Bob Clampett

Robert Emerson Clampett was born in San Diego, California on May 8, 1913, to Robert Caleb Clampett and Mildred Joan Merrifield. The elder Clampett was born in Nenagh, County Tipperary, Ireland in 1882, and he immigrated to the United States with his parents at age two in 1884.[1] Clampett was displaying extraordinary art skills by the age of five.[2] From the beginning, Clampett was intrigued with and influenced by Douglas Fairbanks, Lon Chaney, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, and he began making film short-subjects in his garage beginning when he was twelve.[3] While living in Hollywood as a young boy, Clampett and his mother Joan lived next door to Charlie Chaplin and his brother Sydney Chaplin. Clampett also recalled watching his father play handball at the Los Angeles Athletic Club with another of the great silent comedians, Harold Lloyd. From his early teens Clampett showed an interest in animation and puppetry. Clampett made hand puppets as a child and, before adolescence, had completed what animation historian Milt Gray describes as "a sort of prototype, a kind of nondescript dinosaur sock puppet that later evolved into Cecil." In high school, Clampett drew a full-page comic about the nocturnal adventures of a pussycat, later published in color in a Sunday edition of the Los Angeles Times. King Features took note and offered Clampett a "cartoonist's contract" to begin a seventy-five dollars a week after high school. King Features allowed Clampett to work in their Los Angeles art department on Saturdays and vacations during high school. On occasion, King Features would print one of Clampett's cartoons for encouragement. In addition, they paid his way through Otis Art Institute, where Clampett learned to paint with oils and to sculpt.[4]

Clampett attended both Glendale High School and Hoover High School in Glendale, California but left Hoover a few months short of graduating in 1931. Afterwards, Clampett found a job working at a doll factory owned by his aunt, Charlotte Clark. Clark was looking for an appealing item to sell and Clampett suggested Mickey Mouse due to growing popularity. Unable to find a drawing of the character anywhere, Clampett took his sketchpad to the movie theater and came out with several sketches. Clark was concerned with the copyright, so the two drove to the Disney studio. Walt and Roy Disney were delighted and they set up a business not far from the Disney studio. Clampett recalled his short time working for Disney: "Walt Disney himself sometimes came over in an old car to pick up the dolls; he would give them out to visitors to the studio and at sales meetings. I helped him load the dolls in the car. One time his car, loaded with Mickeys, wouldn't start, and I pushed while Walt steered, until it caught, and he took off."[4]

Clampett on December 5, 1976, receiving the Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Award

In 1946 after Warner Bros. bought out Leon Schlesinger, his key executives Henry Binder and Ray Katz went to Screen Gems and took Clampett with them.[6] Clampett worked for a time at Screen Gems, then the cartoon division of Columbia Pictures, as a screenwriter and gag writer. In 1947 Republic Pictures incorporated animation (by Walter Lantz) into its Gene Autry feature film Sioux City Sue. It turned out well enough for Republic to dabble in animated cartoons; Bob Clampett directed a single cartoon, It's a Grand Old Nag, featuring the equine character Charlie Horse. Republic management, however, had second thoughts due to dwindling profits, and they discontinued the series.[7] Clampett took his direction credit under the name "Kilroy".

In 1949, Clampett turned his attention to television, where he created the famous puppet show Time for Beany. The show, featuring the talents of voice artists Stan Freberg and Daws Butler, would earn Clampett three Emmys. Groucho Marx and Albert Einstein were both fans of the series. [8] In 1952, he created the Thunderbolt the Wondercolt television series and the 3D prologue to Bwana Devil featuring Beany and Cecil. In 1954, he directed Willy the Wolf (the first puppet variety show on television), as well as creating and voicing the lead in the Buffalo Billy television show. In the late 1950s, Clampett was hired by Associated Artists Productions to catalog the pre-August 1948[9] Warner cartoons it had just acquired. He also created an animated version of the puppet show called Beany and Cecil, whose 26 half-hour episodes were first broadcast on ABC in 1959 and were rerun on the network for five years.[10]

In his later years, Bob Clampett toured college campuses and animation festivals as a lecturer on the history of animation. In 1974 he was award an Inkpot Award.[11] In 1975 he was the focus of a documentary entitled Bugs Bunny: Superstar, the first documentary to examine the history of the Warner Bros. cartoons. Clampett, whose collection of drawings, films, and memorabilia from the golden days of Termite Terrace was legendary, provided nearly all of the behind-the-scenes drawings and home-movie footage for the film; furthermore, his wife, Sody Clampett, is credited as the film's production co-ordinator. In an audio commentary recorded for Bugs Bunny: Superstar, director Larry Jackson claimed that in order to secure Clampett's participation, and access to Clampett's collection of Warners history, he had to sign a contract that stipulated Clampett would host the documentary and also have approval over the final cut. Jackson also claimed that Clampett was very reluctant speaking about the other directors and their contributions.[12]

Clampett died of a heart attack on May 2, 1984 in Detroit, Michigan, six days before his 71st birthday,[13] while touring the country to promote the home video release of Beany & Cecil cartoons. He is buried in Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills.[14][15]

Though Clampett's contribution to the Warner Brothers animation legacy was considerable and inarguable, he has been criticized by his peers as "a shameless self-promoter who provoked the wrath of his former Warner's colleagues in later years for allegedly claiming credit for ideas that were not his."[16] Chuck Jones particularly disliked Clampett and intentionally avoided making any mention of his association with him in his 1979 compilation film The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie (in which Jones lists himself and other Warners directors), although he did briefly mention working with Clampett in his 1989 autobiography "Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of An Animated Cartoonist" and his 1998 interview for the American Television Archive.[17] Some of this animosity appears to have come from Clampett's perceived "golden boy" status at the studio (Clampett's mother was said to be a close friend of cartoon producer Leon Schlesinger), which allowed him to ignore studio rules that everyone else was expected to follow. In addition, Mel Blanc (the voice actor who had worked with Clampett at the same studio for ten years) also accused Clampett of being an "egotist who took credit for everything."[18]

Martha Sigall, on the other hand, recalled Clampett as "an enthusiastic and fun type of guy". She describes him as consistently nice to her and very generous when it came to gifts or donations to a cause.[19] She had left the Termite Terrace in 1943 and did not meet Clampett again until 1960. She did, however, hear from people whom Clampett helped break into the animation business and/or mentored.[20]

Beginning with a magazine article in 1946, shortly after he left the studio, Clampett repeatedly referred to himself as "the creator" of Bugs Bunny, often adding the side-note that he used Clark Gable's carrot-eating scene in It Happened One Night as inspiration for his "creation." (Clampett can be observed making this claim in Bugs Bunny: Superstar.) A viewing of the early Bugs cartoons of the late 1930s and early 1940s, however, clearly demonstrates that the character was not "created" as a whole at one time, but rather evolved in personality, voice, and design over several years through the efforts of Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Cal Dalton, Ben Hardaway, Robert McKimson, Bob Givens and Mel Blanc, in addition to Clampett's contributions.

As the aforementioned Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie was compiled by Jones (along with Friz Freleng) the omission of Clampett is not surprising. (The other two directorial fathers Bugs claims to have had are Avery, who directed A Wild Hare, his first official short, and McKimson, who is the least known of the three best-known Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies directors, but drew the definitive Bugs Bunny model sheet. Depending on the source, number one could be either Jones or Freleng.) Furthermore, in Bugs Bunny: Superstar, Clampett takes credit for drawing the model sheet for the first Porky Pig cartoon, I Haven't Got a Hat (1935), even though it was actually drawn by Friz Freleng.[21][22]

Animation historian Milton Gray details the long and bitter rivalry between Clampett and Jones in an essay titled "Bob Clampett Remembered." Gray, a personal friend of Clampett, calls the controversy "a deliberate and vicious smear campaign by one of Bob's rivals in the cartoon business." He reveals that Jones was angry at Clampett for making some generalizations in his 1970 interview with Funnyworld that gave Clampett too much credit, including taking sole credit for not only Bugs and Daffy but also Jones's Sniffles character and Freleng's Yosemite Sam. He writes that Jones began making additional accusations against Clampett, such as that Clampett would "go around the studio at night, looking at other directors' storyboards for ideas he could steal for his own cartoons." Jones wrote a letter of accusations in 1975 and, according to Gray, distributed copies to every fan he met: seemingly the genesis of the growing controversy. Gray asserts that Clampett was a "kind, generous man [who was] deeply hurt and saddened by Jones's accusations. […] I feel that Bob Clampett deserves tremendous respect and gratitude for the wonderful work that he left us."[23] Other Warner Bros. peers such as musical coordinator Carl Stalling and animator Tex Avery stood by Clampett during his talks on the cartoon industry in the 1960s and 1970s.

Since 1984, The Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award is given each year at the Eisner Awards. Recipients of the award include June Foray, Jack Kirby, Sergio Aragonés, Patrick McDonnell, Maggie Thompson, Ray Bradbury and Mark Evanier.[24]

Clampett's Tin Pan Alley Cats (1943) was chosen by the Library of Congress as a "prime example of the music and mores of our times" and a print was buried in a time capsule in Washington, D.C. so future generations might see it.[4] Porky in Wackyland (1938) was inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2000, deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."[25]

John Kricfalusi, best known as the creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show, got to know Clampett in his later years and has reflected on those times as inspirational. Kricfalusi calls Clampett his favorite cartoon director and calls The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946) his favorite cartoon: "I saw this thing and it completely changed my life, I thought it was the greatest thing I'd ever seen, and I still think it is."[26]

Animation historian Leonard Maltin has called Clampett's cartoons "unmistakable." Milton Gray believes that Schlesinger put Clampett in charge of the black and white cartoon division in order to save it, and many historians have singled out a scene in Porky's Duck Hunt, in which Daffy exits, as a defining Clampett moment. Maltin called it "a level of wackiness few moviegoers had ever seen."[27]

Historian Charles Solomon noted a rubbery, flexible animation quality visible in all Clampett's shorts, and Maltin noted an "energetic, comic anarchy." While Clampett's cartoons were not as well known in the latter half of the 20th century because television syndicators only had the rights to the post-1948 Warner cartoons, his creations have increased in notoriety and acclaim in recent decades.[2]

Clampett is survived by his three children who currently preserve his work and their names are Robert Clampett Jr., who worked for his father as a puppeteer at Bob Clampett Productions, Ruth Clampett, who is an author for several books including a book about a animated couple; she also founded Clampett Studio collections after her fathers death, and Cheri Clampett, a therapeutic yoga specialist.[15] [28][29]

• Cohen, Karl F. (2004), "Censorship of Theatrical Animation", Forbidden Animation: Censored Cartoons and Blacklisted Animators in America, McFarland & Company, ISBN 978-0786420322
• Sigall, Martha (2005). "The Boys of Termite Terrace". Living Life Inside the Lines: Tales from the Golden Age of Animation. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 9781578067497.

• Barrier, Michael. (1999). Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-503759-6.
• Maltin, Leonard. (1980). Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-039835-6.

• Lambiek Comiclopedia article.
• In His Own Words: Bob Clampett on "Time for Beany"
• Robert Clampett at IMDb
• Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
• Clampett Studio Collections
• On a Desert Island with....Bob Clampett
• Michael Barrier's interview with Bob Clampett
• Correspondence between Tex Avery and Chuck Jones concerning Michael Barrier's interview with Bob Clampett
• Milt Gray's essay on Bob Clampett
• Toon Tracker Beany and Cecil page
• Toon Tracker Matty's Funday Funnies page
• Bob Clampett at Find a Grave