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

by Neal Thompson

  Despite the dangers and images of war, he left China as enchanted and beguiled as ever. Though besieged by Japanese invaders, the country struck him as resilient and magical, a place “of superstition and religion, of mercy and goodness,” as Pearl Buck once put it, “of dreams and miracles, of dragons and gods and goddesses and priests …”

  Ripley’s group left China by boat, traveling to the Korean city of Pusan and then across to Japan, where Ripley spent a few days visiting temples, sitting for interviews with Japanese newsmen, and catching up on his cartoons before reuniting with the Mariposa once again for the journey home—to California.

  His latest big adventure put him in a philosophical mood, and his journal captured his sometimes pessimistic view of mankind, and possibly himself:

  Nature is strong and man is weak

  The earth turns green and man turns dark

  Nature is virulent and man is impotent

  ON FRIDAY MORNING, April 29, thousands of Santa Rosa citizens gathered outside the courthouse to celebrate “Ripley Day,” an event timed for Ripley’s return from the Orient. Ripley’s sister met the Mariposa at the pier in San Francisco and drove him straight to Santa Rosa, which he hadn’t visited since his mother died.

  Bands marched, flags waved, and residents cheered the return of their now-famous former citizen as Mayor George Cadan presented him the keys to the city and Ripley thanked the crowd. At a luncheon, ex-classmates sang high school fight songs and bombarded Ripley with backslaps and bet-you-don’t-remember-me’s. Ripley told the group that in the seventeen years since his last trip home he had visited Santa Rosa, Mexico; Santa Rosa, Chile; and Santa Rosa, Philippines.

  Ripley was escorted by civic leaders to his old grammar school and then to Santa Rosa High, where he told 1,500 students the story of leaving town in 1909 to work at the San Francisco Bulletin for $8 a week. He was joined onstage by his former English teacher, Frances O’Meara, whom he embraced in an enormous bear hug. Ripley thanked O’Meara for encouraging his drawing, then gave her a gold-and-jade necklace he’d purchased in China. After the event, O’Meara grew weepy recalling the 1921 fire that destroyed the old high school, torching all of Ripley’s drawings: “Part of me was destroyed in that fire … Their loss can never be replaced.”

  At one last reception that evening, the mayor gave Ripley an unexpected gift—a section of the roof beam from his old Orchard Street house. As a lonely little boy, LeRoy Ripley had sometimes crawled into the attic. He once etched his name into the beam with a pocketknife. The beam had been salvaged from the house and still bore Ripley’s hand-carved name. Visibly moved by the gesture, he seemed on the verge of tears. Fortunately, he had the excuse of a plane to catch. He quickly thanked everyone, then drove off in Ethel’s car.

  IN 1932 ALONE, Ripley estimated that he covered sixty thousand miles—equal to two and a half times around the Earth.

  In recognition of his relentless global explorations, he was elected to the prestigious, century-old Royal Geographic Society of London. (Ripley thought it was a prank and initially ignored the society’s congratulatory letter.) Joining the society put Ripley in the company of one of his heroes, Burton Holmes, the famed creator of the “travelogue,” who for forty years had been telling stories about his globetrotting experiences in popular lectures and films.

  Ripley had much in common with Holmes, who harbored a deep admiration for Marco Polo, loved the Orient, slept on a futon at night, and often wore a kimono by day. Ripley likely heard Holmes speak at the San Francisco World’s Fair in 1915, or read about Holmes witnessing the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 1906. He surely knew of Holmes’s much-publicized wanderings, which far outpaced his own. Along the way Holmes had collected massive amounts of art and curios, stored in his numerous residences. He now lived in a sprawling apartment, called Nirvana, overlooking Central Park.

  Holmes’s motto—“To Travel Is to Possess the World”—seemed to have become Ripley’s as well. And while Ripley enjoyed sharing his experiences with the public, he preferred the road to the radio booth or the lecture stage. At the start of 1933 he cut back on his radio and lecture schedule to prepare for even more far-flung travels.

  BY NOW, Ripley had become something of a wayfaring snob. For foreign lands to be interesting, they needed to challenge him, enlighten him, surprise him, or at least disgust him. South America and Europe had been too ordinary compared to the countries that most fascinated him, mainly India and China.

  He was hoping for some surprises from Africa when he booked a last-minute sea-and-air tour from Cairo to Cape Town in early 1933.

  As on previous travels through Muslim lands, he found himself troubled by the “fanatical” teachings of Islam and the Koran. He was also annoyed that the “natives” suddenly seemed so Western—drinking whiskey, wearing English suits, mixing socially with white Brits and Yanks.

  His curiosity was finally aroused when he and Joe Simpson and a camera crew (no girlfriend this time) reached Sudan, where he fell into a typical rhythm. One day he’d be amazed by the sword-wielding Bishari tribe. The next day he’d be repulsed by the “unwashed horde” traveling in the third-class barge towed behind his ship down the Nile. As on other travels, he was shocked at how hard the women worked. “In this country, there are three beasts of burden,” he wrote in a dispatch, en route to Khartoum. “The camel, the donkey, and the woman.” The men, meanwhile, spent much of their time horizontal. Although he’d sometimes be accused of mistreating the women in his life, there was a complicated duality to Ripley’s contradictory attitudes on gender and racial equality. He had fallen in love with Africa, for example, but disparaged African males’ work ethic, sometimes referring to Africans as “darkies” and at times claiming admiration for the British “white standard” in its colonies.

  “The English know how to run colonies,” he wrote, while the Americans “have a knack for spoiling natives.”

  Friends could never quite resolve the seemingly bipolar attitudes of Ripley the traveler. On the one hand, he was the worldly anthropologist, concerned about women being treated as beasts of burden in male-dominated cultures, and seemingly envious of the simple lives of the poor. (In New Zealand, he had admired the Maori, who seemed peaceful and lived “in the moment.”) On the other hand, he was the narrow-minded hayseed, relieved to get off the Nile and into the Grand Hotel in Khartoum, which he called “a first-class white man’s oasis in the desert, where they have pink gins, and Scotch and sodas.” He was sometimes being ironic in such statements, or self-mocking. Still, it was often hard for Ripley to disguise his unease amid the dark-skinned poor or conceal his fluctuating compassions. In Khartoum, when his car was surrounded by swarms of beggars, he found them menacing but also “curious [and] good natured.”

  Ripley flew south to the city of Juba and, in his adopted traveling uniform—pith helmet, khaki shorts, and two-toned shoes—he walked through a village of thatched-roof huts shaped like beehives, gathering footage for an upcoming Vitaphone film (in which he would describe the “African Beehive Village”). He filmed some of the topless women, but many rushed to cover themselves when the strange-looking white man approached.

  In Nairobi, Ripley toured a Kikuyu village with an Englishman named John Boyes, who had lived in Africa for years and once fought beside the Kikuyus against a rival tribe, afterward declaring himself their king. Boyes was also a known elephant poacher who exploited what he called the “Dark Continent.” Discussing colonialism with Boyes gave Ripley the chance to explore topics that had nagged him since his arrival in Africa. He disagreed with Boyes on a few points—for example, that the “savage” native was inferior to the educated Westerner or that the Kikuyu practice of female genital mutilation was acceptable—but felt there was something valid about Boyes’s argument that white men had upset the natural order of Africa. Just as he hated to see signs of Westernization in Cairo, Ripley disapproved of what he saw in Nairobi: “stupid white people trying to change the age-old habits of the Africans.” />
  “Missionaries are the curse of Africa, the same as they are the curse of the Islands of the South Seas. The black man of Africa in his savage state is a gentleman,” he wrote in his journal. “Only when he starts to become civilized does he lose his character and become diseased, immoral, unhealthy, and criminal.”

  ONE APRIL MORNING, Ripley worked in his hotel room in his undershorts, catching up on overdue cartoons while nursing a hangover. He’d been celebrating the previous day, after hearing the news from back home: Congress had voted to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment, and Prohibition would come to an end later in 1933. Nairobi was an expensive city—a pair of socks cost $2.50—but for the price of two socks Ripley managed to buy a celebratory quart of scotch.

  Ripley loved to drink when he traveled (and when he didn’t), but usually found time to work off the liquor through exercise. Lately, it had been getting harder to squeeze in a swim, a long walk, or a game of tennis or handball, and he worried often about his weight. That didn’t stop him from drinking and eating more and more freely. His weakness for alcohol was something else he shared with Burton Holmes, who never smoked but would boast in his autobiography that he “violated the Volstead Act at every convenient or inconvenient opportunity.”

  Even with the extra pounds and rounded face, Ripley was recognized everywhere in South Africa. He traveled from Mombasa to Zanzibar to Maputo (known then as Lourenzo Marques), then to Swaziland and onward to Durban, where he judged a Believe It or Not contest and gave a radio address. During the show, he made frequent trips to the adjacent Durban Club, but later felt “utterly disgusted” with himself. After a visit to Victoria Falls, he again drank too much during a “disgraceful” appearance at the Plaza in Johannesburg and awoke feeling embarrassed about his public drunkenness “and more or less sore at the world in general.”

  He forced himself out of bed for a scheduled trip to the Robinson gold mine, which turned out to be the perfect hangover cure. He descended by elevator nearly two miles underground into a buried city of railroads, electric lights, blacksmith shops, and hospitals, all squeezed beneath a low ceiling propped up by crooked timbers. He was amazed that man’s “lust for gold” had inspired him to dig so deep into the earth’s crust. Though overwhelmed by the thick heat, he was grateful for the perspiration, the previous night’s scotch seeping from his pores. When he emerged from the elevator and back into sunlight, he felt euphoric.

  During a radio interview in Cape Town, he described his experience in the gold mine as “the most thrilling of my life.”

  BY NOW RIPLEY had visited 147 countries, traveling “farther than the distance from the earth to the moon,” by his estimation. When asked about his favorite country, he usually listed China first, but told a South African interviewer, “at the present time, after my trip from Cairo to Cape Town, I am a little bit in doubt.” He flew to Argentina by seaplane—among the earliest transatlantic passenger flights—then flew to New York, lugging many crates of artifacts he’d purchased in Africa.

  He also returned home armed with more strange scenes with which to entertain a depressed nation.

  In Mombasa, he had watched a two-hour tribal dance that climaxed when one frenzied dancer “stuck the blade of a dagger into his mouth and twisted it around and then spouted blood all over.” Just like the holy men of India who tortured themselves, he continued to be fascinated by religious fanaticism. He had come to believe that “the strangest places on earth are the holiest.” He was also developing a guilty fascination with disfiguration. In Zanzibar he searched for victims of elephantiasis, offering two rupees to anyone who would expose their large and gruesome limbs to his camera.

  While flying (nervously) home from Africa, he had tried describing in his journal what he loved about travel, how the rewards were always worth the hardships:

  I don’t know what my position in life really is—I don’t like to fly, I don’t like to walk, I don’t like to swim, and I don’t like to be underground … Yet each time I do either one of these things I am thrilled, but more thrilled after they are finished. Every time I go up in an airplane, I am exhilarated after I am on the ground again.

  Ripley’s fame would soon expand significantly thanks to the promotional instincts of a fellow Santa Rosan named Charles C. Pyle.

  Known as “Cash and Carry” or just “C. C.,” Pyle was a born promoter. As a boy, he had created a goodwill tour to lure businesses back to Santa Rosa after the 1906 earthquake. In 1925, he became publicity agent for Chicago Bears star Red Grange, considered a first in pro football. Pyle next formed his own football team, the New York Yankees, and founded his own nine-team American Football League to compete with the NFL.

  When the AFL flopped and was absorbed into the NFL, Pyle switched sports to promote a 1928 L.A.-to-New York marathon called the Bunion Derby. Most of the runners dropped out along the way, struck by cars or felled by illness, and only a handful made it to New York. Pyle lost at least $150,000.

  Another money-losing venture was a sideshow tour with the mummified corpse of a train robber named Elmer McCurdy, which Pyle bought for $50, dubbing him the “Oklahoma Outlaw.” Critics—and the police—eventually forced Pyle to bury poor McCurdy.

  Ripley had attended grammar school with Pyle’s sister and was willing to listen to an intriguing business proposal from a childhood acquaintance.

  Pyle’s idea was to bring the Believe It or Not franchise to the upcoming World’s Fair in Chicago in the form of an exhibit that would display some of the curios and artifacts Ripley had been collecting. The highlight of Pyle’s proposed exhibition would be live performances by some of the bizarrely talented people Ripley had featured in his cartoons, films, and radio shows. Pyle would run everything and pay Ripley a licensing fee plus a share of the profits. With Ripley traveling and still overcommitted to his lecture, film, and radio obligations, the arrangement could spread the Believe It or Not brand name without much heavy lifting by Ripley.

  Ripley’s initial contribution to the partnership was to give the exhibition its name: the Ripley “Believe It or Not” Odditorium.

  RIPLEY TAPPED his Hearst-appointed secretary and frequent traveling partner, Joe Simpson, to help Pyle track down performers and negotiate contracts. Simpson and Pyle sent out scores of letters and telegrams seeking the world’s oldest man, the shortest man, contortionists, Hindu ascetics, and other Believe It or Not subjects. “We have done our best to trace the Horned Man of South Africa but have been unable to do so,” read one reply from an overseas acquaintance.

  Performers were offered travel expenses, a $40 weekly salary, and free room and board. Half their pay would be withheld until the end of the fair, to prevent premature quitters. (Delayed payments were implemented after the early loss of a performer from India. When Arjan Desur Dangar learned that his manager/translator was keeping two-thirds of his income, he cracked open the man’s head with a brick. The manager fought back and accidentally ripped off half his client’s seventy-eight-inch mustache. Pyle sent them both back to India.)

  The Century of Progress Exposition opened on May 27, 1933, commemorating Chicago’s hundredth birthday and its recovery from the 1871 fire that had leveled much of the city. Spread across 424 acres south of downtown, the fair was scheduled to last five months.

  Ripley visited in July for a dizzying three-day Odditorium kickoff. He hosted a huge contest in Hearst’s Herald and Examiner, gave radio interviews and lectures, and autographed books at Marshall Field’s. At a luncheon of the Chicago Association of Commerce, he was introduced as “one of the world’s greatest explorers,” and he was a special guest at the first-ever Major League Baseball All-Star Game, held at Comiskey Park.

  BELIEVE IT!

  The All-Star Game was intended as a one-time matchup between the two Major League divisions but would become an annual event.

  At Pyle’s air-conditioned exhibition hall, visitors walked past display cases with shrunken heads, medieval torture devices, and hundreds of other treasures and
trinkets that Ripley finally released from his boxed-up personal collection, including Jesse James’s first gun and a “cannibal fork” from Fiji.

  Farther inside were sixteen small stages, where entertainers performed vaudeville-style acts. On one stage, an attractive sword swallower plunged a two-foot neon light down her throat, where it glowed. Another performer lifted weights with hooks attached to his eyelids, then used the same hooks to tow a wagon carrying his wife. Other stages featured a man who could smoke a cigarette and inflate balloons through his eye socket, a man who could dislocate his jaw and “swallow” his nose, and a one-man orchestra who could play twenty-one instruments simultaneously.

  Some of the two dozen performers had been featured in Believe It or Not cartoons over the years, including E. L. Blystone, who wrote more than two thousand letters on a grain of rice, and a man who crammed his huge mouth with four golf balls and a full-sized baseball. As one newspaper writer pointed out, “You’ll not have to wonder about these men and women from a pen and ink illustration. They’ll be right there in person.”

  In the first weeks, however, business lagged, and Pyle worried that the Odditorium might be a bust. He considered dropping the forty-cent admission price to lure visitors and shared his nagging concerns with another sideshow operator named Lou Dufour. “I don’t understand it,” Pyle lamented.

  Somewhat audaciously, Dufour had come to the fair with a display of human embryos in jars of formaldehyde, including a two-headed fetus. His other exhibit, “Darkest Africa,” was a village of thatched-roof huts inhabited by Zulu and Senegalese immigrants from Harlem dressed in loincloths and carrying spears. “Darkest Africa” also included the hut of a man named Captain Callahan, who had been mutilated during an expedition to the Congo. A show barker told patrons that savages “had decapitated his penis and testicles,” and that Callahan would remove his robe to reveal the scars—for an extra fifty cents.