Gumby - Origins

Origins

Gumby was created by Art Clokey in the early 1950s after finishing film school at University of Southern California. Clokey's first animated film was a 1953 three-minute student film called Gumbasia, a surreal montage of moving and expanding lumps of clay set to music in a parody of Disney's Fantasia. Gumbasia was created in a style Clokey's professor Slavko Vorkapich taught at USC called Kinesthetic Film Principles. Described as "massaging of the eye cells", this technique of camera movements and editing was responsible for much of the Gumby look and feel. Clokey and his wife, Ruth (née Parkander), invented Gumby in the early 1950s at their Covina home shortly after Art finished film school at USC. In 1955 Clokey showed Gumbasia to movie producer Sam Engel, who encouraged him to develop his technique by adding figures. Of the three pilot episodes of Gumby, the first was done by Clokey on his own, and the next two were done for NBC and shown on The Howdy Doody Show to test audience reaction. The second 15-minute pilot, "Gumby Goes to the Moon", was initially rejected by NBC executive Thomas Warren Sarnoff. The third Gumby episode, "Robot Rumpus", made a successful debut on the Howdy Doody Show in August 1956.

Gumby was an NBC series (a Howdy Doody spin-off) during 1957. Featuring lots of Clokey's puppet films, as well as variety, interviews and games, it was hosted by Robert "Nick" Nicholson from March to June, then by Pinky Lee until November.

Gumby was inspired by a suggestion from Clokey's wife Ruth that he base his character on the Gingerbread man. Gumby was green because it was Clokey's favorite color. Gumby's legs and feet were made wide for pragmatic reasons: they ensured the clay character would stand up during stop-motion filming. The famous slanted shape of Gumby's head was based on the hair style of Clokey's father Charles Farrington in an old photograph.

Gumby's voice was originally provided by Ruth Eggleston, wife of the show's art director Al Eggleston, and starting in 1957, Dallas McKennon became the voice of Gumby. New episodes were added from 1961 to 1963. Production continued through 1966–1968, by which time Norma MacMillan voiced Gumby. On some occasions, his voice was provided by Ginny Tyler and Dick Beals.

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