Believe It or Not (Second Series) #9 (1932) User Reviews

Can Donnelly Be As Wooden As Ripley?

[boblipton · 6/10 · 27 April 2024]

In this episode of Warner Brothers' series of BELIEVE IT OR NOT shorts, Robert Ripley only shows up to introduce Leo Donnelly, who proceeds to narrate the usual collection of oddities -- a fat man's clothing store in New York, lady elephant washers, and a salt pyramid in Spain among them -- in a fair imitation of Ripley's halting, dull style of talking. It's a bit odd, since Donnelly was an actor and writer. He died in 1935, aged 56.

Ripley himself lived to be 55, and his newspaper feature is still going strong, as well as a series of museums called 'Odditoriums', with several locations throughout the world.

You can believe it or not...

[classicsoncall · 5/10 · 1 May 2024]

As I write this review, some of these 'Believe It or Not' episodes are making the rounds on Turner Classic Movies. Robert Ripley actually bows out of this one after introducing narrator Leo Donnelly, whose off-screen delivery is no more compelling than Ripley's himself. Of the few I've seen, this one offers the least amount of 'unbelievable' entries, as most are fairly mundane. There's a quick clip of a fat men's shop in New York City and one of a guy going around town picking up cigarette and cigar butts. Why?? A penny menu of about a dozen items in a New York eatery looked interesting, but for 1932, I guess it wasn't all that unusual. Ancient muskets handed down father to son in Tibet, a kiddie car made from cheap components, and a trio of ladies washing elephants and filing their toenails rounded out this program, making me once again wonder why Ripley's crew couldn't come up with a film short with oddities that were connected or related to each other in some manner. The randomness of the subjects presented was just too perplexing, but for once, the stories weren't all that unbelievable.

Ripley Begins to Leave

[Michael_Elliott · 11 April 2010]

Believe It or Not (Second Series) #9 (1932)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

One of the weakest entries in the series has Robert L. Ripley standing in front of a globe as he introduces Leo Donnelly as the narrator of this episode. We then see some rather boring clips including three girls who bath elephants, one of the first stores for fat men, a part of land caught between Spain and Europe where only goats can live and a man in NYC who collects cigarette and cigar butts. This is an extremely weak episode for a number of reasons but the biggest has to be the actual clips shown. Perhaps that's why Ripley didn't stick around to introduce them as none of them are overly impressive in terms of their "believe it or not" factor. The only stuff that keeps this short going and worth seeing is for the early stuff showing off NYC during the early 30s.