Storer, Doug

Radio producer, talent agent, and writer Doug Storer was born near Harlem, N.Y., in 1899. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1921 and completed one year of medical school there. During the 1920s, Storer worked for the John Curtiss Advertising Agency as an account executive and also managed the agency's radio department. In 1929, he left the Curtiss Agency to reorganize and manage radio stations owned by his cousin George Storer in Ohio. As vice president and general manager of WGHP in Detroit and WSPD in Toledo, Storer developed programming and oversaw nearly every aspect of the stations' operation. With his success as a station manager, in 1931, he became director of radio for the Blackman Company, where he created and produced radio programs for several large firms including the United States Rubber Company, Hudson Motor Car Company, and Proctor and Gamble. While at Blackman, Storer was responsible for introducing Robert Ripley and his Believe It or Not feature to radio.

The Believe It or Not franchise officially began in 1918 as a newspaper cartoon panel drawn by sports cartoonist Robert Ripley that featured unusual sporting feats and facts. Over time, the scope of Believe It or Not cartoons expanded to include all sorts of oddities and unusual facts. By the 1930s, the feature was syndicated in over 300 newspapers worldwide. Despite the questionable veracity of many claims made in Believe It or Not, Ripley insisted on their accuracy. Encouraged by the success of Believe It or Not cartoons and book projects, Ripley, with Storer's help, brought the feature to radio in 1930.

From about 1933 until 1949, Doug Storer produced Ripley's Believe It or Not radio broadcasts and managed all of Ripley's business affairs. Under Storer's direction, Believe It or Not was broadcast on several networks and became one of the most successful programs on radio. During their association, Ripley and Storer formed a close personal relationship. Doug Storer and his wife Hazel Anderson Storer were married at Ripley's estate in New York, and they traveled extensively with Ripley during production of Believe It or Not broadcasts. Although Ripley entrusted Storer with nearly all of his business affairs, Storer later claimed that the two never signed a formal contract and that Ripley never asked for an accounting. Upon Ripley's death in 1949, Storer became president of Believe It or Not, Inc., and continued to oversee production of radio programs, television shows, and other projects bearing the Believe It or Not name.

From the 1930s to the 1950s, Storer also managed a number of other radio personalities including Laurie York Erskine, creator of Renfrew of the Mounted ; self-help guru Dale Carnegie; journalist Bob Considine; and band leader Cab Calloway. In the early 1940s, Storer was director of programming for the Blue Network, initially a division of NBC that was later absorbed by ABC. At the Blue Network, Storer developed several radio programs in support of the war effort including Scramble, a program sponsored by the Junior Air Reserve to encourage young boys to become pilots, and a series of Believe It or Not broadcasts sponsored by the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs and designed to promote hemispheric solidarity between the United States and Latin America.

After overseeing the Believe It or Not franchise for ten years, Storer sold his interest in the company in 1960 and started his own franchise titled Amazing But True . Like the Believe It or Not series, Amazing But True included books, radio shows, newspaper columns, and films all featuring tales of strange people, weird occurrences, and peculiar animals and places. From the 1940s to the 1970s, Doug and Hazel Storer traveled around the world researching subjects for Believe It or Not and Amazing But True . Their discoveries included human oddities like Javier Pereira, a Columbian man reported to be the oldest man alive at age 167, and Lina Medina, allegedly the youngest woman to give birth at age 5. From the 1960s to the 1980s, Storer authored several Amazing But True books that highlighted unusual facts about presidents, animals, royalty, and other subjects. Storer also broadcast brief Amazing But True radio segments on NBC's Monitor program and other radio programs, and his Amazing But True newspaper column was syndicated in several newspapers, especially in Florida.

Doug and Hazel Storer spent most of their later years in Belleair, Fla. After Doug Storer's death in December 1985 at age 86, Hazel Storer sold and donated a number of artifacts and other materials in her possession related to Ripley and Believe It or Not to Believe It or Not, Inc. Hazel Storer died in 2005.

From the guide to the Doug and Hazel Anderson Storer Collection, 1920s-2003, (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.)