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1932
Directed by Alfred J. Goulding
Synopsis
In this short film, Robert L. Ripley introduces narrator Leo Donnelly who presents various "Believe It or Not" oddities from around the world as gathered by Ripley. Segments include a NYC clothier that caters to very large men and circus elephant grooming. Vitaphone No. 1363.
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- Cast
- Crew
- Details
- Genres
- Releases
Cast
Robert L. Ripley Leo Donnelly
DirectorDirector
Alfred J. Goulding
Studios
Warner Bros. Pictures The Vitaphone Corporation
Country
USA
Language
English
Alternative Title
Believe It or Not #21
Genre
Documentary
Releases by Date
- Date
- Country
Theatrical
30 Apr 1932
USA
Releases by Country
- Date
- Country
USA
30 Apr 1932
- Theatrical
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Review by Lowbacca ★½
This never stays on any one thing long enough to dwell in the disinterest this generates, but this really struggles to have anything of note (outside of some dated 30s racism).
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Review by diegesis ★★½
“How do you do ladies and gentlemen. This is Robert L. Ripley, starting another Believe It or Not expedition in search of thestrange, curious and unbelievable. And
while I’m away my friend, Leo Donnelly,will explain one
of my Believe It or Nots.”
— Robert L. RipleyRipley only briefly appears just for the short introduction. I’m curious, did Ripley have a deadline to meet? Not sure why, especially for a short film, he didn’t do the narration here. I can understand issues with doing a live production but he could’ve recorded the audio in post anywhere of the 122 countries he was headed off to. Maybe Vitaphone had different traveling production methods compared to MGM’s TravelTalks series with "The Voice…
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Review by JimmyZ_81 ★½
Believe it or not I watched another of these. This was a bit better than #8, but not much.
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Review by Eric Borer ★★
Ripley absolutely mails it in with this one. Not only does he have someone else do the narration, the whole first half just consists of street scenes around Manhattan. Except for the build-it-yourself car from Germany, none of the activities shown are truly remarkable, but more like slice of life scenes from NYC and a few other places. That, combined with the fact that the cinematography looks different (and far better) than the other Ripley shorts makes me think that he just took a random collection of other people's footage and slapped his name on it.
And it's probably for all those reasons that I like this one better than any of the others. It's more interesting to watch than Ripley's usual tall tales and, with one brief exception, less exploitative.
Anyway, anyone who thinks Manhattan traffic is bad today wasn't around in the days when cars, horses and trains all had to share the same streets.
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Review by kevin_mc ½
This time Ripley says the briefest of hellos in his archeologist / mailman white hat before passing the buck to a narrator. We don't even get Ripley! Not sure that a big and tall store and penny lunch counter qualify as fascinating, but here I am watching…
