Raymond M. Brydon was born in Indiana on June 30, 1898. Well-known as a Store Show operator, Brydon was a showman with a long career in the circus and sideshow. Perhaps Ray’s greatest legacy are the iconic, two-color posters he produced for his 1934-44 store shows, which featured the “Believe It Or Not” moniker. Though his use of Robert Ripley’s brand was totally unauthorized Brydon got away with the rip, and was subsequently copied by numerous other showmen. Brydon’s effective use of strikingly simple graphic designs made his posters remarkable as paper substitutions for the canvas banners of the traditional 10-in-1 sideshow. Growing up in Evansville, Indiana, Brydon was a newsboy, and played coronet in The New Newsboy’s Band, and likewise played the instrument while in the U.S. Army. Wounded, he returned from service on a disability discharge in 1919, and worked as an Editor for a local Indianapolis newspaper. He first entered the outdoor show business at the age of either 11 or 16 (depending on who Brydon was telling the story to) as an usher for the Sells-Floto Shows. In another version of his showbiz origin he appeared as a trumpet player for The Gentry Brothers Circus. In 1916 he joined Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus, tending ponies, working in the cookhouse as a “coffee boy,” and playing the trumpet. Displaying a talent that would serve his long career in the business, he soon got a job with the Hagenbeck sideshow as an outside talker. In 1920 he had his first store show in Indianapolis. He eventually owned and operated circuses, including The Dan Rice Circus, claiming that Dan Rice was his grandfather on his mother’s side. Ray’s father was a much-noted carpenter and builder of river steamboats, and built The Steamboat Saloon, a well-known Evansville, Indiana restaurant with a steamboat’s replica exterior and interior. In 1930 Brydon started his own circus, Best Brothers, which featured his long-managed Hungarian midget boxing act, brothers Mike and Ike, who the previous season he’d had on the Cole Brothers Circus. Brydon was invited to bring the midget brothers to dine with Calvin Coolidge at The White House, though the brothers counted their fondest memory as the all-night poker game they played with Jack Dempsey. In 1933 and 1934 he managed Ripley’s show at the Chicago Century of Progress World’s Fair, officially titled “Congress of Oddities, Strange People as Cartooned By Robert Ripley.” He claimed to be the discoverer of freak superstars Grace McDaniel “The Mule-Faced Woman,” “Armless and Legless Wonder” Frieda Pushnik, “Four-legged Girl” Betty Lou Williams. Brydon claimed that he won the loyalty of the performers at the Century of Progress by busing them to and from the show to a private apartment building each night during the fair’s run. Brydon took an unauthorized version of the Ripley’s show on the road when the fair ended. In 1935 he brought his “Believe-It-Or-Not” sideshow to Dodson’s World’s Fair Shows, and his International Congress Of Oddities to the Riverside Amusement Park in Indianapolis, where he featured the Century of Progress performers E.L. Blystone “The Rice Writer,” J.B. Schuster “Ball Manipulator,” Sword-Swallower Larry Johnson, a trio of midget performers– Lord Leo, Princess Denise, and Lady Ethel– McCloud’s Scotch Band, and Snookie “The Educated Chimpanzee.” Snookie was originally captured by showman Frank Buck and appeared in Tarzan films, and was buried in 1936 in a ceremony that included four midget pallbearers. In 1935 The St. Louis New-Press reported that Brydon was operating a store show there– The International Congress of Oddities– which was “disclaimed” by Ripley’s as not affiliated with the famous cartoonist while using the “Believe-It-Or-Not” moniker and having eleven of its fifteen acts from the Ripley’s Odditorium show from The Century of Progress. Brydon stated:

We have never advertised that this is the Robert L. Ripley exhibit. It has never been our intention to lead anyone to believe that he sponsors this show.”

Despite that statement, Brydon continued to use the Ripley name and brand on shows for many years. Also in 1935 Brydon and partner animal trainer Allen King purchased Bay Brothers Circus. By the 1940s Brydon was the largest operator of independent midway shows in the country. His attractions included fan-dancer Sally Rand, and as mentioned previously, the highly successful midget boxing brothers, Mike and Ike. Another midget performer was to play a large role in Brydon’s life as a showman. Jack J. Stevens, a 40-inch-tall performer was adopted by Ray when he was 15, and for 31 years was variously Ray’s valet, office manger, bookeeper, and partner in all his business ventures. Beginning around 1926, Stevens handled the accounting for what eventually became a 7 to 8 show enterprise,, spanning multiple cites, and consisting of store shows and fairground sideshows. In 1938 Brydon managed The Great Harris Circus, and was caught in a bitter rivalry with The Haag Brothers Circus, culminating in a beating by roughies from Haag Brothers while making a call in a phone booth in Belaire, Ohio. The fight demolished the phone booth and left Brydon bruised and battered. A 1943 article and interview in The Vidette Mesenger of Valparaiso, Indiana, had Brydon use the term “jeets,” claiming this was slang used in the business for freaks. In the same article he also claimed to have personally “discovered” Lionel “The Lion-Faced Man” in Germany working as a cobbler before the WW-I, bringing him to the United States to star in sideshows. This was probably news to Lionel who emigrated to America in 1901 and appeared with The Barnum and Bailey Circus that same year. Brydon and his wife established The Brydon Beach Amusement Park at Bass Lake near Knox, Indiana in 1941, where the couple had sideshows, carnival rides, and built the famous Crystal Palace Ballroom. Married in 1940, Brydon’s wife Teresa (né Adkins) was known as Lula, and was reportedly a sword-swallower and the heir to The Cole Brothers Circus. In 1944 Brydon ran five shows in five different states: The Place of Wonders at Riverview Park in Chicago, The Congress of Oddities in Eastwood Park in Detroit, Coney Island Freaks at Summit Beach, Akron, Ohio, World Wonders at State Fair Park in Dallas, and Oddities Of The World at Ponchatrain Beach, New Orleans. Ray Marsh Brydon died June 16, 1954 at the age of 55 a week after suffering a heart attack at a movie theatre. He died at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Indianapolis. He was survived by his 85 year old mother, his wife Lula T. Bryson, and two sisters and two brothers. He is buried in Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis. According to his obit in The Billboard:

“…Brydon was daunted by little, if anything. Money meant little to him. Nether did tremendous demands upon his energy. He had almost limitless bounce and time and again after going down in a venture, he picked himself up, surveyed a situation, and started over. Not infrequently he bounced up to a higher position”

From Ward Hall:

“In 1946 I worked in a store show (museum) for Ray Marsh Brydon in San Antonio. The building was on the Main Street right across the street from Woolworth dime store. The old museum operators all agreed that the closer you got to Woolworths the better the location. Ray had a big show, about twenty acts, each on a separate stage, with a sideshow banner as a backdrop. Two blowoffs. In the back on ground floor was Dolly Reagen Ossified girl, and on the mezzanine was the “NUDE RANCH” which was slide photos of nude girls, each posed behind a bush, a fence, or peeking around a statue. The amount of exposed flesh exposed was about as much as you would see of a lady bundled up for the cold wind on a frigid winter day walking down the street. Two big show windows facing the street. One with “Waxo the mechanical man” and the other with a drag queen with a snake. The space between the windows was big double doors. The ticket box stood between the windows in front of the door. Admission was ten cents, a dime. We started each day at 10am till 11pm weekdays and Sunday. Friday till Midnight and Sat till 1:00 am. Everyone got paid the same, $5.00 a day, paid in nickels and dimes. This was a good living in those days. Most stayed in a small hotel around the corner, where rooms were a dollar a day double, bathroom down the hall. A good breakfast was anywhere from 15 to 30 cents at any good downtown restaurant, a good dinner for fifty cents. To have a dress shirt laundered was a dime. Business was good. The show opened there Thanksgiving week and ran through the middle of January. The show was so strong many folks came back again and again. The show moved from San Antonio to Birmingham Ala., where the location was not good, nor was the business. When the show closed Ray wanted my partner Harry Leonard and I to go in his show at Riverview Park in Chicago, where he had a sideshow for many years, and he also had a very beautiful sideshow for fairs. However, we went back to Dailey Bros Circus, a gigantic railroad show out of Gonzales, TX. where we worked through the season of 1949. Remember the number one rule in operating ANY business, the magic words: Make Money.”

–Ward Hall