Believe It or Not (Second Series) #3

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.