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Gumby is an American cartoon character and associated media franchise created by Art Clokey. He is a blocky green humanoid Claymation.
Gumby stars in two television series, the film , and other media. Gumby immediately became a famous example of stop motion clay animation and an American cultural icon, spawning tributes, parodies, and merchandising.
Clokey's first animated film was a 1953 three-minute student film titled 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 the "kinesthetic" style taught by Clokey's USC professor Slavko Vorkapich, described as "massaging of the eye cells". Much of Gumby's look and feel was inspired by this technique of camera movements and editing.
In 1955, Clokey showed Gumbasia to film producer Sam Engel, who encouraged him to develop his technique by animating figures into children's stories. On January 29, 1955, Clokey produced and filmed the first pilot episode starring Gumby, titled "Adventures of Gumby: A Sample", which never aired.
The name "Gumby" was derived from the muddy clay found at Clokey's grandparents' farm that his family named "gumbo". Gumby's appearance was inspired by a suggestion from Clokey's wife Ruth (née Parkander) that Gumby be based on the Gingerbread Man. Clokey saw the color green as both racially neutral and a symbol of life. Gumby's legs and feet were made wide to pragmatically ensure that the figure would stand erect during stop-motion filming. Gumby's slanted head was based on the hairstyle of Clokey's father, Charles Farrington, in an old photograph.
The pilot episode was seen by NBC executive Thomas Warren Sarnoff, who asked Clokey to make another one. The second episode, "Gumby on the Moon", became a hit when featured on Howdy Doody, so Sarnoff ordered a series in 1955 titled The Gumby Show. In 1955 and 1956, 25 11-minute episodes aired on NBC. In early episodes, Gumby's voice was provided by Ruth Eggleston, wife of the show's art director Al Eggleston, until 1957, when Dallas McKennon assumed the role. Al Eggleston also invented Pokey, the little orange pony who was Gumby's best friend and was introduced during the earliest episodes.
Because of its variety format, The Gumby Show features Clokey's animations plus interviews and games. During this time, the show had two successive hosts, Bobby Nicholson and Pinky Lee. (1985). 9780810816510, The Scarecrow Press. ISBN 9780810816510
In 1959, The Gumby Show entered syndication, and more episodes were produced in the 1960s. Production started in Hollywood and in 1960 moved to a larger studio in Glendora, California, where it remained until production ended in 1969. During this time, Gumby was primarily voiced by Norma MacMillan and occasionally by Ginny Tyler. The cartoon shorts introduced new characters, including a blue mermaid named Goo and a yellow dinosaur named Prickle.
Several sources claim that Dick Beals also voiced Gumby in the 1960s series. However, Beals refuted this claim in a 2001 interview.
This renewed interest led to a new Gumby Adventures series of 99 seven-minute episodes, produced for television syndication in association with Lorimar-Telepictures in 1988. Dallas McKennon voices Gumby in the new adventures, in which Gumby and his pals travels beyond their toyland setting as a musical band. Gumby Adventures includes new characters, such as Gumby's little sister Minga, a mastodon named Denali and a chicken named Tilly.
The 1988 series includes the 1950s and 1960s shorts with rerecorded voices, and the original music was replaced by Jerry Gerber's synthesizer score. Legal issues prevented Clokey from renewing rights to the original Capitol Records production tracks.
On March 16, 2007, YouTube announced that all Gumby episodes would appear in their full-length form on its site, digitally remastered and with their original soundtracks. This deal also extended to other video sites, including America Online. In March 2007, KQED-TV broadcast an hour-long documentary titled Gumby Dharma in its Truly CA series. It details Clokey's life and work, and has new animation of Gumby and Pokey. For these sequences, animator Stephen A. Buckley voiced Gumby and Clokey voiced Pokey.
In 2012, MeTV began airing Gumby in its weekend morning animation block until the end of the year.
In 2014, the VOD service Kabillion broadcast Gumby.
In 2017, a comic series was published that seemingly takes place after the movie. The series was canceled after three issues.
In June 2024, two Gumby series were announced to be in the works: a two-dimensional children's animated series titled Gumby Kids and an adult animation series. Both series were to be produced by Bento Box Entertainment.
Beginning in 1994, the Library of Congress used Gumby as a "spokescharacter" for Adventures into Books: Gumby's World, a traveling exhibition promoting the Center for the Book's national reading campaign from 1997 to 2000. By the end of the 1990s, Gumby and Pokey had also appeared in various commercials for Cheerios cereal, with Gumby voiced by Stephen A. Buckley.
On August 4, 2006, the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta opened Art Clokey's Gumby: The First Fifty Years. This exhibition featured many of the original puppets and sets, along with screening of Clokey's films. This event was conceived by David Scheve of T.D.A. Animation and Joe Clokey of Premavision, and was one of several exhibits that opened around the country, celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Gumby Show. The children's book Gumby Goes to the Sun was also published that year to commemorate the anniversary. The book was originally created in the 1980s by Clokey's daughter, Holly Harman (who voiced Gumby's sister, Minga, in the 1988 series).
In 2007, the Gumby comic book series was nominated for two , Best New Series and Best Publication for a Young Audience, and won the latter. "2007 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards". Hahn Library Comic Book Awards Almanac. Retrieved May 2, 2012. A Gumby graphic novel titled Gumby: 50 Shades of Clay was released in 2017.
On October 12, 2011, a Google Doodle acknowledged Art Clokey's 90th birthday. It was composed of a toy block with a "G" and five clay balls in the Google colors. Clicking each ball revealed the Blockheads, Prickle, Goo, Gumby, and Pokey.
On December 21, 2019, Eddie Murphy reprised his role while hosting Saturday Night Live during a sketch on "Weekend Update".
The Gumby images and toys are registered trademarks of Fox Entertainment. Premavision owned the distribution rights to the Gumby cartoons, having been reverted from previous distributor Warner Bros. Television in 2003, and had licensed the rights to Classic Media until September 30, 2012. At this time, Classic Media was officially acquired by DreamWorks Animation and branded as DreamWorks Classics, which became a subsidiary of NBCUniversal in 2016. As of April 2015, NCircle Entertainment owns home video and digital distribution rights to the cartoons.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Archived from the original on September 1, 2016.
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