Norbert Pearlroth
Norbert Pearlroth (May 7, 1893 – April 14, 1983) was the primary researcher for the Believe It or Not! cartoon panel from 1923 until 1975.[1]
Biography
He was born on May 7, 1893, Tarnów, Austria.[1]
Pearlroth attended university in Kraków, Poland. A well-dressed, tall, handsome man with thick wavy hair, he kept this appearance throughout his long life. He was planning to become a lawyer, but events of World War I took him away from his studies. He came to America in 1920. He was working as a teller in a New York bank in 1923, when he encountered Robert Ripley as a customer. As he knew of Ripley's successful sports Believe It or Not! newspaper panel, he ventured to tell his new customer a few "believe it or not" facts and pictures he himself had gathered. The great man was intrigued and subsequently made it a habit on all future bank visits to get on line at Pearlroth's window. Pearlroth's interesting facts came from all sorts of fields, way beyond the sports area to which Ripley had hitherto limited himself. Every bank visit found Pearlroth offering him more material. Eventually Ripley realized he could benefit greatly from this treasure trove he had happened upon. He decided to expand the subjects of his panel by hiring this diffident polyglot researcher from out behind the bank cage. Ripley had needed someone capable of researching foreign newspapers to locate material for his syndicated panel. With Pearlroth on board, his panel would develop from sports oddities into what we today think of as Ripley's Believe It or Not!
Since Pearlroth knew 11 languages (he could actually read at least another 10 more), he was hired to do Ripley's research and soon began doing the picture research as well. He usually worked ten hours a day, six days a week in the New York Public Library's Main Reading Room. The library estimated that Pearlroth examined some 7,000 books every year, meaning that he researched in more than 350,000 books during decades of work on Believe It or Not!.[2]
Married with two children for more than half a century, Pearlroth and his wife Susan lived in Brooklyn at Newkirk Avenue and East 16th Street. For 52 years, he took the subway into Manhattan in the morning and worked at his office until noon, answering some of the 3000 letters that arrived each week from readers all over the world. Instead of having lunch, he then went to the library where he worked through the afternoon and evening, taking half an hour for dinner. When the library closed at 10pm, he headed back to Brooklyn. He sometimes worked on Sundays if he fell behind in locating what he called "believe-it-or-nots." His deadline was on Friday, and he always worked several weeks in advance.[3] The only time his schedule changed was when he accompanied Ripley several times on his wildly exotic and highly publicized world journeys.
By the 1940s, Pearlroth and Ripley had approximately 80 million readers worldwide. During the first 26 years, Pearlroth simply gave Ripley whatever his research had turned up. After Ripley's death on May 27, 1949, King Features Syndicate took over Believe It or Not!, and Pearlroth continued for the next 26 years to work for syndicate editors, who required him to submit exactly 24 items each week. Pearlroth usually worked anonymously, but on Ripley's Believe It or Not! 50th Anniversary Edition (Pocket Books, 1968), he is credited as "Research Director".
For 25 years, Pearlroth also wrote a weekly column, "Your Name", about the origins of Jewish surnames, for the Jewish Post of New York. His son Arthur Pearlroth was the Economic Development Counsel for the South Bronx Development Office.
Although Norbert Pearlroth never missed a deadline, King Features replaced him in 1975. As a freelancer, he received no pension or royalties from the many collections and reprints that sold in the millions, but Ripley did give him a bequest of $5,000 and money for Pearlroth's son's schooling.[4]
He died on April 14, 1983 of heart and kidney diseases at Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, New York City.[1][5]
References
- 1 2 3 "Norbert Pearlroth, 89, Researcher For 52 Years For 'Believe It Or Not'". New York Times. April 15, 1983. Retrieved 2015-01-11.
Norbert Pearlroth, who combed hundreds of thousands of books in the New York Public Library over 52 years as sole researcher for Ripley's Believe It or Not, died of heart and kidney diseases Thursday at Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn. He was 89 years old and lived in Brooklyn. ...
- ↑ "Fun Facts", New York Public Library.
- ↑ Lydon, Susan. "In Search of the (Nearly) Miraculous," Village Voice, October 22, 1979.
- ↑ St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture
- ↑ "Died". Time magazine. April 25, 1983. Retrieved 2015-01-11.