The Modern Marco Polo

Somewhere on the edge of popular consciousness is the name Robert Ripley. If I throw in the phrase "believe it or not" , Robert Ripley becomes the answer of an easy trivia question. The man's legacy occupies a strange place where he is known but overall not very well known.

For me it all started with a 4th grade school book fair. I had saved enough money for two paperback collections of Robert Ripley's Believe It Or Not cartoon panels from his syndicated newspaper series. I was hooked. These weren't the first books I ever finished from cover to cover but they are the only ones I really remember.

The books were filled with bizarre facts, puzzles, the results of improbable battles and the kind of odd information that wasn't taught in school. One thing that I had learned was from each odd fact comes a long thread of connecting history. It became apparent that schools were forced to teach a very streamlined body of knowledge and the world was so much bigger and more fascinating than what was in the classroom.

Who was Robert Ripley? He was born in Santa Clara California in 1890 when the West still had a little wildness in it and places like Arizona were not yet granted statehood. He played semi-professional baseball and sold cartoons to magazines and newspapers.

As a very young man he moved from California to New York City and became a sports columnist. His birth name was LeRoy but a newspaper editor suggested he change it to Robert to sound more masculine. On a slow news day in 1918 Robert submitted a nine panel drawing call Champs and Chumps about odd but very real sports. The cartoons soon began to be more popular than his articles.

He married a woman named Beatrice Roberts and together they traveled to Asia. Their exploits were published in the New York Globe as a daily syndicated feature -sort of like a blog. In that time it was quite a technical feat because the articles had to be telegraphed or radio telegraphed back to New York.

Robert Ripley became the beat writer of the strange and unusual. So by 1929 when Randolph Hearst syndicated Robert Ripley's Believe it Or Not in his national newspaper chains, Ripley as already an experienced writer, traveler and researcher.

Believe It Or Not made headlines on November 3, 1929 when the cartoon stated that the United States had no national anthem. Though most people assumed it was it was the Star Spangled Banner but other songs like Hail To The Chief were also played at official functions. None of the songs were actually sanction. Americans wrote to their representatives. The White House alone reportedly received a million letters. By March 3, 1931; Herbert Hoover signed into law making The Star Spangle Banner our national anthem -partly because of Robert Ripley.

Through the 1930's  Believe it Or Not was regularly read every day by over 80 million people worldwide.

Daily, Robert Ripley would receive more mail than the President. He was so famous that mail would be delivered to him with only his name on the envelope. Once one letter was only addressed "to the biggest liar in the world" and it was correctly delivered to Robert Ripley, it's intended recipient.  

At 12 years old Charles Schulz, later known for the comic strip Peanuts, submitted his first paid work to Robert Ripley.

Robert Ripley was the first person to have his voice simulcasted around the world.  For over 15 years Believe It Or Not was a twice a week radio show on CBS and later on the Mutual Network.

Robert Ripley was a pioneer in sound movies. He did a series of short Believe It Or Not Movies to be played along with the cartoons and newsreels. 

In 1948-1949 he again was a pioneer in media, this time in TV. He produced his own television show just before his death. Before 1950 only about one percent of Americans owned a TV.

In 1933 the first "Odditorium" opened in Chicago. Today there are Believe It Or Not museums in ten countries.  

What's odd is how Robert Ripley has faded into a vague kitschy obscurity. For the last ten years or more Hollywood has planned to make a movie about him. There was a rumor the project received a green light and the actor Jim Cary signed on for the lead role. 

It probably would have been a good role for Jim Cary. Robert Ripley in some ways was similar to Andy Kauffman. Both men were extremely eccentric with unconventional personal lives.

Unlike Andy Kauffman, Robert Ripley had plenty of money to indulge himself with. He bought an authentic Chinese Junk instead of a yacht. Routinely he would dress in native consumes that he collected from his travels around the world. Before he died he visit over 200 countries on seven continents.

The 28 room mansion he owned in Miami, after his divorce, he shared with up to five women at a time and one pet boa. But Robert Ripley was also a shy and insecure man who drank heavily near the end of his life to help suppress a  nervous stutter.  

By chance I was given a copy of one of the scripts that was written and under consideration.  To prove truth is stranger than fiction, Robert Ripley died of a heart attack  while recording the thirteenth episode of his TV show -it was about death rituals from around the world.  If it was written as fiction it would have been rejected.

Robert Ripley's Believe It Or Not still draws crowds and generates profits, though the franchise is more popular overseas than here in America.  It's easy to think Robert Ripley was all about trivia but his was not a trivial life.