Film & TV / Visual art
Art Clokey
1921–2010 · animator, director, producer
Creator of Gumby, born Arthur Farrington in Detroit, who named his clay hero after the sticky 'gumbo' mud of his grandfather's Michigan farm.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Los Osos, California
aged 88- Birth name
- Arthur Charles Farrington
- Detroit years
- 1921–c. 1932
- Field
- Film & TV, Visual art
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Art Clokey was born Arthur Charles Farrington in Detroit in 1921. His childhood was hard: his parents divorced when he was about eight, he went to live with his father, and a year later his father was killed in a car accident. Around the age of eleven he was adopted by Joseph Waddell Clokey, a California composer and organist, and took his name. His happiest Michigan memories came from his grandfather's farm north of Detroit, where he molded figures from the sticky clay mud the family called gumbo. After Pomona College, wartime service as a reconnaissance photographer and film school at USC, he made the experimental clay short Gumbasia (1953). Its success led to a small green clay boy he named Gumby, who appeared on The Howdy Doody Show and then in his own series from 1956, joined by the horse Pokey. Clokey also created Davey and Goliath and voiced Pokey for years.
Highlights
- Created Gumby and Pokey (1950s), pioneers of TV clay animation
- Experimental short Gumbasia (1953)
- Created the Lutheran-funded series Davey and Goliath (1961– )
- Gumby's name came from the 'gumbo' mud of a Michigan family farm