A Curious Man

by Neal Thompson

  “H-how’d I do?” Ripley asked Storer, who couldn’t believe the celebrity cartoonist cared what he thought.

  Feeling obliged to be honest, Storer said, “You need a little practice.”

  Storer was shocked to find Ripley so shy and self-conscious, yearning for approval. But he was impressed that Ripley seemed game for anything, especially broadcasts that accomplished something new and unique. Storer knew of Ripley’s previous exploits over the airwaves: transmitting a cartoon from London to New York (1926), broadcasting from ship to shore (1931), and broadcasting from Australia to New York (1932).

  It had been Storer’s idea to hire translators and attempt the simultaneous worldwide broadcast, which served its intended purpose and earned Ripley a new radio show.

  On Hudson Motor Car Company’s Terraplane Program, with bandleader B. A. Rolfe conducting the “Terraplane Orchestra,” Ripley played a smallish role introducing live reenactments of scenes depicted in his cartoons. Sometimes Bugs Baer served as emcee—he was a natural—and Ripley had a scant few lines. Storer felt that with more speech lessons and practice, Ripley could land an even bigger sponsor. Ripley agreed and invited Storer to work for him full-time, offering Storer 10 percent of all his radio income. Storer soon proved worth his commission. When the Terraplane Program ended in 1935, he convinced NBC that Ripley was ready for a show of his own. He landed a deal with the Baker’s Broadcast, sponsored by food conglomerate Standard Brands. The show would air in prime time on Sunday nights, with Ripley as the host, assisted by a sidekick/bandleader named Ozzie Nelson and Nelson’s soon-to-be wife, the singer Harriet Hilliard.

  Storer made sure the new Ripley-and-Ozzie-and-Harriet partnership received plenty of newspaper ink, and telegrammed congratulations poured in. “You’re the nuts,” the actress Beatrice Lillie wired, and Jimmy Durante wished him “good luck.” Jack Dempsey wrote, “You’re a knockout to me.” Storer became a true believer in the Believe It or Not brand and, like Norbert Pearlroth and others, another moonstruck apostle eager to lash his career to Ripley’s.

  Storer loved Ripley’s lack of pretense or polish, his unrehearsed authenticity. The public seemed smitten too. “In fact, the pubic liked Ripley’s awkward manner,” Storer said later, describing him as “boyish and appealing, so earnest and honest.”

  It was that same boyish, earnest appeal that had drawn Pearlroth to Ripley a decade earlier. Back in 1923, as Frank Munsey tore apart the newspaper network that had been Ripley’s support base, Pearlroth was Ripley’s most loyal accomplice. Lately, though, as Joseph Connolly and Ripley’s brother and now Doug Storer came aboard, Pearlroth felt a distance growing between him and his boss. Yet, even as he felt shoved aside a little, he was unwilling to walk away from his “dream job.”

  Storer, meanwhile, seemed to have found his own dream job. He felt that his previous careers, as adman, radio producer, and talent agent, had all been leading him to Ripley.

  Like Ripley’s other benefactors—Max Schuster, William Randolph Hearst, and C. C. Pyle—Storer possessed a keen sense of what the audience wanted, even if he sometimes tested sponsors’ patience. He and Ripley pitched one show in which circus performer James Mandy—alleged owner of the hardest head in the world—would head-butt a goat. When a humane society accused Ripley of cruelty to animals, NBC officials nixed the idea. Ripley and Storer also once considered the proposal of a terminally ill man who wanted to kill himself on the air—for $5,000.

  Though they declined the offer, Ripley told Storer, “It would have been a helluva show.”

  HEARST CONTINUED to be a tolerant patron, letting Ripley push the boundaries of radio and indulging his cartoonist’s perpetual traveling and forays into freak shows. Hearst also protected Ripley from the economics of the troubled news business. When King Features proposed cutting costs by reducing the size of Ripley’s Sunday cartoons, Ripley complained to Hearst that it would be “harmful” to the Believe It or Not name.

  “This is quite true,” Hearst wrote back. “We will resume the larger sizes later.”

  Hearst was less accommodating when Ripley defied him, as he did when he continued to accept offers to endorse products in magazine ads, or when Ripley willfully crossed into territory that might cost Hearst subscribers.

  Ripley had grown more politically conservative by the mid-1930s, distrustful of Roosevelt’s New Deal and suspicious of Communist-friendly politicians and policies. He and Storer tussled frequently over Ripley’s spontaneous pontificating on the air. When Upton Sinclair lost his 1934 campaign for governor of California, Ripley congratulated his birth state for its “good sense in rejecting a man who would turn [California] into another Soviet state.”

  As fear of communism and socialism slowly infected America, Ripley became more vocal in airing his views on the dangerous shortcomings of the Soviet way of life. His tiff with the Soviet empire had begun in late 1933, following his trek through Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Russia. Months later, he’d written an article for Hearst’s International Cosmopolitan magazine, describing his Soviet travels as the most miserable of his life.

  “It is always misty in Russia … the sun never shines,” he wrote, claiming that citizens had grown dour and fearful after more than a decade of Soviet rule. “There is no God in Russia. Lenin has taken the place of Christ,” said Ripley, who called Lenin “the Deity of the Downtrodden.”

  True, Ripley had been reluctantly impressed by Russia’s social liberalism, free health care, and liberal sexuality, and he even worried that “Sovietism” might catch on, that the USSR could become “one of the strongest nations in the world.” In early 1935, however, he shared a more critical account of his Russian visit in a speech to the Crusaders, an organization initially created to fight Prohibition that had grown into an aggressive anti-Communist consortium. Ripley claimed that Russians never smiled or laughed because they were starving to death. The Soviet government stole farmers’ grain, he said, forcing people to “subsist on dogs, cats, weeds and grass.” Ripley’s address was broadcast on radio and reprinted on the front page of Hearst’s New York American. The headline: “I SAW STARVATION IN RUSSIA,” SAYS BOB RIPLEY.

  His accusations were extreme. And, as they appeared to give voice to Hearst’s own outsized fears of communism, they raised some eyebrows:

  “Everybody in Russia is a prisoner of the government.”

  “Russia is a gigantic poorhouse where millions of people are on the verge of starvation.”

  “Outside of Moscow and Leningrad—the Soviet show-places—starvation stalks through squalor and filth.”

  The Daily Worker newspaper, published by the Communist Party of America, ridiculed Ripley’s claims, pointing out that he was only in-country for two weeks and spent most of his time on trains. The writer called Ripley a “well-known Hearst stooge” and a “phony.”

  It’s unknown whether Hearst, no fan of communism himself, played any role in Ripley’s tirades. Hearst complained often of Roosevelt’s “socialistic” tendencies and felt the New Deal nurtured a socialist movement in America, and he’d recently argued that his media empire needed to “make a powerful crusade against Communism … if we want to retain our liberties.” So it’s plausible that Hearst and/or Connolly lurked behind Ripley’s vocal accusations.

  Still, Ripley’s scuffle with Russia might have petered out if he hadn’t mischievously attempted another visit to “Sovietland.”

  IN EARLY 1936, Ripley began planning yet another around-the-world trip and applied for permission to enter Siberia, in far eastern Russia. When his visa application was denied, he complained to the US secretary of state, whose office responded: “It is not the practice of this Government to intervene in such matters.” Ripley then sent copies of his letter, as well as the secretary of state’s response, to the media and members of Congress, igniting a political firestorm.

  Legislators tripped over themselves to denounce Ripley’s “ban” from Russia. Congressman John McCormack of Massachusetts, who chaired a committee
investigating un-American activities, called it “a suppression of the truth” that would “crystallize American opinion” of the failures of communism. One New York representative defended Ripley as an “outstanding American cartoonist whose honesty has never been questioned.”

  Such foot stomping made Ripley an instant hero among nationalists and right-wing organizations. Harry Jung, head of the American Vigilant Intelligence Federation, thanked Ripley on behalf of his “group of patriots” and encouraged him to “Go after the Bolsheviks!” Ripley suddenly had to consider how far to exploit this new renown. He asked Joe Simpson to look into a possible series of anti-Communist radio broadcasts, but Simpson warned that it might alienate advertisers and listeners. “Not on a commercial radio program,” Simpson advised. “Also doubtful of NBC letting it on the air.”

  Ripley kept stoking the anti-Communist theme. In one Sunday-night broadcast he complained about his inability to visit Russia and promised to discuss the reason for the ban the following week. He immediately received a letter of admonishment from the advertising firm J. Walter Thompson Company, warning that the show’s sponsor, Standard Brands, wanted no mention of “Russia, Soviet or Communism.” Ripley then petulantly fired off letters directly to Standard Brand executives and board members, scolding them while also imploring them to reconsider.

  “I am astounded that Standard Brands takes this attitude, because I feel everyone should do all possible to combat the un-American institutions,” he wrote.

  When a Standard Brands executive replied that his company had to remain “non-partisan and non-political,” Ripley appealed to a higher authority. In a telegram to Hearst, he wrote:

  I cannot understand such attitude of men who would be first to lose their shirts and heads should Communism succeed in America STOP I would like to write a speech like one I did April fourth last year and broadcast special half hour program over National Broadcasting nationwide STOP Would appreciate your suggestions and assistance.

  Hearst’s response, if any, is lost to history, but Doug Storer soon received an urgent letter from NBC vice president John Royal. “Be sure Ripley doesn’t say anything about Russia in any way, shape or form on Sunday night,” said Royal, advising Storer that “everyone will be saved embarrassment.”

  Ripley complied, but found other ways to snipe. At St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Mamaroneck, he delivered an address titled “How God Is Worshipped All Over the World.” With religion banned in Russia, he said it was vital for other lands to explore “the mystery of whence we came and whither we are going.” The many religious customs he’d witnessed over the years “are all pointing in the same direction,” he said. “They are trying to make the pathway of life more pleasant.”

  He continued: “The greatest thing in life is faith.… Whatever your religious belief is, believe in it very much.”

  A nonpracticing Christian, Ripley never made it clear exactly where his own faith lay, except maybe a deep belief in the strange truths of life. And in himself.

  IN JANUARY OF 1936, Congress released a report on the previous year’s highest-paid Americans. While not a definitive list, the report found that sixteen people had earned more than $300,000; nine were General Motors employees, with GM president Alfred P. Sloan Jr. topping the list at $561,311. Ten movie and radio stars reported income in excess of $200,000, with Gary Cooper making $370,214.

  Ripley was not mentioned, possibly because his income came from various sources and no single corporation. Nonetheless, the curious cartoonist from Santa Rosa was now earning as much as GM’s president and ranked among the highest-paid men in America.

  He was also, by at least one measure, one of the most popular.

  The Boys Club of New York conducted a nationwide survey that spring of 1936, asking thousands of boys between the ages of eight and eighteen one question: “If you had your choice of all the jobs in the world, whose job would you want?” Walter Winchell ranked tenth—“because he knows everything before it happens,” one boy wrote. President Roosevelt was seventh, boxer Jack Dempsey sixth. Such notables as Henry Ford, golfer Bobby Jones, and aviator Charles Lindbergh didn’t even crack the top dozen. Movie star James Cagney ranked third, preceded by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

  Overwhelmingly, the boys preferred the job of that buck-toothed cartoonist, world traveler, and radio and film star Robert L. Ripley—who must’ve felt an extra thrill to have beaten Roosevelt. Among the boys’ reasons:

  “He gets ’round a lot.”

  “He is so busy with his radio speeches, drawings, and trips that he doesn’t have time to get into mischief.”

  “He meets interesting people and freaks.” (Rube Goldberg noted in his column that President Roosevelt also met many freaks, “only he keeps quiet about it.”)

  The widely publicized survey set off a flurry of editorials seeking to make sense of the values of America’s youth. “He is engrossed in life, as shown by a desire to go places and see things,” said the Nashville Tennessean. A Columbus Dispatch editor said, “Ripley makes a great deal of money just doing the things which the youth would like to do.”

  Boys recognized in Ripley a kindred spirit, a whimsical child in a man’s body who displayed “that priceless quality of naive and youthful wonder,” said a columnist friend of Ripley’s.

  “The wide-eyed, innocent curiosity that started Bob Ripley along the trail of fame more than 15 years ago burns as brightly today as ever,” O. B. Keeler wrote. “He is still a youngster … and he can never grow old, for the freshness of life is an eternal dew in his heart.”

  LeRoy Robert Ripley was becoming a real-life Peter Pan.

  Later that year, the New York Boy Scout Foundation honored Ripley at a star-studded benefit dinner chaired by Hearst and held at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. Among the attendees were Lou Gehrig, Walter Winchell, and many of New York’s top cartoonists. More than two thousand people paid $10 apiece to attend, raising scads of money for Ripley’s favorite charity, the Boy Scouts of Greater New York.

  Ripley had been traveling and arrived, theatrically, just in time for dinner. Wearing white socks with his dark suit, Ripley was surrounded by autograph seekers, patiently signing copies of his book, the backs of envelopes, scraps of paper. As if striving to live up to recent accolades, he told the attendees about his latest exploration throughout Greece, Africa, India, and Afghanistan.

  But the world as Ripley knew it had begun changing. Due to political upheaval and the storm clouds of war, lands he had recently visited were shifting allegiances and changing names. Latvia had become a dictatorship. Persia had become Iran. Adolf Hitler, Germany’s hawkish president, was expanding his army, building an air force, conspiring with Italy. In China, Mao Tse-tung’s Communist Army had been forced into retreat by Japan’s Imperial Army, even as many rural Chinese, left hungry and homeless by famine and civil war, wondered if communism might save them. Across Europe and Asia, nations were realigning—Communist or Socialist or Fascist—teaming up and choosing sides.

  None of which was good news for a man who, as fourteen-year-old Leroy Smith had put it to pollsters, “goes all around the world, has brains, and is always having adventures.”

  The future for adventure was looking bleak as Ripley’s foreign playgrounds tilted toward war, one after the other. For Ripley, it was like watching a curtain slowly close. And he worried: If he couldn’t travel at will, what would fuel his cartoons? If he couldn’t experience the wonders of the world and translate and reinterpret them in print and on air, what would stoke his followers’ dreams?

  As one of the most popular men in America, Ripley reigned among the most eligible, with an international playboy’s reputation nurtured in the gossip pages.

  “Almost always in public he is squiring with much gallantry something especially slick and saucy,” columnist O. O. McIntyre wrote in the New York American.

  “Who are the most beautiful women in the world?” a teenager shouted one night after a lecture at a Connecticut boys’ s
chool, and Ripley professed an appreciation for Icelandic women: “Blond and blue eyed, with beautiful skin and marvelous figures.” The boys wanted to hear about French and Spanish women, but Ripley said Europeans were “overrated” and that Oriental and Arab women were the most lovely and mysterious.

  Then again, he added, “You can see more beautiful women any day in the week in one New York block than you can find anywhere in the world.”

  With newspaper and magazine photography now commonplace, Ripley was often caught in the act of sharing drinks or dinner with actresses and dancers. Long gone were the requisite ball games and boxing matches, replaced by Broadway parties, charity balls, or cocktails at midtown nightclubs, often in the company of his raspy-voiced sidekick, Bugs Baer. Pictures of Ripley and Baer appeared regularly, posing with some attractive unnamed woman at a table with Gene Tunney or Babe Ruth. Ripley always looked dapper, in tailor-made suits, bright-colored shirts, bow ties, and his trademark black-and-white wing tips. He wore a pinky ring and twirled a walking stick. Columnists stoked his reputation as a fop. “All shyness disappears as Ripley goes to town sartorially,” said one writer. “High colors are his choice—green that is green, red that is red.”

  Yet, Ripley suspiciously remained a bachelor, and the question lingered—Why aren’t you married? “Women have a way of falling in love with Ripley,” wrote a female reporter who spent a weekend at BION Island while researching a story for Radio Stars magazine. “Popular, wealthy, fabulously famous, extremely attractive to women—and still not married!” Ripley usually explained that his hectic travel schedule limited his marital prospects to women who were extremely tolerant, adventurous, or both. “If she didn’t like to travel,” he said, “she’d be a widow most of the time.” He told another reporter that he sometimes dreamed of having children and “growing old at BION.” But it seemed that anytime he fell in love he would leave for a trip and return to find his lover betrothed to another.