Revisiting Santa Rosa native Robert Ripley

'Anybody who is born in Santa Rosa must turn out to be either an artist or a poet, for the spirit of the hills gets into your blood out there.' — Robert Ripley, quoted in 'A Curious Man: The Strange & Brilliant Life of Robert 'Believe It or Not' Ripley'

Santa Rosa native Robert Ripley may have left his hometown as a budding artist, but soon his love of startling facts, exotic locales and human and animal 'oddities' propelled him to national prominence.

He loved to upset popular wisdom, as he did in 1928 when his 'Believe It or Not' cartoon proclaimed that famed aviator Charles Lindbergh 'was the 67th man to make a nonstop flight over the Atlantic Ocean.' Amid a torrent of angry denunciations, Ripley pointed out that other fliers already had made the crossing, including two who flew together by plane and 64 more in dirigibles. Lindbergh was simply the first to make the trip flying solo.

Ripley died in 1949 at age 59, but those who think of him merely as a curator of the weird and wacky — with vague ties to the Church of One Tree here in Juilliard Park — know little of the man who in his day was arguably Santa Rosa's most famous native son.

They will get the chance to learn more Tuesday, when PBS presents 'Ripley: Believe It or Not' on 'American Experience.'

'He was a small town boy made good,' said Cathleen O'Connell, the program's producer/director.

Yet his tale also is that of 'a goofy, portly, bucktoothed stutterer who becomes a world traveler, a multimedia pioneer, a rich and famous lady's man, and one of the most popular men in America,' as he is described by his biographer Neal Thompson in 'A Curious Man: The Strange & Brilliant Life of Robert 'Believe it or Not' Ripley' (Three Rivers Press, 2014).

Born in Santa Rosa in 1890, Ripley grew up the son of a carpenter on Orchard Street, north of downtown. Here he survived the 1906 earthquake, scampered the streets of Chinatown and was described as shy, poor and something of a misfit.

At Santa Rosa High he found support as a budding artist from a teacher who let him submit artwork rather than a written essay. At 19, he left Santa Rosa to take a job as a sports cartoonist in San Francisco. His first two editors let him go, prompting him to move on to New York City where he took a job in early 1912 at the New York Globe.

In the winter of 1918, while stumped for a subject, Ripley drew a cartoon featuring a collection of nine athletes doing what one editor later termed 'screwy' stunts: staying underwater for 6.5 minutes, hopping the 100-dash in 11 seconds, walking backwards across America. The cartoon was titled 'Champs and Chumps.' The name 'Believe It or Not' didn't appear for another 10 months.

Big break

Ripley's life and work forever changed when the Globe sent him on an around-the-world expedition. He sent back regular dispatches and cartoons that introduced readers to the exotic world of the Far East and India.

When he returned to New York, his 'Believe It or Not' cartoons branched out from athletics to include what would become his brand's three staples: startling facts, human and animal 'oddities,' and unique features of exotic locales.

Even then, 'Believe It or Not' didn't become a daily feature until 1920, according to Ripleys.com.

By that time he already had caused his first big stir with the Lindbergh cartoon, and he seemed eager to create more. Among his unknown truths: Buffalo Bill never shot a buffalo. (He shot bison.) And George Washington wasn't the first U.S. president. (Ripley said John Hanson briefly served as the first president of the Continental Congress; others say there were even more before Hanson.)

'He was quite a provocateur,' said O'Connell.

Ripley's showmanship led to a best selling book deal and a job in 1929 with newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. The latter increased Ripley's income tenfold, to $100,000 a year.

Under Hearst, Ripley regularly went off to explore the world, eventually visiting more than 200 countries. And Hearst's King Features began contests for readers to send in their best strange-but-true items.

'Ripley himself crowd-sourced his material,' said O'Connell. The public, she said, soon saw that getting their items published by Ripley as sort of a way to 'become immortalized.'

Among those who sent in an item was Peanuts comic strip creator and longtime Santa Rosan Charles Schulz. At 15, Schulz had his first published drawing in a 'Believe It or Not' panel — a sketch of the family dog with a credit stating 'Drawn by Sparky,' Schulz's nickname.

From newspaper cartoons, Ripley went on to appear in short film segments for Warner Brothers and then won his own radio show. The radio broadcasts were unique partly because they were done on location from places such as inside Carlsbad Caverns and at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and a shark tank in Florida's Marineland.

At the inspiration and direction of fellow Santa Rosan Charles C. Pyle, Ripley opened his first Odditorium at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. Along with artifacts the cartoonist had gathered over the years, it featured live performances, many from those who had appeared in 'Believe It or Not' panels. They ranged from a man who could blow up a balloon with his eye to a 9-year-old girl born without arms or legs (but who had learned to dress herself and write) and a woman whose skin ailment caused thick folds of skin to droop from her hips to her knees.

Such displays caused one New York Times reporter in 2007 to declare that Ripley had been 'a cross between the Coney Island barker and the cultural anthropologist.'

Thompson acknowledges in his book that under Pyle's direction, the first Odditorium had 'become nothing less than a spiffed-up adaptation of a Barnum-esque freak show.' Even so, he argues that Ripley sincerely appreciated such people as underdogs and worthy of attention.

Ripley always felt something of a misfit and 'championed other misfits of the world and taught people how to appreciate the uniqueness in oddballs,' Thompson told The Press Democrat in 2014.

When television came along, Ripley plunged into that medium with a weekly show on NBC, but after his 13th episode, he suffered a massive heart that ended his life.

His body was returned to Santa Rosa, where it was buried beside his parents in the Odd Fellows Cemetery next to Santa Rosa Memorial Park.

His death did not bring an end to 'Believe It or Not,' however. Orlando-based Ripley Entertainment now promotes the cartoon as the longest-running in the world, part of a brand that includes books, aquariums and other attractions in 13 states and Canada, including Odditoriums in San Francisco and Hollywood.

If Ripley had published a 'Believe It or Not' about himself, it might have divulged the fact that he couldn't take full credit for many of his cartoons, including the famous Lindbergh panel. Ripley silently owed his success largely to a former banker who spent six days a week seeking out amazing facts in the stacks of the New York Public Library.

The researcher's name was Norbert Pearlroth, a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe who was said to be fluent in at least seven languages. According to Thompson, Pearlroth worked for 'Believe It or Not' for 52 years, far outlasting Ripley and retiring in 1975 at age 81.

Ripley was married and divorced as a young man and later was described as a millionaire playboy. But near the end of this life he told a reporter, 'I've discovered that fame and good fortune don't mean a thing unless you can share them with the right woman.'

'I ultimately think he was lonely,' said O'Connell. Ripley was the kind of man who couldn't be home more than a couple of months without wanting to get back on the road.

The human fascination with the mysterious and unbelievable remains long after the cartoonist's death. As Pearlroth, the researcher, once put it, people are drawn to Ripley's work much for the same reason they are drawn to fairy tales.

'They like to learn that nature makes exceptions,' he said. 'These are fairy tales for grown-ups.'

You can reach Staff Writer Robert Digitale at 521-5285 or robert.digitale@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @rdigit.