Robert Emerson "Bob" Clampett (May 8, 1913–May 4, 1984) was an American animator, producer, director, and puppeteer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes series of cartoons from Warner Bros. and the television shows Time for Beany, and Beany and Cecil. May 8 is the 128th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (129th in leap years). ... Year 1913 (MCMXIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar). ... is the 124th day of the year (125th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1984 (MCMLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link displays the 1984 Gregorian calendar). ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... A film producer creates the conditions for making movies. ... The film director, on the right, gives last minute direction to the cast and crew, whilst filming a costume drama on location in London. ... A puppeteer is a person who manipulates an inanimate object — a puppet— in real time to create the illusion of life. ... Looney Tunes opening title Looney Tunes is a Warner Brothers animated cartoon series which ran in many movie theatres from 1930 to 1969. ... A cartoon is any of several forms of illustrations with varied meanings that evolved from its original meaning. ... Warner Bros. ... Time for Beany was a television series, with puppets for characters, which aired circa 1949-1955. ... Beany and Cecil was an animated cartoon series that ran from 1962 to 1967. ...

Early Career

One of Clampetts early cartoons from Porky in Wackyland

Clampett showed an interest in animation and puppetry from his early teens in Los Angeles. The young Clampett designed the first Mickey Mouse dolls for Walt Disney. As Clampett would later claim in interviews, Disney was impressed with the young artist, and promised him a job. However, a lack of space at Disney's tiny Hyperion studio prevented Clampett from taking the position. Instead, he secured a job in 1931 at the studio of Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising where he worked on the studio's Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series. In his first years at the studio, Clampett mostly worked for Friz Freleng, under whose guidance Clampett grew into an able animator. In 1935, he designed the studio's first major star, Porky Pig, who appeared in Freleng's film I Haven't Got a Hat. Image File history File links Porky_in_Wackyland_&_Dough_for_the_Do-Do. ... Image File history File links Porky_in_Wackyland_&_Dough_for_the_Do-Do. ... The bouncing ball animation (below) consists of these 6 frames. ... A puppeteer is a person who manipulates a puppet or marionette, either by the use of strings, wires or their hands, for a stage production or film. ... Flag Seal Nickname: City of Angels Location Location within Los Angeles County in the state of California Coordinates , Government State County California Los Angeles County Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D) Geographical characteristics Area     City 1,290. ... Mickey Mouse is an Academy Award-winning comic animal cartoon character who has become an icon for The Walt Disney Company. ... For the company founded by Disney, see The Walt Disney Company. ... Year 1931 (MCMXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full 1931 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Hugh Harman (1908–1982) and Rudolf Rudy Ising (1903–1992) were animators best known for founding the Warner Bros. ... Hugh Harman (1908–1982) and Rudolf Rudy Ising (1903–1992) were animators best known for founding the Warner Bros. ... Looney Tunes opening title Looney Tunes is a Warner Brothers animated cartoon series which ran in many movie theatres from 1930 to 1969. ... Merrie Melodies end title Merrie Melodies is the name of a series of animated cartoons distributed by Warner Bros. ... Isadore Friz Freleng (August 21, 1906[1]–May 26, 1995) was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros. ... 1935 (MCMXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar). ... Porky Pig is an Academy Award-nominated animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. ... Porky Pig, in his first Looney Tunes appearance, and Oliver Owl, from the opening titles of I Havent Got a Hat. ...

Bugs Bunny in Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid (1942)

Tweety in A Tale of Two Kitties

Clampett moved to Tex Avery's unit that same year, and the two soon developed an insanely irreverent style of animation that would set Warner Bros. apart from its competitors. Working apart from the other animators in a dilapidated wooden building, Avery and Clampett soon discovered they were not the only inhabitants. They shared the building with thousands of tiny termites. They christened the building Termite Terrace, a name eventually used by fans and historians to describe the entire studio. Image File history File linksMetadata Beaky. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Beaky. ... Bugs Bunny is an Academy Award-winning fictional animated rabbit who appears in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated films produced by Warner Bros. ... Bugs Bunny Gets The Boid is a 1942 Merrie Melodies cartoon, directed by Bob Clampett, produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions, and released to theatres by Warner Bros. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Frederick Bean Fred/Tex Avery (Wednesday, February 26, 1908 – Tuesday, August 26, 1980) was an American animator, cartoonist, and director, famous for producing animated cartoons during the Golden Age of Hollywood. ... Termite Terrace is the nickname for an old building on Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA where Looney Tunes were created frm 1935 to 1937. ...

Elmer talks to the audience in "The Big Snooze"

They were soon joined by animators Chuck Jones, Virgil Ross and Sid Sutherland, and worked virtually without interference on their new, groundbreaking style of humor for the next year. It was a wild place with an almost college fraternity-like atmosphere. Animators would frequently pull pranks such as gluing paper streamers to the wings of flies. Leon Schlesinger, who rarely ventured there, was reputed on one visit to have remarked in his lisping voice, "Pew, let me out of here! The only thing missing is the sound of a flushing toilet!!" Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Chuck Jones in 1976 Charles Martin Chuck Jones (September 21, 1912 – February 22, 2002) was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. ... Leon Schlesinger (1884 - December 25, 1949) was a producer at the Warner Bros. ...

Clampett about this time pressured studio head Leon Schlesinger to give him a chance as a director, and was finally given that chance on an animated sequence for the Joe E. Brown film What's Your Birthday?, animating signs of the zodiac. This led to what was essentially a co-directing stint with fellow animator Chuck Jones for the financially ailing Ub Iwerks, whom Schlesinger subcontracted to produce several Porky Pig shorts. These shorts featured the short-lived and generally unpopular Gabby Goat as Porky's sidekick. Despite Clampett and Jones' contributions, however, Iwerks was the only credited director. A publicity photograph (circa 1929) of Ub Iwerks and his most famous co-creation, Mickey Mouse. ... Gabby Goat is a animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. ...

Clampett was promoted to director in late 1937, and he soon entered his personal golden age. His cartoons grew increasingly violent, irreverent, and surreal, not beholden to even the faintest hint of real-world physics, and his characters are easily the rubberiest and wackiest of all the Warner directors'. Clampett was heavily influenced by surrealist artist Salvador Dalí, as is most visible in Porky in Wackyland (1938), where the entire short takes place within a Dali-esque landscape complete with melting objects and abstracted forms. Clampett and his work can even be considered part of the surreal movement, as it incorporated film as well as static media. 1937 (MCMXXXVII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... DALI (Danish Audiophile Loudspeaker Industry) is a manufacturer of high-end loudspeakers situated in Denmark. ...

Daffy Duck in The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946)

Over the next nine years, Clampett created some of the studio's funniest and most outrageous cartoons, including Porky in Wackyland (1938), Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid (1942), A Tale of Two Kitties (1942), which introduced Tweety Bird, Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs (1943), Russian Rhapsody (1944), The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946), and The Big Snooze (1946), his final cartoon with the studio, and one for which he did not get screen credit. It was largely Clampett's influence that would impel the Warners directors to shed the final vestiges of Disney and enter the territory they are famous for today. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Daffy, as Duck Dodgers, faces off against Marvin the Martian in the 1953 short Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century, a parody of Buck Rogers. ... Porky in Wackyland is a 1938 animated short film in which Porky Pig goes hunting through a surreal Salvador Dalí-esque landscape to find the Do-Do Bird. ... Year 1938 (MCMXXXVIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... Bugs Bunny Gets The Boid is a 1942 Merrie Melodies cartoon, directed by Bob Clampett, produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions, and released to theatres by Warner Bros. ... 1942 (MCMXLII) was a common year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1942 calendar). ... A Tale of Two Kitties is an American cartoon, released in 1942, notable for introducing the character Orson Tweety Bird. ... 1942 (MCMXLII) was a common year starting on Thursday (the link is to a full 1942 calendar). ... For other meanings of words and phrases starting with tweet, see tweet. ... Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs (working title: So White and de Sebben Dwarfs) is a Merrie Melodies animated cartoon directed by Bob Clampett, produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions, and released to theatres on January 16, 1943 by Warner Bros. ... Year 1943 (MCMXLIII) was a common year starting on Friday (the link will display full 1943 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... After Falling Hare turned into a big hit in 1943, Bob Clampett made another Wartime cartoon involving gremlins, called Russian Rhapsody a Merrie Melodie, released to theaters on May 20, 1944. ... 1944 (MCMXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday. ... Daffy Duck in Duck Amuck. ... Year 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full 1946 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... This article or section should be merged with Bob Clampett Bob Clammpets last Warner Bros. ... Year 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full 1946 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Later career

Clampett worked for a time at Screen Gems as a writer and gagman, but in 1949, he turned his attentions to television where he created the famous puppet show Time for Beany. The show would earn Clampett three Emmys and count such celebrities as Groucho Marx and Albert Einstein as fans. It also launched the career of Stan Freberg. In 1952 he created the Thunderbolt the Wondercolt television series, and in 1954 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-1948 Warner cartoons they had just acquired. In 1959, he created an animated version of the puppet show called Beany and Cecil, which began its run on ABC in 1962 and was on the network for five years.[1] Screen Gems is an American subsidiary company of Sony Pictures Entertainments Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group that has served several different purposes for its parent companies over the decades since its incorporation. ... Time for Beany was a television series, with puppets for characters, which aired circa 1949-1955. ... An Emmy Award. ... Julius Henry Marx, AKA Groucho Marx (October 2, 1890 – August 19, 1977), was an American comedian, working both with his siblings, the Marx Brothers, and on his own. ... “Einstein” redirects here. ... Associated Artists Productions was a distributor of theatrical features and short subjects for television founded in 1953 and headed by Elliott Hyman. ... Beany and Cecil was an animated cartoon series that ran from 1962 to 1967. ... The American Broadcasting Company ( oftenly known as ABC) operates television and radio networks in the United States and is also shown on basic cable in Canada. ...

In his later years, Clampett toured college campuses and animation festivals as a lecturer on the history of animation. In 1975 he was the focus of a documentary entitled Bugs Bunny: Superstar, the first documentary to seriously 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 (critics also chuckled that he was wearing a very noticeable toupee). The bouncing ball animation (below) consists of these 6 frames. ...

Bob Clampett died of a heart attack on May 4, 1984, four days short of his 71st birthday. Acute myocardial infarction (AMI or MI), more commonly known as a heart attack, is a disease state that occurs when the blood supply to a part of the heart is interrupted. ... is the 124th day of the year (125th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1984 (MCMLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link displays the 1984 Gregorian calendar). ...

Clampett Controversy

Though Clampett's contribution to the Warner Brothers animation legacy cannot be underestimated, his peers often referred to him as "a shameless self-promoter who provoked the wrath of his former Warner's colleagues in later years, for allegedly claiming credit for ideas which were not his." Chuck Jones particularly disliked Clampett, and made no mention of his association with him in his 1989 autobiography Chuck Amuck. Mel Blanc also accused Clampett of being an "egotist who took credit for everything." As years went on 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." However, a viewing of the early Bugs cartoons of the late 1930s and early 1940s clearly demonstrates that the character was not "created" as a whole at one time, but rather evolved in terms of personality, voice and design over several years through the efforts of Tex Avery, Jones, Friz Freleng, Cal Dalton and Ben "Bugs" Hardaway, Bob McKimson, and Mel Blanc, in addition to Clampett's contributions. Melvin Jerome Blanc (May 30, 1908 – July 10, 1989) was a prolific American voice actor, performing on radio, in television commercials, and most famously, in hundreds of cartoon shorts for Warner Bros. ... It Happened One Night is a 1934 romantic comedy directed by Frank Capra, in which a pampered socialite (Claudette Colbert) tries to get out from under her fathers thumb, and falls in love with a roguish reporter (Clark Gable). ... Frederick Bean Fred/Tex Avery (Wednesday, February 26, 1908 – Tuesday, August 26, 1980) was an American animator, cartoonist, and director, famous for producing animated cartoons during the Golden Age of Hollywood. ... Jones may refer to: People with the surname Jones: Jones (surname) In fictional characters: Jones, a cat in 1979 film Alien by Ridley Scott and its sequel Aliens Jones, a character in George Orwells novel Nineteen Eighty-Four In companies: David Jones Limited, Australian retailing company Dow Jones & Company... Isadore Friz Freleng (August 21, 1906[1]–May 26, 1995) was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros. ... Cal Dalton was a cartoon director at Warner Brothers. ... Joseph Benson Ben/Bugs Hardaway (1897 - 1957) was a storyboard artist, gagman, and director for several American animation studios during the The Golden Age of Hollywood animation. ... Robert Bob McKimson, Sr. ... Melvin Jerome Blanc (May 30, 1908 – July 10, 1989) was a prolific American voice actor, performing on radio, in television commercials, and most famously, in hundreds of cartoon shorts for Warner Bros. ...

Viewing the 1975 documentary Bugs Bunny: Superstar (currently found as a bonus feature on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 4 DVD) lends credence to this accusation: Friz Freleng and Tex Avery are modest by comparison to Clampett, who not only appears more than his former colleagues, but indeed takes credit for many Warner creations. Isadore Friz Freleng (August 21, 1906[1]–May 26, 1995) was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros. ...

In the 1979 compilation feature film The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie, Clampett is not mentioned when Bugs Bunny refers to his "several fathers." As the feature was compiled by Jones (along with Friz Freleng), the complete omission of Clampett is not surprising. The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie is a 1979 Looney Tunes film with a compilation of classic Warner Bros. ... Bugs Bunny is an Academy Award-winning fictional animated rabbit who appears in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated films produced by Warner Bros. ...

However it is worth mentioning that other Warner Brothers peers such as Tex Avery and Carl Stalling stood by Clampett during his talks on the cartoon industry in the 1960's and 1970's.

See Milt Gray's essay below for an alternate version of the Clampett controversy.

References

• Barrier, Michael (1999). Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Mel Blanc (1989). That's Not All, Folks! Warner Books.
• Jones, Charles M. (1989). Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Melvin Jerome Blanc (May 30, 1908 – July 10, 1989) was a prolific American voice actor, performing on radio, in television commercials, and most famously, in hundreds of cartoon shorts for Warner Bros. ...

External links

• Robert Clampett at the Internet Movie Database
• Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
• Clampett Studio Collections
• On a Desert Island with....Bob Clampett
• Michael Barrier's interview with Bob Clampett
• Milt Gray's essay on Bob Clampett