Believe It or Not (Second Series) #3

After drawing a couple of cartoons for his one-man audience, Robert Ripley takes him down to the projection room, where he shows off a church made of hay, a 138-year-old mother paddling her centenarian daughter, and a four-legged duck.

It's from the second series of shorts that Ripley made for Warner Brothers. He had begun as a sports cartoonist, but his series of odd facts spawned a long-lasting empire, which is still with us in a newspaper series, and in Odditoriums, in which strange things are exhibited. Not that Ripley is in charge any more. He died in 1949 at the age of 59.

I don't believe the old ladies were really that old.

This particular entry in the Ripley's Believe it or Not series is a rather clumsy compilation of oddities, a short film made by Vitaphone in 1931, but interesting as a curiosity piece.

Among the subjects: A church in Nebraska made entirely of bales of hay; a Tennessee cabin where a primitive mode of living still exists; a 128 year-old woman and her 100 year-old daughter from Kansas; a waiter showing how he can hold fourteen cups of coffee at one time; a duck with four legs who follows its owner around like a dog, and a few other odds and ends that don't make much sense.

Of course, the B&W photography is a bit grainy, but this is the sort of short meant to accompany double bills that were the feature attractions.

Believe It or Not (Second Series) #3 (1931)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Strange entry in the series is one of the best due to a few of the subjects shown here. We start off with Robert L. Ripley doing a couple drawings for us then we get to the good stuff. We travel to Tennessee where we see a family living in the mountains who have never grown with time as they still live very primitive in terms of their home, their food and their way of life. We also go to Mississippi where we see a 128-year-old black woman and her 108 year-old daughter. Also on hand is a church in Nebraska made of bales of hay and a baseball team in Iowa made up of nine brothers. The stories here are among some of the best I've seen from the entire series. The one with the mother and daughter is probably the most fascinating one even if it just some of the humiliating racial jokes that could be made as the producers of this thing makes the daughter bend over the mother's lap and get spanked. In the early intro we also get a waiter showing us that he can hold twelve cuts of coffee in one hand. Some of the video footage here is in poor (grainy) shape but this is to be expected. Look closely in Ripley's office and you'll see a poster of him hanging up and it's this poster that would grace the cover of the series DVD release.