Gumby at NBC

Stop motion animation in the days of network television after 1947 meant maybe one thing—commercials. Jam Handy created a series of spots for American Tobacco featuring marching Lucky Strike cigarettes.

And then came Art Clokey.

Clokey had been a divinity student who found his religious training not so divine. A biography in an NBC news release re-written by Arlene Garber in the April 17, 1957 issue of the Hollywood Citizen-News revealed Clokey:

[A]t one time studied at the Hartford Theological School for entrance into the Episcopal ministry. Later when he felt that ministry was not his field he studied geology which gave him the chance to take color movies when he went on field trips.
After the war, Clokey attended USC where he had classes under Slavko Vorkapich, film pioneer. When he graduated on cinema work he realized the creative and research possibilities in the medium.
HIS BEGINNING
For some years after, he taught at a girls’ school in Santa Barbera courses which included algebra, chemistry, Latin and biology. In his spare time he did a three-minute silent commercial for a soup company. From that beginning and a $50 film investment plus innumerable telephone calls to all firms listed in the telephone directory, he gradually began making his film studies pay off.
When a national soft drink company signed him to do a commercial his lucky break came. Shortly afterwards, he made an abstract film, “Gumbasia,” using animated clay.
Then he started writing a story around the figure and called it Gumby. Because as he explained, “He’s made from plain gumbo, clay muck. Also, it’s suggestive of gum in its elastic character.”

Gumbasia didn’t star Gumby, or anything else. It was a short film with morphing geometric shapes. Gumbasia caught the eye of Sam Engle at 20th Century Fox, and he had Clokey create a 15-minute film called Gumby Goes to the Moon.

Meanwhile...
The year: 1956. The place: Somewhere in New York...

NBC had decided to move Howdy Doody, which aired Monday through Friday, into what was becoming exclusively children’s time—Saturday morning; it was getting walloped in the ratings by The Mickey Mouse Club on ABC. Either producer Roger Muir, or host Buffalo Bob Smith, or both, decided it was time to freshen the show. That’s when a deal was reached with Clokey to make short Gumby adventures to drop in the programme. The revamped Howdy Doody debuted June 16, 1956. Kids liked Gumby. The Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch of July 21, 1956 had this to say:

A Personality in Clay
Gumby of Howdy Doody Show Lives in Fantasy
A small wedge shaped character named “Gumby” is fast becoming one of the favorite features of the Howdy Doody Show (Saturdays, 9 am., WVEC TV.)
Created by Arthur Clokey, Gumby is a hand-sized moppet who gets into all the trouble ordinary moppets encounter—except that he has a lot more fun. Made of clay—and highly plastic clay at that—Gumby can do any of the magical things that clay can do.
He can change into limitless forms, roll himslef [sic] into a ball, take on a [l]ong serpentine shape or divide, amoeba like, into many parts but always returning to his familiar Gumby form.
* * *
Gumby comes to life in a boy [toy] shop when the proprietor has closed up for the weekend. From a set of modeling clay, he molds himself into his wedge-shaped form and sets off on his adventures among the other toys, all of whom become life-like under his touch.
The man who really molds the stuff that Gumby’s made of is Arthur Clokey, film creator and producer, who works with the little man in a small Hollywood studio jammed with toys.
* * *
Clokey's basic idea for getting Gumby on film came when he was a student of Sivko Vorkapich at the University of Southern Califomia. Vorkapich, a leading film theorist and former director at RKO and MGM opened up new horizons for him, Clokey says.
Finally, after absorbing many new film ideas, Clokey put his ability to work at television commercials. This success led him to the creation of Gumby and the application of the stop-motion techniques for a children’s film series. Most cartoon films are made by the animation process.
Gumby lives largely in a world of fantasy in which his unique plastic structure makes him somewhat of a superman. However, unlike most children’s heroes Gumby has a built-in weakness. He can stand neither extreme cold not heat and when he disregards his Achilles Heel, he winds up in trouble.

Garber’s article revealed Clokey drove 40 miles in Hollywood to supervise production of the films by a staff of four.

When you read about the first TV spin-offs, Gumby isn’t mentioned. But he quickly graduated to his own half hour on March 16, 1957, placed in the time slot following Howdy Doody, displacing reruns of I Married Joan. Muir and Hultgren of the Doody production team oversaw the show. Variety reviewed the debut in its edition of March 20.

THE GUMBY SHOW
With Bobby Nicholson, Bob Smith
Producer: E. Roger Muir
Director: Bob Hultgren 30 Mins.; Sat. 10:30 a.m.
SWEETS CO. OF AMERICA (alt. weeks)
NBC-TV, from New York
(Moselle & Eisen)
“Gumby” is a delightful piece of stop-motion animation, and the little clay character is considered by NBC-TV as the backbone of its new Saturday ayem half-hour stanza for juves. There are, however, other facets of the program taking up as much time, which are not quite as good as the 10 or 12 minutes that were devoted on the preem to “Gumby” but were mostly sufficiently strong to hold moppet interest. Until sometime in May, Sweets Co. of America will skip-week its bankroll (other week is presently open) and then pay the weekly wad.
Gumby, a wedge-like mound of clay who resembles the gingerbread boy, was a sometimes thing on the old “Howdy Doody Show.” The whimsical star was involved in a pleasant, cleanly developed yarn during the initial outing called “The Little Lost Pony.”
Bobby Nicholson was the blustery emcee, going by the name of Scotty McKey. Nicholson brought a lot of the characterization he gave to the puppet Mr. Bluster in the latter days of “Doody.” His performance had no quality to make him other than ordinarily identifiable to the juves. Help on the first show—and on shows to come for the next couple of months —was given by Bob Smith. (Buffalo Bob did the heavy share of commercial pitching in his oily fashion). Notch above the video norm was the closing cartoon; it was nicely done art work, though not in the Gumby class. Art.

Clokey spoke to Norman Shavin of the Atlanta Journal about his story philosophy and how the films were made.

“Most of the time Gumby is made of clay about seven inches tall. However, sometimes he is 14 inches tall and made of various synthetic rubbers and plastics. To fit certain toys we have animated Gumby in the 1 ½-inch size. This required tweezers for some movements.
“The figures are cut in two sections by devices resembling cookie-cutters. Implanted between two halves is a special wire armature to give stability to the clay and plastics.
“For talking, the editor measures first the number of frames per syllable of each prerecorded word. Then the animator moves the clay lips or jaw to match the frame count. With bodily movements, on the average two exposures are made for each movement. The animator therefore must make about 12 adjustments for every second of action.
“With three camera crews, we are able to shoot an 11-minute adventure in seven days. The main problem is creative story writing talent trained for our special visual medium.
“Gumby is a curious new being, strictly functional in shape; he combines certain qualities of a super clown with genuinely human traits.
“Since he can enter into book there is no place he cannot go for adventure. Yet he is always obedient to his parents, he never willfully engages in mischief, he has a double Achilles’ heel—if he gets too hot he melts into a helpless blob; if he gets too cold he becomes rigid.
“Our aim in the Gumby adventure series is to develop a wholesome contribution to child culture. Good fantasy, we believe, is important to the creative of sound minds and spirits in our children.”

Considering how shows on Saturday mornings are rerun over and over and over, you’d expect The Gumby Show to be an evergreen at NBC. But it was cancelled. Clokey sounded bitter about it. He pointly told the disappointed Shavin:

“Besides an attack of the flu, difficulties in the NBC programming have distracted us. First, Pinky Lee was put on the show against our wishes [replacing Bobby Nicholson on June 8]; then, the only time slot available was opposite the strongest CBS show, ‘Mighty Mouse,’ Now, NBC has not been able to get a sponsor for the ‘Gumby’ show. Therefore, the show goes off the air Nov. 16. There is some talk of going into syndication. There you have it: No sponsor, no network and no show.”

Gumby did go into syndication. In March 1958, 22 episodes in colour were offered to stations by Victory Program Sales (in Canada, the CBC aired them in English and French); the company had acquired licensing rights when the show was still on NBC. Gumby and Pokey bendable figures became huge hits with kids. The old shows were so popular, new ones were made in the 1960s. Meanwhile, Clokey announced on December 2, 1958 he was planning another stop-motion show tentatively called Jamie and Ginger (Variety, Dec. 3). The former ministerial student went on to create Davey and Goliath for the Lutherans on Sunday mornings beginning in 1961.

The Gumby adventures were surreal in plot, with amateurs providing the original voices (later, actors Dal McKennon and Norma McMillan played the star). The Gumby Show was one of the first programmes to use the brand-new Capitol Hi-Q library. For example, the title cue over “Too and Loo” is PG-168J FAST MOVEMENT by Phil Green (the episode aired on July 6, 1957, according to the Oklahoma City Advertiser of the day before). L-983 ANIMATION LIGHT by Spencer Moore opens “The Eggs and Trixie” (aired May 25, 1957, as per the Winston-Salem Journal of that date). The Langlois Filmusic library surfaces in Lion Around. At 5:54, the background cue is Jack Shaindlin’s LAF-25-3 (I don't have the name), heard at the end of the Yogi Bear cartoon Baffled Bear, among others (it aired May 18, 1957, according to the two papers mentioned above).

Despite what Clokey said at the time, NBC had announced Gumby’s cancellation before Lee ever showed up. Variety of May 15, 1957 reported Pinky was booked until September 28, when the sponsorship deal for the show with Sweets was due to expire. Andy’s Gang, sponsored on alternate weeks by the 3-M company, was supposed to replace it on October 5. That didn’t happen until November 23, when 59 NBC stations cleared time for Andy Devine and Froggie.

But Andy survived a mere three weeks in the time slot. Something was swirling around the mind of producer E. Roger Muir. He was still sold on the idea of a show with a live host and cartoons, but with a difference. Instead of stop-motion, he wanted cartoons newly-made for television. So it was that Muir pushed for a deal with Screen Gems, who contracted with a company run by George Sidney, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera for a new show. On December 15, Andy’s Gang was moved to a different time slot and in its spot was placed the series that started the Hanna-Barbera empire: Ruff and Reddy.