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| An interview with Art Clokey | Hippies always got Gumby, says Art Clokey. "They could see he was an honest expression right from my heart," explains Clokey, the soft-spoken, gently effervescent septuagenarian who created the fanciful pea-green funboy in 1953. ``I wasn't trying to exploit children or do formula television. Gumby was an honest attempt to entertain and give kids a little joy.'' And now, 40 years after Gumby was first introduced to America on ``The Howdy Doody Show'' (speaking of iconic kidvid bliss), Clokey has brought forth ``Gumby: The Movie,'' a G-rated family viewing experience. Why a feature-length movie at this late date? Because Gumby is bigger than ever, Clokey, 73, said during a phone conversation from his home in northern California. ``We're reaching a whole new generation,'' Gumby's chummy alter ego proclaimed, referring to the fact that Gumby and his funky stop-animation gang have found new life _ and new fans _ while airing seven days a week on Nickelodeon, the popular cable network for kids. But even before Gumby clicked with Nick, there was an earlier cockeyed booster rocket of recognition provided by Eddie Murphy on ``Saturday Night Live'' in the early 1980s. ``I'm Gumby, dammit,'' snarled Murphy's cigar-smokin', satiric G-thang. ``It cracked me up,'' said Clokey of Murphy's parody. ``Gumby has a sense of humor. He can laugh at himself.'' Besides, self-deprecation is good for business. ``It was excellent promotion,'' said Clokey of the ``SNL'' marketing windfall. ``Eddie Murphy is a great Gumby fan. I saw him once in a Gumby T-shirt.'' In the early years, Clokey stayed away from hyping his little pal with a bunch of crass merchandise. ``We didn't want to give the impression we were trying to exploit kids,'' Clokey said. ``I was kind of idealistic.'' So when ``The Gumby Show'' first aired on NBC between 1957 and 1964, there wasn't a T-shirt or lunch box to be found. But by the time Clokey shrewdly bought back the original 42 episodes from NBC and sold them in syndication in 1966, the Gumby cornucopia of collectibles had begun. ``Some guy said, `Why don't you make a toy?' '' said Clokey. So kaboom, the first Gumby and Pokey bendable plastic action figures were born in the mid-1960s. Hippies flipped. So did a lot of other Gumby fans. And the bend-it toys are still great sellers. Plus, you can now find Gumby-head hats, Gumby lunch boxes, Gumby and Pokey T-shirts, and Gumby bubble bath. And there even are talking Gumby and Pokey dolls on the way, as well as a Gumby record with Gumby tunes, inspired by the new movie. It's not like Clokey (rhymes with Pokey) planned to hatch a pop culture legend. ``We never imagined that would happen in the early years,'' Clokey recalled. ``We just thought (Gumby) had run its course. But it kept on going and going and going.'' Clokey, who spent the first dozen years of his life in the Motor City, moved to California with his family in the mid-1930s. But while living with his family in a westside Detroit neighborhood, Clokey received happy Gumby-like inspiration during summer visits to his grandparents' farm in Millington, Mich. ``That was paradise every summer,'' Clokey said of his pastoral visits to the Michigan countryside. ``That's why we have barns in the Gumby series.'' But it was in California that Clokey's vivid imagination was further fueled by a newfound fascination with film-making, doing graduate work in cinema at the University of Southern California. He learned about the stop animation process at USC and created an art film called ``Gumbasia,'' which used an eclectic array of colors and clay shapes set to jazz music. It was ``Gumbasia'' that served as Gumby's roots. And the rest, as they say, is bendable green team history. The Gumby saga now includes 65 half-hour episodes of Little Mr. Positive, a 12-year-old clayboy who is honest, pure and extremely flexible. Honest and pure, sure, but Clokey did reveal that merry pranksters at the UCLA film school once made an underground Gumby porno parody. Tsk, tsk. And certain countercultural toonheads claim to have seen hallucinogenic entertainment qualities in ``The Gumby Show.'' And they might be on the mark. Clokey briefly experimented with LSD in the early '60s, he said, when it was still legal, taking the mind-expanding drug under medical supervision. ``There were some pretty psychedelic scenes in the newer episodes,'' the affable animator confessed. But then, maybe he was just naturally high. ``My original subsconscious was in touch with something,'' he observed. Obviously. And these days, Gumby continues to strike a friendly cultural chord. He was invited to the annual Easter egg roll at the White House. He's also a symbol of environmental awareness, a green and bendy ecologically astute hepcat. Plus, he's down with the Dead: A six-foot stuffed Gumby in a Grateful Dead T-shirt put in an appearance at a mass Deadhead memorial for the late Jerry Garcia at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco three weeks ago, Clokey said. The essential thing is, Gumby will always be in tune with Spaceship Earth and its inhabitants. ``He has great faith in the goodness of everything and everybody,'' Clokey said. ``He's very trusting.'' And very, very successful. |
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| -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tape #1 01:00:00 Bars 01:01:30 Interview with R. Marshall Stross, Former Executive Director for Davey and Goliath. Director for Press Radio and Television, ULC. 01:02:48 I functioned as executive director since I signed the contracts, sent out the checks, made the payments. Unfortunately our titles or names never appeared on episodes. I had twin boys, 10 and 11. They'd say, "Dad, you say you make Davey and Goliath. It doesn't say that on the screen." We did credit of course the writers and the animators and the voices. Those were all paid professionals. But no one from the church. And really when you introduce the executive director, Dick Sutcliff has to be recognized as the real father of Davey and Goliath. It was his original idea to get into television. And this was back in the mid 50's. There were other churches, the national council of churches who realized, "Hey, here is a new way to reach a lot of public. But Dick Sutcliff brought it in, this dates back to 1958. The convention was in Dayton, Ohio. I was then city editor of the morning newspaper. He came to town with an animated film called, "U". Which was a pilot. Well the audience or the delegates, if they weren't loyal church people would have walked out. Even he was disappointed. It was a humble recognition though. Hey, children's television is something for the future. So from there he progressed into getting acquainted with Clokey productions in Glenn Dale, California. And Art Clokey who had originated Gumby created the figures Davey and Goliath. Then the cast of characters. Now Sutcliff had to work very closely. Those first 13 episodes were miserable for him because he would send the script out... Well even Art Clokey tried to write a script or two. You can imagine. Here is a man. Commercial production of stop action animation. And he is going to write a script for the church? No way! But he thought he could do it. So this made for a lot of tensions. Then they would send the scripts out to him. And in doing the story boards. Of course a story board is where you set down the illustrations that are going to accompany the script. And he would take licenses which no one in the church would ever have condoned. You see, the United Lutheran Church, and this continued, was very much aware that this had to be a program that would be accepted anywhere. It's purpose was to teach children what God was like. And only God. There was never other reference to a scriptural passage or message except God. And God wou ld usually communicate with Davey. And if Davey something wrong, he would say, "Oh, God would have wanted me to do it this way. Then if Davey slipped Goliath was standing by. Goliath talks. And the audience can hear Goliath. But in the story only Davey can hear. And I can still hear Goliath... "Davey, didn't you remember God?" And that was another way of introducing the subject. But never did we preach. Never did we sermonize. And the young people had to find the message and what God is like. Now it started out, it was aimed at second, third and fourth graders. And that gave us pretty good limitations on how complicated you could get the scripts. When other changes came, it advanced to the 5th grade. Because we found youngsters were not letting go. In fact when the Commission on Press Radio and Television first approved the initial $200,000.00 to be invested in Davey and Goliath it was said, "We'll never do any more of this, it's too expensive". Well before the project ended, the production of it, some 10 years later, the Church had invested a million seven. Now some of that was re- captured. We were never able to sell Davey and Goliath. It was public service in the U.S. and Canada. That is the church gave the film. (It was film in the original), to the station and the stations played it at will. The Church paid for the transportation of the film. We did this in cooperation with the National Council of Churches Broadcast and Film Division. They had the distribution facility which the Lutheran's didn't have. But never was there any money received for U.S. and Canada... 01:08:28 Dick Sutcliff? When Dick left... I became a director and Dick was an assistant in the Department. So when I came upon the scene all of the contracting. All of the financial end of the production was my responsibility. So that is why I say that I was executive director. Dick was really the producing director. Dick would go to California regularly to be on location at Clokey productions. Mine could be done on the telephone, telegraph at that time. So that was my role. It changed when Dick left. I then got the idea... "We can't let this Davey and Goliath fall by the way side". We found out that children are coming one each year that want to see it. They want to see it over. Parents are writing us. We are getting calls from pastors in the Church. "Oh please! We must have more Davey and Goliath!" Well we started out with a special. Christmas is. We then made six 30 minute specials. Easter, back to school, on the holidays they would play. At the same time we made an additional 26 15 minute. You say 15 minute because that is what they were. But for TV purposes they were 14 m inutes because while we allowed no commercial break in Davey and Goliath, we knew at the end or at the beginning there could be an identification by the station. Never were we permitted to make any plea on behalf of the church. This for contributions. This woul d have taken us right off the air. Now, taking it off the air I leap foreword a few years, when all of a sudden the networks and individual stations started turning us down. Why? Because they no longer... they had been de-regulated by the Federal Communication Commission. So no longer did they have the rules where they had to give so much time a week or a month for public service programming. That was blow one. Blow two, the televangelists came along with their rich resources and started buying time. Now, who's going to give time away when they could sell it. And you couldn't blame the stations. So that was really brought the halcyon days of Davey and Goliath to an end. However cable was coming and we had to face up to the decision that the Church could not afford to distribute to cable. It just couldn't begin to make enough prints. So we had to say no to cable. 01:12:15 VISION which is the broadcast unit of Faith and Values Channels distributes Davey to Cable stations. It plays every Saturday morning at 7am to an audience that could reach 26 million households. Now they don't measure. If fact we had Neilson and we had Arbitron and we even paid for some of those services to tell us what public television was doing because we needed to know. But today VISN carries on. And a lot of cable stations are very happy to have Davey and Goliath rolled in every Saturday morning. And across the country. 01:13:20 Why was Davey so successful? It came at a time when those in the Church, and I was a volunteer at the time, appreciated that television was a great means of reaching out. Perhaps the best way of putting it... Franklin Clark Frey, who was then president of the Church... Time Magazine cover, that caliber of a person, used to say, "I have no time for television... Oh maybe a Yankee Ball game once in a while, but", he said, "I realize the impact on the public." And he set aside a million dollars in a television reserve fund so that when the new Church comes into being, the Lutheran Church in America, you'll have a million dollars in reserve. Now that takes you back, and gives you some of the impetus that made us think of children's television. The first program as I mention, "U" was not successful. But in 61, three years later the first 13 Davey and Goliath episodes were released. And they were instant success. Perhaps the best description of the success... Three New York Stations carried the program. Now New York then as it is now had a big audience. But for three stations to carry it. One of those stations carried Davey and Goliath for 18 years. We used A.C. Neilson, we used Arbitron for research. And in the case of Neilson I think at one time 53 stations in the country were carrying Davey. That was unheard of for Public Service. When Arbitron identified the first 10 children's TV programs Davey came in 9th. We were happy about that because the first 8 were commercial shows. 01:16:35 Davey became more inclusive? ...here you had mother Hanson, mother and dad Hanson... Davey and sister Sally. And Goliath of course. As I've said, Goliath could speak, but only Davey could hear him on the film. Now this carried fine until we got into the 60's. All of a sudden we started getting complaints. 01:17:06 Sally is so subservient to Davey. This just isn't the way it is today. We changed the rules. All of a sudden we had Davey doing the dishes and Sally pushing the lawn mower. Easy to do when you were making it. But we were aware that times had changed. The women's movement was on and we had to recognize that what was good in 61 had to be altered 4 or 5 years later. Then the other impact was the, and this was the same time as the movement, had to do with persons of color. All of a sudden we looked at Davey and Goliath and said, "My gosh! They sure are white." We looked at the pastor and he was white, round faced, cherub type person. We realized this wasn't today. So now we introduced Jonathan. The name Jonathan, I don't know how it originated, but it was pure luck. But you go to the new testament and here Jonathan is a friend of David's in the bible. If that was so inspired it was never reported that way. So all of a sudden we introduced Jonathan. Jonathan's father was a pharmacists. So you had a business like character. His mother was involved in teaching. That wasn't enough though. We had to move to Hispanic. And we brought in several Hispanic characters. And then Japanese, oriental, Asian.... So we ended up in the 60's going through what the entire country was going through. A bit of a revolution or evolution to recognize, hey, it's not all white. The world has other... and also has other languages. And it was kind of startling to hear Davey and Goliath for the first time when a little Spanish boy spoke out in Spanish. It was just a brief, but just enough to let the audience know that this boy was different. Now, we capitalized on those differences. We tried to point out and one good story was were one of Jonathan's black friends was bandaged in a hospital for an eye injury. When they took the bandages off... Davey had visited him in the hospital and they had become quite good friends. When they took the bandages off this boy's eyes he look's and says, "Davey, your white!". Just the reverse of what you'd expect. And it took a lot of convincing on Jonathan's part to convince this boy that, "Hey, this boy your seeing is the same Davey who has been so kind and gracious to you in your hours of suffering." But that gave us good acceptance all across the country. 01:20:24 We were not aware of this at the time but Davey was in the front ranks of recognizing the changes in people of color and people of language other than English. We didn't make much of it at the time. We just thought, oh, we had to do this. Let me say, we were always careful not to offend. You could put two shows together back to back and you wouldn't. But we also introduced other elements in the 60's. The one parent family. Authority, the bully. In the early Davey and Goliath it was all too benign and nicety nice, nice for you to have a bully. But you go to the last 13 and there you find the bully. You find officer Bob, a police man. And authority figure. Kids don't like him. But Davey points out that this man is on our side. This man is helping us. So it reached beyond the color and the language. But is was obvious that we had to fit these characters into these situations. Now we are still struggling with some of these problems. Davey and Goliath didn't solve it for the rest of the country but at least for children of those days, those audiences it was made real. 01:22:45 Why do people like Davey today? Well the message, teaching children what God is like, is just as important today as it was in 1961. And I think audiences appreciate it. Then we picked up some educational applications and that has helped. And now we can go to a church that plays Davey and Goliath for a Sunday School or a children's group and we say, "You know this could be made available to the TV audience through cable". And we suggest they contact stations. So I think that explains. Now I do have to say the Church dropped the ball in not maintaining the distribution to commercial television in the United States. The of course Canada, when the new Church was formed, Canada became independent, it dropped Davey completely. It made no bones about it. They said, "We cannot afford to distribute." I think that speaks to this problem of why Davey and Goliath didn't go on for ever. We estimated based on studies that 3 million youngsters a week were watching Davey and Goliath. Now that is a lot. 01:24:20 Copycat productions? One competitor of Clokey Productions introduced a show and was picked up by one of the biggest cereal manufactures in the country. It was called Samson and Goliath. Did just what we didn't want to do. Made Samson and Goliath fill the screen with rage and terror and explosions. Well we had our lawyers contact the firm that was producing it and also the company that was sponsoring it saying, "this was pretty close to copy write infringement". And they changed the name and eventually dropped the program because they realized that they had probably intruded. Their defense was, "we didn't know about Davey & Goliath". We made sure they heard about Davey and Goliath... (Following off record... "that was Hana Barbara and General Mills. The President and CEO of General Mills was an old friend from Ohio days and I called him and said "Ed...") 01:26:00 We found that this stimulated "Peanuts". It was no surprise that "Peanuts" came out with a Christmas story just about the same time as we did. Then we also no that we prodded, not prod,... the acceptance of Davey and Goliath made it aware that there was room for children's shows that aren't wholly violent or destructive. Maybe we should have some of that showing today, now that I say this. 01:27:11 You pried 1.7 million out of the Church in the 1960's. What would you say today? I would tell them to look at the Lion King. What Disney is doing right now with the Lion King certainly would show us what we could be doing with animation today. Bear in mind these figures were nine inch free standing figures made of foam rubber. Armatures inside so that the bodies could move. Hands could be... The little heads had mouths and eyes that could be put on with tweezers. They didn't move, but the person, the animator would take off the old and put on the new. Today you would do all of this with computer. I'm certain. And it would be a lot smother. But I think that is what I would do with a million and a half dollars today. Investigate what could be done to present Da vey and Goliath in this new century or millennium.... 01:28:05 Art Clokey? Art Clokey was a very creative man. He developed Gumby and still makes his living from Gumby. I'll see in the Macy Parade here in New York a 60 foot Gumby b alloon figure come down the street. And you can still buy Gumby figures. Tape #2 02:00:00 Bars 02:01:06 Let me go back to Art Clokey because he really was a genius for his time. For example he was able to create moving water with foil like we were never able to do after he left the company. He and Ruth separated and eventually Ruth took over the company. Ruth Clokey Goodell. And she did a fine job of keeping us supplied. We never lost any production because of their problems. But in all fairness we couldn't duplicate some of the animation that Art Clokey produced. He was a master. Of course he has to be credited with originating the figures and the design. Those armatures we talked about being in the elbows and the knees and the neck and all, came from Germany. He had found them for Gumby. And could easily adapt them to Davey and Goliath. 02:02:30 Talks about Frank Claus, spiritual father of Davey and his doctoral dissertation at Temple University. 02:03:00 Talks about other church producers of Davey. Roy Lloyd, Howard Coleman, Bob Noris, John Jorgensen, etc. 02:06:00 Foreign Distribution? Before the 20 life, I think that is a reasonable estimate of Davey and Goliath, it went into 7 languages... we used to always say, it played every continent but Antarctica. The last one was Iceland and it went on in Icelandic. But it was translated into Portuguese for Brazil, Spanish for Central America, Japanese for our Sagunja publishing house there and Dutch in the Netherlands, Then in Africa they tried to get us to go into dialects and that just got to be too complicated. It wasn't easy, these translations... (goes on about foreign translations). 02:11:10 Davey was a woman? Those of us from the Church supplied the scripts. What they did in producing it was the work of Hollywood professionals. They found that they could get a woman who would sound like a better Davey than a man. Now that is how Davey's voice came from a woman. And for most of the entire 67 programs she was the same woman's voice. Now we had a man who did Goliath. He did all of the male voices. And I think in our credits usually it would be at least 3 voice people named. It seemed strange to us but as I say we kept our hands off production. That was their responsibility. As long as it sounded good, that was our objective. 02:12:30 Gospel message in Davey? One of the first newspaper recognitions of Davey and Goliath came in 1961. George Cornell who for years was religion editor of the Associated Press, wrote a piece in which he said, "This children's show explains God to youngsters by way of television." Now it was that simple, if it can be that simple. But it was just explaining God. It was making God reasonable, livable, acceptable. No preaching, just a presence. A good influence. A person who would represent him self in times of tension and stress. That was, I think, the appeal to youngsters. They could grasp this. This wasn't some sermon. This was God at work. 02:14:45 Marshall talks about educational uses of Davey and Goliath. 02:19:35 Marketing of Davey? It's easy to talk about the good things. Let me say something about some of the frustrations. (Holding up a doll). Here is a figure and Lakeside toys in Minneapolis, this is Raggedy Ann, popular back then, may still be, I don't know. These were figures that could be pliable, you could play with them. You could set them down. And Lakeside came to the Lutheran Church with the idea you could do this with Davey and Goliath. "Oh!" I thought what a way... because these were selling in supermarkets. I saw a way to recover some of that 1.7 million very quickly because this would sell around the country and around the world. Dr. Frey said, "Why don't you present this to the executive council. You'll have to get their approval." So I brought this. So I brought several figures in and arranged for one to be at each position. Pretty soon I see members of the executive council playing with them. Moving them around. Setting them around, looking at them. I thought, "Oh, we're in!". Till one woman looked at the back and said, "Now here it says the Bobs Merrill Company. Would Bobs Merrill have anything to do with it?" "No, no. It would say the Lutheran Church in America". She said, "That's commercial!" I knew right then my good idea, my good hope of selling Davey and Goliath toys was gone. And sure enough it was approved by the 33 member board by a few votes. But Dr. Frey proclaimed himself, "We are going into a commercial endeavor, well we just can't permit it with such a narrow approval." Because we were ready to follow that up with coloring books, jig saw puzzles, all these different applications that you go into a toy store today and you find... Well, I go back to the Lion King. That Lion King today is in everything. Well, we missed tha t opportunity with Davey and Goliath. Maybe it was wise because the Church shouldn't go commercial and yet I was disappointed. 02:24:10 What did Davey In? With commercialization of television we are not going to get the time like we used to. Because back then stations had to carry so much public service a month and report it to the Federal Communication Commission, the FCC. When that deregulatio n came along and ended, we all suffered. Whether it was the networks... all the networks used to carry Sunday afternoon religious shows of their own making dropped those. I don't know how we could come back today. And I'm afraid the stations would want to be paid, which is discouraging. 02:25:16 Marshall reads from Frank Claus's 1978 doctoral dissertation. 02:28:32 To show you the problem of boys and girls as I mentioned we came to realize that Davey and Goliath were apart from Sally. But this really showed up in the Jickets club. Where that word Jickets came from I don't know. But they slammed the door in Sally's face. In the last few episodes we had one where the Jickets club accepts Sally. Tape #3 03:00:00 bars 03:01:00 Marshall Stross walks around Trinity Church, Wall Street. Tape #4 04:00:00 Colorbars 04:02:00 Animator at work on scene 04:02:22 Rey Peck working with plane 04:02:57 Animator at work 04:03:30 Animator at work 04:04:10 Animator at work 04:05:03 CU animator working on Goliath 04:05:20 ECU changing Davey's mouth 04:05:54 Art and Ruth with staff 04:06:20 WS of Clokey Productions. Art on Right 04:07:23 Art Clokey and Wadi Medawar animating. Art on L. 04:08:18 Animating a scene 04:08:55 CU animator preparing to shoot water scene 170 04:09:23 ECU pull of armatures with out clothes 04:10:08 Animators with figures. Art on L. 04:10:38 Rey Peck animating a scene 04:12:04 WS parade 04:13:17 Animator and set with figures 04:13:44 Treehouse set 04:15:00 Ruth holds Davey and Goliath 04:15:55 Ruth doing office work 04:16:26 WS parade 04:16:53 R. Marshall Stross and Rey Peck 04:18:27 Rey Peck and Ruth Clokey Goodell 04:19:36 Woman holds puppetts 04:19:45 Sudden storm lake 04:20:43 Ruth holds dog house 04:20:55 Rey Peck and R. Marshall Stross hold buildings 04:21:17 Rey Peck animates Goliath 04:21:32 R. Marshall Stross and Rey Peck on church building set 04:22:20 Rows of heads 04:22:44 Recording talent, African American child 04:22:57 WS recording studio with children 04:23:09 WS Norma McMillan, as Davey and Hal Smith as Goliath. 04:23:39 WS recording talent 04:24:44 Recording Norma McMillan, and Hal Smith 04:25:02 Rey Peck at movieola Tape #5 05:00:00 Bars 05:01:55 Interview with Art Clokey How did you get involved with Davey? Well Dick Sutcliff who was with the Lutheran Church in New York and he saw on WPIX our Gumby series. This was in 1956. They had a meeting and said, "We want to have our series like that. Like Gumby." The same technique. And so they came out to see us in Los Angels. We made a deal. We started and pretty soon we were producing them. Very simple. They gave us the money and we produced them. 05:03:44 They had the idea? Yes. They had a writer, one or two writes. They let me write one or two of them. Since I was in the Episcopal Church at the time my slant on the stories was a little different. They wanted to be a little bit more obvious and up front about God. I was being less obvious about the thing as being religious. But as it worked out they were right. Not being afraid to talk about God and so on, and the bible. 05:04:55 What is stop motion animation? Well, taking a figure of foam rubber and steel armatures. Ball and socket armatures, about this high... move his arm if you want. ...a quarter of an inch, and take a frame. Another quarter of an inch and take a frame. Turn his head at the same time. Take a frame, like this... If you want him to throw a ball... then you move him a half an inch, an inch if you want him to move very fast. It takes 24 frames for a second. One second. It takes an animator about 8 hours to do 20 seconds, or 10 to 20 seconds of action. We call it tri-mentional animation. Some people call it claymation. Clay animation. But we didn't use clay in Davey & Goliath except for a few little effects. We called it tri-mentional animation. Which is stop motion animation using any materials. Clay, foam rubber, wood, what ever. 05:06:42 Of course the heads were made of epoxy. We cast them in rubber molds. 05:06:54 What went into producing a single episode? Well we had an art department of 3 or 4 artists. A shop man who would make the sets. The art director who would supervise the making of the figures and the props. Maybe a little car, or the ice skates... or the trees, and so on. We had eight or nine animators at the time. How long it would take? Well we could shoot with five animators we could shoot maybe almost 1 minute a day. Once every thing was ready and the sets were in place. We had a big space. Kind of a warehouse space. You could set up five or six sets all at once and then the animator could move from set to set. And it would all be ready for him to start animating. So you could do about a minute a day. If you were fortunate. 05:08:30 Why was Davey so popular? Well it was like Gumby. It was a sincere effort to give children something that would be good for them. And that gave them good role models in the stories. Good examples of how to get along with people. And how to function in society. Creatively and with love. That is how Gumby got started. We didn't start with the idea of making money or exploiting the children. We wanted to give the children something. I used to tell stories to my children every night. Make them up myself. Some times we made those stories into the series episode. It was an act of love for children. For seven years, the first seven years I didn't allow any merchandizing, just as the church didn't allow any merchandizing for Davey and Goliath. We didn't want people to get the idea that we were doing this just to sell merchandize and make more money from the children. Exploit them. The same thing with Davey and Goliath. So in some ways both series were kind of a spiritual endeavor. 05:10:30 It is still popular today... why? I think that is the reason. Partly because it's because it's a sincere gift to the children. Also I guess because of our attitude. We tried to reflect our love for the children. For children and people period in the series. There is no cynicism that you get in a lot of cartoons. Davey and Goliath was popular because it looked real to the kids. Just as Gumby looked real. It was three dimensional and they could identify with it right away. Instead of with flat cartoon. Abstract cartoons. Drawings are kind of an abstraction. Whereas the Davey and Goliath sets were all real. The figures were all real. Gumby was real. It was real clay. And it was like kids could sort of imagine that they were in this real world as they do when they play doll house. Or they play with their little trucks. And they dig sand and they are in a real world. And we enabled them to do that with our tri-mentional animation. It was not abstract. Immediate identification. 05:12:28 Ruth Clokey Goodell? Ruth would help... she would help going over the scripts when the writers gave us the scripts. She would go over them. She was an educ ator and would teach in the church school. She had training in religious education for children. That is another reason the church picked us. Because she had the training and religious education. And she could go over the scripts and check them out... 05:13:25 She worked both as the secretary an d script supervisor and she made out the checks and paid the salaries. We would always discuss the scripts. I would consult with her. Kind of a partnership. We were both partners in the company. Clokey productions it was called. 05:14:30 More mulitcultural over time? Probably Ruth could tell you more directly about that. 05:17:10 God gave you the creativity? People ask me about Gumby especially, because I created Gumby from scratch out of clay. And I tell people. It's like being God. Taking clay and making man. In the bible... you get that same satisfaction of having created something that is really alive when you look at it on the screen. It looks alive. It's three dimensional. So I tell people that I don't know where these ideas and stories came from. I consider them coming from our true self. Our God self. In other words, God. And we are instruments of his will doing things like this. Giving. Being loving. We are instruments of his will because God is love. And we are being instruments of that love when we give the children these stories that they identify with in a wholesome fashion. 05:19:00 Why is Davey a good idea today? Well there is some backlash now against all this violence. Educators and religious people are really speaking up now and speaking to congress in no uncertain terms that they don't like this. Don't like their children watching all this violence and cynicism and criminal activity on the screen. As a parent too I want to see good roll models and true heroism presented before the children. So that they become hero's not zero's in our society. 05:22:18 I was certainly thankful that they chose us. It was a great privilege to be able to produce them. It reached more children than the Gumby series. Because they gave the program to the stations free. So they had a wider distribution. 05:22:56 Gumby? We did the new series in 1988. It went on the air. After that we wanted to do a movie showing Gumby helping farmers. That was an effort that we had to do ourself. Universal wanted to produce it. Warner Brothers wanted to but they wanted to. But they wanted to put Eddie Murphy in it as Gumby. But that would have changed the character of Gumby. Universal wanted to change the script too. So the money we made from the series we put into the movie. So we could control it. It would be completely authentic Gumby. And done the way we wanted to. And that was very gratifying to be able to do that. Do it at our own speed. Not make people work 14 hours a day the way most film companies do. And work 8 hours a day five days a week. Which is unheard of in the film industry. Because they want to beat the deadline. Get that money, get that money... Very stressful... The release is starting in New York in May, in the South, Georgia and so forth and then after that I don't know. Gumby has become the spokesperson for the Make a Wish Foundation. They want to do premiers in 81 cities as a benefit for the Make a Wish Foundation. 05:25:05 Art Clokey at Movieola 05:28:20 Art Clokey cutting film 05:28:50 ECU Gumby and Pokey pull to Art cutting film Tape #6 17:07:10 Interview with Ruth Clokey Goodell When the church decided to do something on the education of children they were attracted by the Gumby series. And that is how they came to talk to us. We went to New York and me with the committee that was in charge of radio and TV. 17:08:11 Do you have a favorite scene? We did do the one episode that had to do with color... 17:10:15 Violence in the media? ...it was our first child and we didn't like what we saw on TV. We wanted to make sure that see saw something that wasn't violent. That would be worth while. And that is how we originally started Gumby. And the church liked the Gumby series. And so when they were going to do something for children this animation business got their attention. 17:11:20 Colorbars 17:11:43 Anyway, the Department of Christian education was interested in having some institutes for teacher training type thing. And so they asked me if I'd be interested in being the representative in New York in the New England conferences. And I was and so they hired me. And so for two years I went around to various churches holding teacher training institutes. Then I realized that there was an awful lot to this and I'd better get a better education in it. So I went to Hartford School of Christian Education to work for my masters degree in that. That is when I me Art. Instead of going the second year to get the degree we got married and moved out here. Then he went to USC. And while he was at USC he got interested in a class project. I suggested that we work with clay and make a little ginger bread boy type character. And so we experimented around and came up with the little Gumby character. And then got busy producing the Gumby series. When the Church got interested in something for children, Gumby was on the air at the time, and this caught their attention. The Commission on Christian Education asked us to come to New York and so we did. And they interviewed us in New York. Asked us all about how this clay animation worked. Decided that we would try a trial film. We did and they liked it. So that is how we got started. So we were really busy at the studio then. We had two complete series that we were working on. So we had a large staff of animators, about 20 at one time. So it was a lot of fun. 17:14:30 Tell me about Stop Motion Animation. Very tedious. Each scene you have clay figures for each character that is in the scene has to be moved a quarter of an inch and then you take a picture. And then move an other quarter of an inch. So you not only have to make all these little clay figures, but you have to make all the background sets. Everything has to be in... proportion. So we were producing Gumby and Davey and Goliath, all clay animation at the same time. 17:15:33 My friend Ilene made all the clothes for Davey and Goliath. That was a lot of work too. She got a big kick out of that. I called in all my friends... 17:16:40 Tell me about your dad? Well he was a minister I don't know how many years he was a minister. He died when he was 90 so he was in the church a long time. Had a big church in Chicago. He moved to providence Rhode Island. Very caring person. 17:17:41 Violence in children's television? Art and I were horrified at what was available for children to watch. And that is when we wanted to do something non- violent for children. That's how Gumby got started. And of course that was the type of thing the church was interested in too. So when they were going to do a series this was kind of a natural thing to follow up on. Because most of your cartoons, even at that time were pretty violent cartoons. 17:18:25 Rey Peck? Well we had Rey Peck who was the manager of the whole animation scene. Excellent person. Just excellent. We had too teams. One was the Gumby team. It was a lot of work. Especially when you figure what goes into it. All the props have to be made. The re is nothing you can go out and buy. ...in scale. All the puppets have to be dressed. And so my friend Ilene was the dress maker for all of those. And so that was a lot of work to make outfits for little tiny figures. Then there were all the voices who had to be recorded before hand. Then all the motions of the puppets had to match the dialogue. One animator working a full 8 hour day was doing very well if he got 20 seconds of film shot. That just shows you how tedious it is. 17:20:10 At one time when we were doing both Davey and Goliath we had a staff of 20 animators working. 17:21:00 Education? It was used in class rooms. It was used on TV. Used in Church schools. And the children really related to Davey and Sally his sister. It was a lot of fun. 17:22:10 ...well the fact that it was done by puppets. I think the message got across a lot better than if someone was preaching. 17:23:10 Inclusiveness? At the time that this came out there weren't very many books or tv programs or anything that erased color lines. So it was innovative. 17:31:45 It's just been a fascinating life work. Really and truly, when I look back on it. Every single day was different and fun. Hard work, but we felt so good about it because we were doing something that I thought was constructive. And I had these two little kids and I didn't want them. 17:36:20 I think it's rare that you can earn a living doing something that is worth while that makes a difference to the world. And I honestly felt that Davey and Goliath was the most wonderful gift that the Church could have given to the children. Because this was something that was entertaining and yet wholesome and had a message that adults as well as children could learn from. 17:38:55 I think that parents today feel today the same way we felt. That there really was so much on television that was not suitable for children. This was something that was entertaining and yet had a wonderful message. And there haven't been too many programs like that. 17:49:50 ...I had grown up in a Lutheran parsonage and went to a Lutheran College and was doing work in the area of Christian education. That was a big influence.. 17:51:06 You know, of all the things that I've done in my life I think I'm the most proud of the Davey and Goliath series. Because I really feel that has helped the children of the world, really. Because it is being shown in other countries too. And it's entertaining and yet it's wholesome... 17:52:56 Well actually Rey Peck was instrumental in supervising all of the animators. And he ran the actual production. I took care of all the business end of it. 17:57:10 Ruth Clokey Goodell walks through garden. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
Tape Log from The Lutheran Church's interview with the people who made Davey and Goliath | |||||||||||
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| Davey and Goliath episodes | : Videotape copies of the
following Davey and Goliath television episodes: Halloween Who-Dun-It New Year Promise The Family of God School... Who Needs It? To The Rescue The Caretakers Rickety Rackety Help! Blind Man's Bluff Jeep in the Deep The Kite The Runaway Officer Bob The Silver Mine Not for Sale On the Line The Polka Dot Tie Happy Easter Editor-in-Chief Good Neighbor, Hocus Pocus The New Skates The Shoemaker Who's George Man of the House The Gang : For children aged 6 - 10. |
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