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This summer I read the biography of Robert Ripley-'A Curious Man'. So many associations to the one-liners we use today. Great read!
Anyways, here's the connection I was looking for
BELIEVE IT!
In 1930 Vitaphone launched a series of animated cartoons
called “Looney Tunes” that would create such characters
as Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, and Elmer Fudd.
Introduced as Egghead in the late 1930s, the speech- impeded
and stuttering character who became Fudd was believed to
have been partly modeled on Ripley. One cartoon, “Believe It
or Else,” featured a bucktoothed Egghead wearing a loud suit
and spats. The narrator introduces the world’s loudest hog
caller, the human basketball, and the world’s fastest woodcutter.
“I don’t believe it!” says Egghead. Egghead/Fudd also made a
cameo appearance in The Isle of Pingo Pongo, a faux South
Seas travelogue cartoon that was later banned for its racist
depiction of black islanders.
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