[Deathwatch] Art Clokey, creator of Gumby, 88

[Notification of departing celebrities]

    Art Clokey dies at 88; creator of Gumby


      The filmmaker's work enchanted generations of children.

By Jason Felch

January 9, 2010

Art Clokey, the creator of the whimsical clay figure Gumby, died in his 
sleep Friday at his home in Los Osos, Calif., after battling repeated 
bladder infections, his son Joseph said. He was 88.



Clokey and his wife, Ruth, invented Gumby in the early 1950s at their 
Covina home shortly after Art had finished film school at USC. After a 
successful debut on "The Howdy Doody Show," Gumby soon became the star 
of its own hit television show, "The Adventures of Gumby," the first to 
use clay animation on television.

After an initial run in the 1950s, Gumby enjoyed comebacks in the 1960s 
as a bendable children's toy, in the 1980s after comedian Eddie Murphy 
parodied the kindly Gumby as a crass, cigar-in-the-mouth character in a 
skit for "Saturday Night Live" and again in the '90s with the release of 
"Gumby the Movie."

Today, Gumby is a cultural icon recognized around the world. It has more 
than 134,000 fans on Facebook.

As successive generations discovered the curious green character, 
Gumby's success 
<http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jul/09/entertainment/ca-gumby9> came 
to define Clokey's life, with its theme song reflecting Clokey's simple 
message of love: "If you've got a heart, then Gumby's a part of you."

"The fact is that most people don't know his name, but everybody knows 
Gumby," said friend and animator David Scheve. "To have your life work 
touch so many people around the world is an amazing thing."

Clokey was born Arthur Farrington in Detroit in October 1921 and grew up 
making mud figures on his grandparents' Michigan farm. "He always had 
this in him," his son, Joseph, recalled Friday.

At age 8, Clokey's life took a tragic turn when his father was killed in 
a car accident soon after his parents divorced. The unusual shape of 
Gumby's head would eventually be modeled after one of the few surviving 
photos of Clokey's father, which shows him with a large wave of hair 
protruding from the right side of his head.

After moving to California, Clokey was abandoned by his mother and her 
new husband and lived in a halfway house near Hollywood until age 11, 
when he was adopted by Joseph W. Clokey. The renowned music teacher and 
composer at Pomona College taught him to draw, paint and shoot film and 
took him on journeys to Mexico and Canada.

Art Clokey attended the Webb School in Claremont, whose annual fossil 
hunting expeditions also inspired a taste for adventure that stayed with 
him. "That's why 'The Adventures of Gumby' were so adventurous," his son 
said.

Clokey served in World War II, conducting photo reconnaissance over 
North Africa and France. Back in Hartford, Conn., after the war, he was 
studying to be an Episcopal minister when he met Ruth Parkander, the 
daughter of a minister. The two married and moved to California to 
pursue their true passion: filmmaking.

During the day, the Clokeys taught at the Harvard School for Boys in 
Studio City, now Harvard-Westlake. At night, Art Clokey studied film at 
USC under Slavko Vorkapich, a pioneer of modern montage techniques.

Clokey's 1953 experimental film, "Gumbasia," used stop-motion clay 
animation set to a lively jazz tempo. It became the inspiration for the 
subsequent Gumby TV show when Sam Engel, the president of 20th Century 
Fox and father of one of Clokey's students, saw the film and asked 
Clokey to produce a children's television show based on the idea.

In the 1960s, Clokey created and produced the Christian TV series "Davey 
and Goliath" and the credits for several feature films, including "How 
to Stuff a Wild Bikini."

Gumby's ability to enchant generations of children and adults had a 
mystical quality to it, said his son, and reflected his father's 
spiritual quest. In the 1970s, Clokey studied Zen Buddhism, traveled to 
India to study with gurus and experimented with LSD and other drugs, 
though all of that came long after the creation of Gumby, his son said.

His second wife, Gloria, whom he married in 1976, was art director on 
Gumby projects in the 1980s and '90s. She died in 1998.

Besides his son Joseph, Clokey is survived by his stepdaughter, Holly 
Harman of Mendocino County; three grandchildren, Shasta, Sequoia and 
Sage Clokey; his sister, Arlene Cline of Phoenix; and his half-sister, 
Patricia Anderson of Atlanta.

Instead of flowers, the family suggests contributions in Gumby's name to 
the Natural Resources Defense Council, of which Art Clokey was a 
longtime member.

"Gumby was green because my dad cared about the environment," his son said.

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