Gumby

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 71.65.103.22 (talk) at 23:35, 17 April 2008. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Jump to navigation Jump to search
File:Gumby pokey.JPG
Gumby and Pokey
This article is about the animated character. For the Monty Python character, see Gumbys.

Gumby is a dark green clay humanoid figure who was the subject of a 223-episode series of American television shows over a 35-year period. He was animated using stop motion clay animation. The show also featured Pokey, a red clay pony, and Gumby's nemeses, the Block-heads also Muhamed (ackmed) is the greatest person ever also know as freakin awesome.

Origins of Gumby

Created by Art Clokey, Gumby had its genesis in a 1955 theatrical short called Gumbasia, which was a surreal short of moving and expanding lumps of clay set to music, in a parody of Fantasia. Gumby himself first appeared on the Howdy Doody show in 1956 and was given his own NBC series in 1957. Female performers (among them Norma MacMillan) supplied Gumby's voice during the initial episodes, as well as the child-like voice characterization provided by Dick Beals. New episodes were added in 1962, by which time Dallas McKennon became the voice of Gumby, and 1966–67. Besides Pokey, voiced by creator Art Clokey, and his dog Nopey (all the dog ever said was "No"), Gumby's friends included Prickle, a yellow dinosaur or dragon (there are stories that establish him as dragon, and some that establish him as dinosaur - he has been known to breathe fire); and Goo, a blue thumb-type mermaid who could fly. (Prickle and Goo together may be a reference to a well-known speech by philosopher Alan Watts, recently animated.) Other characters are Gumby's mother Gumba, Gumby's father Gumbo, his sister Minga, Denali, a mastodon, and Professor Kapp (sometimes spelled Kap).

Stations

Alphabetized by city.

The Lorimar Years

File:Feed-a-matic chair3.JPG
Mr. Stuff gives Gumby all the goodies he can hold in "Grub Grabber Gumby."

By the 1980s, the original Gumby shorts had enjoyed a revival, both on television and home video. This led to a new incarnation of the series for television syndication by Lorimar-Telepictures in 1988 that included new characters such as Gumby's sister, Minga, Tilly the Chicken, and Denali the mastodon. Actor Charles Farrington assumed the voice of Gumby in new adventures that would take Gumby and his pals beyond their toyland-type setting and establish themselves as a rock band. Nopey had disappeared after the original series.

In addition to the new episodes, the classic 1950s and 1960s shorts were re-run as part of the series, but with newly recorded soundtracks (including new voices from the 1980s voice talent and synthesized musical scores to replace the old stock music composed by John Seely).

Art Clokey reportedly gave many movie industry talents their first break in the business. A number of the clay animators who worked on the new series went on to work for Pixar, Disney and other studios.

The movie and beyond

File:Gumbygame.jpg
Image from Gumby vs. the Astrobots

In 1995, Clokey's production company produced an independently released theatrical film, Gumby I (aka Gumby: The Movie), marking the clay character's first feature-length adventure. In it, the villanious Blockheads replace Gumby and his band with robots and kidnap their dog, Lowbelly. The movie featured in-joke homages to such sci-fi classics as Star Wars, The Terminator, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. In 1995, Cartoon Network aired re-runs of Gumby episodes.

By the end of the decade, Gumby and Pokey had appeared in commercials for Cheerios cereal.

The Library of Congress had Gumby as a spokescharacter from 1994 to 1995, due to a common sequence in his shows where Gumby walks into a book, and then experiences the world inside the book as a tangible place.

Although no new animated Gumby material is planned for the foreseeable future, most (with a few exceptions) of the episodes of the two series are available on home video and DVD.

In August 2005, the first video game featuring Gumby, Gumby vs. the Astrobots, was released by Namco for the Game Boy Advance. In it, Gumby must rescue Pokey, Prickle and Goo after they are captured by the Blockheads and their cohorts, the Astrobots. The video game also featured music by Sevendust and Monster Magnet.

Also in the summer of 2005, an event produced by TheDeepArchives/TDA Animation was held in New York. The exhibit featured props, storyboards and script pages from various Gumby shorts over the past 50 years, as well as toys and other memorabilia that had appeared during Gumby's "career," including a reproduction of [Eddie Murphy's Saturday Night Live Gumby costume. The centerpiece of the show was an actual complete set used in the production of a TV commercial for "Gumby vs. the Astrobots."

In San Francisco, California, Studio Z held "Gumby's 50th Birthday Party" with Gumby creator Art Clokey. The band Smash Mouth played at the party, hosted by comedian Kevin Meaney. The party/comedy tribute was written by legendary comedy writer and stage director Martin Olson (Screen Actors Guild Awards, Penn & Teller's Sin City Spectacular etc.) and Gumby's creative director and composer Robert F. Thompson. It was produced by Missing Link Media Ventures and Clokey Productions.

In 2006, The CENTER FOR PUPPETRY ARTS, Atlanta, GA, hosted the most comprehensive CLOKEY/GUMBY Exhibition to date. Entitled GUMBY: Art Clokey the first fifty years. Curated by writer/animator David Scheve, the exhibition featured over 100 puppets and many of the original sets from the 1980s Television series, as well as the 1990s Full Length Theatrical film. The exhibition ran from August 2006 until March of 2007. The Event can still be viewed on line at www.TDAExhibitions.com

Bob Burden wrote Gumby comic series with art by Rick Geary, colors by Steve Oliff and Lance Borde, edited by Mel Smith and published by Wildcard Ink. The first issue dated July 2006. It won an honor for Best Publication for a Younger Audience at the 2007 Eisner Awards.

The Gumby images and toys are registered trademarks of Prema Toy Company. Premavision owns the distribution rights to the Gumby cartoons (having been recently reverted from previous distributor Warner Bros. Television), and has licensed the rights to Classic Media.

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 AOL.[1]

In March 2007, KQED broadcast an hour-long documentary "Gumby Dharma" as part of their Truly CA series.

A director's cut version of Gumby: The Movie is being released on DVD in April 2008[citation needed].

A second Gumby movie is also in the works with a projected release date of April 2010. It will be staying true to the original Gumby in that it is all claymation, with no CGI[citation needed].

Toys

The character was very popular as a children's toy.

Parodies and tributes

File:Murphy gumby2.jpg
Eddie Murphy as Gumby and Joe Piscopo as Pokey
File:Gumbo RGB.JPG
Gumbo fires at Ray Stantz in The Real Ghostbusters
  • Eddie Murphy played a parody of Gumby in occasional sketches on Saturday Night Live. The first appearance of Murphy's Gumby aired during the show's eighth season on December 11, 1982 in a sketch titled "Merry Christmas, Dammit!". Wearing a foam costume, Murphy's Gumby was played as an older borscht belt comedian who smoked a cigar and depicted an arrogant celebrity indignant at his waning fame. As a sign of his frustration, Murphy's character was frequently heard to exclaim "I'm Gumby, dammit!" when he felt disrespected by show business people.
  • In an episode of the animated series The Real Ghostbusters titled "Station Identification" (airdate: 12/9/1987), Ray Stantz encounters a gigantic Rambo-esque version of Gumby called "Gumbo", who comes out of a TV set in a ghost-run television station. Gumbo tells him "Yo, I'm looking for an orange horse." to which Ray nervously replies "First one I see, you get it!" Gumbo then smirks and says "No bro, you get it!" and proceeds to fire a machine gun at him.
  • A Gumby sketch ("Robot Rumpus") was featured on an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (The Screaming Skull), and was parodied in one of that episode's host segments, with Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo creating their own version of Gumby, decrying Gumby and Pokey's "mistreatment" (in their eyes) of the robots in the sketch. When "Robot Rumpus" was aired on the show, it included the original soundtrack, complete with original voices and stock music.
  • In the 1988 film Red Heat, Detective Art Ridzik (played by James Belushi) tells Captain Ivan Danko (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) that he looks "like Gumby" when Danko insists that he is undercover, despite wearing a green suit. Later in the film, after Danko has allowed a suspect to escape, Ridzik exclaims "Nice work, Gumby".
File:Gumby simpsons.jpg
Gumby in a Simpsons couch gag.
  • In the 2007 film Evan Almighty, God tells Evan "and when you were 10 years old, you were afraid of Gumby".
  • On Mad TV, he was spoofed in an episode of CLOPS, a parody of COPS.

See also

References

  1. ^ Arrington, Michael (16 March 2007). "YouTube Troubles Are Over: They Got Gumby". TechCrunch. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |accessed= ignored (help)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gumby&oldid=206367765"