Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Ripley's Believe It or Not! is an American franchise founded by Robert Ripley, which deals in bizarre events and items so strange and unusual that readers might question the claims. Originally a newspaper panel, the Believe It or Not feature proved popular and was later adapted into a wide variety of formats, including radio, television, comic books, a chain of museums and a book series.
The Ripley collection includes 20,000 photographs, 30,000 artifacts and more than 100,000 cartoon panels. With 80-plus attractions, the Orlando, Florida-based Ripley Entertainment, Inc., a division of the Jim Pattison Group a Canadian global company with an annual attendance of more than 12 million guests. Ripley Entertainment's publishing and broadcast divisions oversee numerous projects, including the syndicated TV series, the newspaper cartoon panel, books, posters and games.
Ripley first called his cartoon feature, originally involving sports feats, Champs and Chumps, and it premiered on December 19, 1918, in The New York Globe. Ripley began adding items unrelated to sports, and in October 1919, he changed the title to Believe It or Not. When the Globe folded in 1923, Ripley moved to the New York Evening Post. In 1924, the panel began being syndicated by Associated Newspapers,[2] (formed as part of a cooperative that had included the Globe). That same year, Ripley hired Norbert Pearlroth as his researcher, and Pearlroth spent the next 52 years of his life in the New York Public Library, working ten hours a day and six days a week in order to find unusual facts for Ripley.[3]
Other writers and researchers included Lester Byck. In 1930, Ripley moved to the New York American and was picked up by the King Features Syndicate, being quickly syndicated on an international basis.[4]
Ripley died in 1949; those working on the syndicated newspaper panel after his death included Paul Frehm (1938–1978; he became the full-time artist in 1949), and his brother Walter Frehm (1948–1989); Walter worked part-time with his brother Paul and became a full-time Ripley artist from 1978 to 1989. Others who assisted included Clem Gretter (1941–1949), Bob Clarke (1943–1944), Joe Campbell (1946–1956), Art Sloggatt (1971–1975), Carl Dorese, and Stan Randall. Paul Frehm won the National Cartoonists Society's Newspaper Panel Cartoon Award for 1976 for his work on the series. Clarke later created parodies of Believe It or Not! for Mad, as did Wally Wood and Ernie Kovacs, who also did a recurring satire called "Strangely Believe It!" on his TV programs. Other strips and books borrowed the Ripley design and format, such as Ralph Graczak's Our Own Oddities, John Hix's Strange as It Seems, and Gordon Johnston's It Happened in Canada. Don Wimmer took up the panel from 1989-2004.[5] John Graziano from 2005-2021.[6] The current artist is Kieran Castaño and is supported by the Ripley's Research Team.[7]
At the peak of its popularity, the syndicated feature was read daily by about 80 million readers, and during the first three weeks of May 1932 alone, Ripley received over two million pieces of fan mail. Dozens of paperback editions reprinting the newspaper panels have been published over the decades. Recent Ripley's Believe It or Not! books containing new material have supplemented illustrations with photographs.
