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Brant · Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2010 7:58 pm Post subject: No more Gumby, dammit

Sad news from California:

Art Clokey, the animator who half a century ago created Gumby, that most pliant of pop-cultural figures, died on Friday at his home in Los Osos, Calif. He was 88.

His son, Joe Clokey, said he died in his sleep.

Asparagus green and fashioned from clay, Gumby made his television debut in 1956 on “The Howdy Doody Show.” The next year, he became the star of “The Gumby Show,” in which he embarked on a string of gently quixotic adventures with his supple steed, Pokey. The series was one of the first extended uses of stop-motion animation on television.

Though the 1950s show was fairly short-lived, Gumby reappeared in new series in the 1960s and in the 1980s and continued for years in syndication. He also starred in a feature film, “Gumby: The Movie” (1995), directed by Mr. Clokey.

Gumby is now firmly ensconced in popular culture. He dangles from rearview mirrors, appears in video games and crops up ubiquitously in references in film and on television. Millions of Gumby dolls have submitted to their owners’ manipulations. The character has been satirized, notably by Eddie Murphy, who played him as a cigar-chomping vulgarian — “I’m Gumby, dammit!” — on “Saturday Night Live” in the 1980s.

With his first wife, Ruth, Mr. Clokey also produced “Davey and Goliath,” the adventures of a clay boy and his dog, broadcast in the 1960s and ’70s.

Mr. Clokey was the subject of a documentary film, “Gumby Dharma,” released in 2006.
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OndinitaAKALibchit · Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2010 9:39 pm Post subject:

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