Robert Ripley’s Believe It or Not became a huge hit in 1929 when the feature caught the attention of publisher William Randolph Hearst, who lured Ripley to his King Features Syndicate. Ripley’s feature went on to huge success, not only as the famous comic panel but also in books, movie shorts, a radio show, a television show, the Odditoriums and more.
Today there are 32 Believe It or Not! museums in 10 countries around the world and “Believe It or Not!” is still a very popular franchise.
Ripley claimed to be able to “prove every statement made” because he worked with the amazing professional fact researcher, Norbert Pearlroth. Pearlroth assembled the array of odd facts for Believe it or Not! and also verified the small-town claims submitted by readers for 52 years, working 10 hours a day, six days a week in the New York Public Library. Believe it or not!
One of the fabled Disney Nine Old Men of animation, Les Clark, was featured in Ripley’s Believe It or Not comic panel on June 29, 1947: “Les Clark has made more than 1,215,000 drawings in his 20 years with Walt Disney. In making them, Les used up more than 12,000 pencils!”
In that same tradition and as a tribute to the comic panel that fascinated me when I was growing up, the following stories from Disney history are all true.
Disney Animator Wins An Olympic Gold Medal For His Art
According to the Encyclopedia of the Olympic Games (1972), gold, silver and bronze medals were awarded for art at the quadrennial Olympics from 1912 to 1948. The gold medal for watercolors was only awarded twice: in 1928 to Jean Jacoby of Luxembourg, and in 1932 to Disney artist Lee Blair for a rodeo image done in what was known as California Watercolor Style.
Blair was the husband of famed artist Mary Blair and the brother of animator Preston Blair, both of whom worked for Disney, as well.
The painting was a depiction of a crowded corral, full of horses and lariat-carrying cowboys. It was donated (some reports say “sold”) to Blair's alma mater, Polytechnic High School in downtown Los Angeles, where it hung in the library. When the school relocated to Sun Valley in 1957, the painting was lost and the school district has no record of what happened to it.
The first year the Olympics were staged in Los Angeles was 1932. The silver medal in watercolor that year went to Percy Crosby, the creator of the comic strip Skippy.
“I don't remember Uncle Lee ever once mentioning it,” said his niece, Jeanne Chamberlain of the gold medal. In fact, she had never seen the medal until 2008. In the wake of the death of Blair's son, Kevin, Chamberlain was going through family documents stored in a safe deposit box in Northern California. She pushed aside some papers and found a thin, cardboard box.
“I opened it up, and there was the gold medal,” said Chamberlain who then was 74. It looked nearly pristine, as if it had been seldom out of the box.
“Of course,” she said, “I began to cry.”
Blair was sensitive about appearing too old, so he rarely mentioned the medal because it was closely tied to a specific date that would betray his real age.
Probably the only remaining public reminder of Blair's Olympic achievement is a bronze plaque on the wall of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum where his name is listed as a gold medal winner, along with those who won in gymnastics, wrestling and sculpture.
Walt's Oscar win made it to the pages of the Ripley's Believe it or Not.
Woman Kills Husband Possessed by Mickey Mouse But Gets Minimum Sentence
From the Orlando Sentinel newspaper February 24, 1989 about an incident that took place in New York:
“A woman who killed her husband by repeatedly running over him with a car – and who claimed she thought he’d been possessed by Mickey Mouse – has been sentenced to five to 15 years in prison.
“Roseann Greco, 52, of West Islip, was charged with second-degree murder for killing her husband, Felix, in their driveway in 1985. She insisted at the time that the cartoon character had taken over her husband’s body.
“Mrs. Greco was found mentally competent to stand trial and was convicted of first-degree manslaughter. She could have faced a maximum of eight to 25 years in prison.
“But Suffolk County Judge John Vaughn sentenced her Wednesday to the minimum, five to 15 years. Assistant District Attorney Georgia Tscheimber urged the judge to impose the maximum sentence, arguing that Mrs. Greco posed a threat to her family if released from prison or a mental hospital.
“Defense attorney Edward McGuinness said the crime was the result of his client's refusal to take prescribed medication for mental problems. Relatives had asked for the minimum sentence and promised Greco would be ‘watched carefully and made to keep taking her medication' when released.”
Walt Disney Wanted Mickey Mouse To Commit Suicide
In 1920, Walt Disney saw a Harold Lloyd silent theatrical comedy entitled Haunted Spooks where Lloyd's character tries to kill himself. However, being a comedy, Lloyd picks up a gun to shoot himself and it turns out to be a water pistol. He stands in front of a trolley to be run over and it veers away on another track a mere 3 feet in front of him.
In the Mickey Mouse comic strip story, “Mr. Slicker and the Egg Robbers” (September 22, 1930 through December 29, 1930), written by Floyd Gottfredson, who was also drawing the strip, Gottfredson got a suggestion from Walt that he discussed in a November 1975 interview.
“(Walt) would make suggestions every once in a while, for some short continuities and so on, and I would do them. One that I'll never forget, and which I still don't understand was when he said, 'Why don't you do a continuity of Mickey trying to commit suicide?'
“So I said, 'Walt! You're kidding!' He replied, 'No, I'm not kidding. I think you could get a lot of funny stuff out of that.' I said, 'Gee whiz, Walt. I don't know. What do you think [King Features] Syndicate will think of it? What do you think the editors will think? And the readers?'
“He said, 'I think it will be funny. Go ahead and do it.' So I did, oh, maybe 10 days of Mickey trying to commit suicide—jumping off bridges, trying to hang himself… I don't remember all the details. But strangely enough, the Syndicate didn't object. We didn't hear anything from the editors, and Walt said, 'See? It was funny. I told you it would be.'”
Thinking Minnie is in love with someone else, Mickey tries jumping off a high bridge but lands instead on the deck of a small boat that had been tugging underneath. Mickey turns on the gas in his house but a squirrel scampers in to use the escaping gas to over inflate his balloon that explodes and scares Mickey.
Mickey puts a huge anvil around his neck goes to the river bank where the fish tell him the water is freezing so Mickey decides against it.
Mickey soon discovers that Minnie loves only him and his fears were unfounded.
Just the Facts, Ma’am!
The late actor-writer-producer-director Jack Webb is perhaps best remembered as the tough, no-nonsense cop Joe Friday on the long running and popular television series Dragnet.
Amazingly, in his youth, he wanted to be a cartoonist. “I was convinced that Walt Disney was combing the country for a fellow like me,” Webb said. I made up a portfolio, took it to the Disney Studios and sat back to wait for the big offer.”
That big offer never came, so Webb found other work.
Later, Webb became a friend of Walt and even shot some Dragnet episodes on the Disney back lot, until the noise of Walt building things for Disneyland drove the production company to other locations. Roy E. Disney's first professional film work was working as an assistant film editor on Dragnet in 1951.
Friend and fellow Disney Historian Jeff Kurtti wrote to me that “Stage 2 at the Disney Studio in Burbank was built and financed as a joint agreement between Walt Disney and Webb, who used the stage for the filming of the first Dragnet television series from 1949 to 1954. The 1953 Rosalind Russell feature Never Wave at a WAC was also shot on the stage and used the Disney Studio facilities.”
The Man Who Sank Disneyland’s Mark Twain
As former 1955 Disneyland cast member Terry O'Brien finally admitted in 2005, he was the one responsible for the sinking of the Mark Twain on July 17. One of O'Brien's first assignments was to tend the “holding pen” for the Mark Twain, the area where people waited to board the boat.
Yes, the facial hair ban at the Disney parks was true. Believe it or not!
“They gave me a clicker and told me to let people in until the pen was full. The boat would come in and let one group off and we'd put the other group on. No one was sure just how many people would fit, so they said to try and keep it between 200 to 300.”
After a few times, it got kind of boring, so O'Brien started talking to the people and the other workers as he clicked people into the pen, not paying much attention to how many there were. The boat came in, and the next group got on.
“Pretty soon, we heard the toot-toot signal that meant disaster. And everyone wondered what had happened.” What had happened was that the boat, which actually made its way around the lagoon on a rail, had sunk off the track and into the mud. There were too many people on board.
“It took about 20 to 30 minutes to get it fixed and back on the rail and it came chugging in. As soon as it pulled up to the landing, all the people rushed to the side to get off, and the boat tipped into the water again, so they all had to wade off through the water, and some of them were pretty mad”
His boss came to ask O'Brien how many people he'd put on the boat. “And I said about 250. And he said, 'Well, better keep it at about 200.' Then I remembered I had the clicker in my pocket. I looked and was shocked to see I'd put 508 people on the boat. I never told anyone until now. Now, I figure, what can they do to me? They can't fire me.”
After that first summer, O’Brien left to go on his Mormon mission to Guatemala. After he got back from that experience he worked again at Disneyland for several summers while he attended Brigham Young University. Eventually, he ended up teaching pre-Columbian art at Cypress College in Fullerton and then retired to Provo, Utah.
Weed Science
There are more than 170 different species of weeds. These weeds have both a common name and a scientific botanical one that is in Latin, the international language of science.
The main reason for plants to have scientific names is to eliminate confusion since some common names may be used for more than one plant and the Latin name is recognized in countries around the world.
“We landscaped all of Disneyland in less than a year with a maximum of arm-waving and a minimum of drawings and money,” laughed Disney Legend Bill Evans who along with his brother Jack were hired personally by Walt Disney to landscape the Happiest Place on Earth.
“We scampered around the country to try to find all the mature trees we could and it didn't take long to exhaust the budget. The park was built on a very modest budget.”
At a 10-year anniversary celebration in July 1965 for Disneyland cast members held at the Disneyland Hotel, Walt regaled the audience with this anecdote:
“A lot of people don’t realize we had some very serious problems here, keeping this thing going … getting it started. I remember when we opened we didn’t have enough money to finish the landscaping. I had Bill Evans go and put Latin tags on all of the weeds. We had a lot of inquiries. [laughter] That’s a fact. You ask Bill Evans. Of course, every weed to Bill Evans has got a Latin name, you know.”
In 1985, I asked Evans if that story was true. He responded, “Yes, absolutely. I had to tell Walt by the time I got around to the back berm that we had run out of money and plant material and were scraping the bottom of the barrel. Walt said, ‘I notice you have some head high weeds out there. Why don't you put some jaw breaking Latin names on them?’ So we did as he suggested.
“As we got closer to opening, we did a lot of irrigating to get the weeds to grow on the barren areas, particularly on the high dirt berm that surrounded the Park, so it would look fuller for the guests. The weeds were growing almost as high as trees so we put some fancy names on them. Walt got such a kick out of it that he mentioned it at the cast celebration for the 10th anniversary of Disneyland.”
Peg-Leg’s Pete Ever Changing Peg Leg
Peg Leg Pete is the longest recurring Disney animated character. He originally bullied Alice in the Alice Comedies starting in 1925 as “Bootleg Pete” and later Oswald the Lucky Rabbit before becoming Mickey Mouse’s chief nemesis in Steamboat Willie (1928).
“For an adversary, we had a surly strongman with a cigar (usually) and a wooden leg, probably to suggest a pirate symbol who audiences would associate with someone who was rough and mean,” stated animator Frank Thomas in 1993.
“The animators could never seem to remember whether the wooden leg was on the right or the left, and, in some pictures, even drew him with two good legs but still called him Peg-Leg Pete. However, the biggest problem with the peg leg was doing a walk cycle because he would have to swing the leg around and it messed with the timing.
“So we got rid of the peg leg not for socially conscious reasons but because it just made things easier for us to animate.”
In the animated short Two Gun Mickey (1934), Mickey is a cowboy hero who rescues Minnie from Pete and his gang of outlaws.
Pete switches which leg his pegleg is on several times during the few minutes of this cartoon. One of the most noticeable instances is his jumping on the log bridge with the peg on one leg and when he gets off on the other end, the peg has shifted to the other leg.
In his earliest comic strip appearances Pete’s peg leg also proved to be a problem as well. At first, Pete sported a knee-high peg leg which was later reduced to a ankle-high prosthesis.
In Mickey Mouse in Race to Death Valley (1930) newspaper serial, cartoonist Floyd Gottfredson started the strip drawing the peg leg on Pete’s right leg but by the time the story had finished, the peg leg was on the left leg.
Officially, Pete lost his peg leg in the animated shorts after appearing in Mickey’s Service Station (1935). It would later pop up again in Mickey, Donald and Goofy: The Three Musketeers (2004).
Davy Crockett in the White House
When the comedy movie Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult was released in 1994, producer David Zucker found himself invited to the White House for a screening. He had heard that President Bill Clinton might be concerned about a “lookalike” for him that was used in the film and his actions.
After the film, Zucker was asked why he had not directed the film as he had done with the previous installments in the Naked Gun series of comedies. Zucker replied that he was working on a film about Davy Crockett and was too busy preparing that film.
First Lady Hillary Clinton asked, “Are you going to use the song in your movie?” Zucker realized that she was referring to “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” that was famously a part of the series of episodes made by Disney about the frontiersman.
Before he could respond, Hillary started to sing the song and everyone else in the White House movie theater started to join in as well.
“Here I was, standing in front of the President of the United States, the First Lady and members of their staff and they’re all singing ‘Davy, Davy Crockett’. It was really something I will never forget,” Zucker stated.
20.000 Lunches Under the Sea
Disney’s live-action feature film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) was filmed at a variety of locations in the Bahamas. In fact, one of the locations was the exact same place that the silent version of the film had been shot in 1916.
The Disney film also used space at Universal International (exterior sets redressed for the opening scenes) and 20th Century Fox (large exterior tank for the larger models).
The warm Caribbean waters were filled with more than 25 different species of fish including barracuda, dolphin, grouper, marlin and tuna.
The crew would spend the first part of their lunch hour every day with rod and reel hoping to catch a lunch or dinner. However, one of the reasons Walt had sent the crew to film in the area was because of the abundance of sea life. He wanted every underwater scene to be filled with as many fish as could be captured by the camera lens.
To make certain the fish were not scared away or depleted by the eager Disney fishermen, director Richard Fleischer posted a stern warning on the beaches forbidding fishing. The sign stated: “Please do not catch or eat the actors”.
Yes, all these strange tales of Disney history are true. Believe It or Not!
