In case you didn’t hear the news, Art Clokey, the creator of Gumby, died in his sleep last Friday in his Los Osos home. He was 88 years old. For all of you Gumby fans out there (including myself), I thought I’d dedicate a post to the work of Art Clokey. Who doesn’t love Gumby? As a child I tried to make my own stop-action videos with troll dolls and my parents’ oversized video camera. Gumby was an inspiration!

Check out these cool facts I found from IMDB and Premavision:

• The shape of Gumby’s head was inspired by an old family photo of Art Clokey’s father, Arthur Farrington, at age 18, which showed a rather large cowlick on one side.
• Female voice actors originally supplied the voice of the title character during the initial episodes.
• The series went dormant for many decades, but during all of this time Gumby had developed an audience interested in classic television animation. Soon, the marketing of Gumby had exploded, as it became the most popular flexible toy on the market, and later appearing in many forms, from cups to ice cream bars.
• Each show called for 60 artists and technicians animating about two minutes of film every eight working hours. Gumby and his friends were moved up to 9,000 times in a 6-minute show.
• Gumby had its genesis in Gumbasia (1955), a theatrical short that featured similar claymation characters.
• Gumby himself first appeared on “Howdy Doody” (1954) in 1956 and was given his own NBC series in 1957.
• Newly produced episodes were added in 1962 (by which time Dallas L. Barnes became the voice of Gumby) and 1966-67.
• Gumby was made out of plasticine, which disintegrates quickly. Animators went through five or six Gumbys for every scene.
• Besides Pokey (voiced by creator Art Clokey), Gumby’s pals included Prickle (a yellow dinosaur) and Goo (a blue thumb-type mermaid blob who could fly).
• Gumby’s first appearance on national television was as a guest on The Howdy Doody Show.
• Art Clokey named Gumby after “Gumbo,” a type of clay found at his grandfather’s Michigan farm.

Art Clokey Bio

Clokey created “Gumbasia” 1953 while attending USC. “Gumbasia” was the ground-breaking film which featured clay animation set to jazz music. However, it was while tutoring at a military academy called Harvard School, that Clokey got his big break. Sam Engel, a producer at 20th Century Fox and father of Clokey’s student became fascinated with the animator’s three and half minute short; calling it the most exciting film he’d ever seen in his life. Interested in improving the quality of children’s television programming, Engel quickly agreed to finance the pilot for a series that featured clay characters created by Clokey. So, in 1955, with a little experimentation and the help of a rolling pin and a cookie cutter, Gumby was born.

Click here to read the full bio at Deep Archives.

All right, folks. I gotta spend the next few hours on YouTube looking up my favorite Gumby episodes, but I leave you with this question: Who was your favorite supporting character besides Pokey? I’d have to go with Goo, blue mermaid girl. I always thought she was pretty (for a blue mermaid blob). Rest in peace, Art Clokey. You were a creative genius.

Photo Courtesy of The Deep Archives

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