bernarr Macfadden, a flamboyant bodybuilder, nutritionist, and health advocate who could tear a deck of cards in half. Though some doctors branded Macfadden a fake and a kook, he railed against “pill-pushers” and processed foods, inspiring millions of acolytes with claims that exercise, fasting, and a heavy intake of milk could help a man live to 150.

  BELIEVE IT!

  Macfadden died at age eighty-seven after refusing treatment for a urinary tract infection.