912S - A GUMBY ADVENTURE: ROBOT RUMPUS (1956; TV episode; NR; 15m) companion short to YARD WORK MADE EASY Shown with Movie: 912-The Screaming Skull Short Type: Television Series Plot: Gumby's idea of having robots do work around the house and yard backfires. Cr/Prod/Dir/Scr/Sto: Art Clokey* Anim Dir: Ray Peck and/or Peter Kleinow? Ed: Woodward Smith, Don McIntosh and/or Colin Young? ADir: Alfonso Eggleston and/or Melvin Wood? Score: John Seely Associates and possibly Jerry Gerber voice of Gumby / Ginny Tyler (TV's Davey and Goliath) voice of Pokey / Art Clokey voice of Gumba, Gumby's mother / Ginny Tyler voice of Gumbo, Gumby's father / Art Clokey narrator / Art Clokey? Classic Line: "Such clever boys deserve crackers with their milk." Trivia: ART CLOKEY studied at the University of Southern California. It was there that in 1953 he made his first clay animation (which he termed "Claymation") short film entitled Gumbasia, which featured geometric shapes moving to a jazz score. In 1956, Art Engel at 20th Century Fox was so impressed with Gumbasia that they hired Clokey to make 59 short films starring Gumby, which were featured on NBC's The Howdy Doody Show. Every second of air-time is comprised of 24 separate still pictures...can you imagine spending that much time tediously moving clay ever so slightly? (In 1959, Clokey also made the popular religious animated series, Davey and Goliath, which had the movement of small models instead of clay). Gumby gained an ever-widening audience, when the show went into syndication on its own in 1962, and again in 1966 and 1988, each time Clokey (with his wife Gloria) making new episodes to show with the older ones. The Gumby character was revived once more, when he starred in his first feature film, 1995's Gumby: The Movie. So why is Gumby's head shaped that way? According to Clokey himself, he based Gumby's slanted head on an early photo of his father, showing a pronounced cowlick that looked like a big bump. Says Clokey: "This picture of my father fascinated me as a child. I thought the shape would fascinate kids." Last Updated: 3/28/1999 Welcome! | Author, Contributors, Disclaimer | Introduction | FAQs Movies by Year | Titles by Experiment # | Titles by Alphabetical Order Performers and Production Crew