Animator Art Clokey died 8 January 2010. Born Arthur Charles Farrington in Detroit, Michigan, on 12 October 1921, he created the stop-motion animation icon Gumby.
Young Arthur’s parents divorced when he was 8. A year later, his custodial father died in a car accident, and he rejoined his mother in California. But his mother’s new husband didn’t want him around, and placed him in a children’s home. When he was 11, he was adopted by composer Joseph Waddell Clokey. He later earned a bachelor’s degree from Miami University of Ohio, and then attended Hartford Seminary in Connecticut (he planned, at the time, to become an Episcopal priest). But before graduation, he left school, moved to California, and then entered USC, where he studied film under modernist filmmaker Slavko Vorkapich.
In 1955, Clokey made a student film called “Gumbasia” (the title was an acknowledgment of Walt Disney’s Fantasia) in which clay shapes dance to a jazz soundtrack. Soon afterward, Clokey created the green claymation figure for which he is known. Clokey often said that Gumby’s asymmetrical head, resembling a rakish pompadour, was a tribute to his biological father’s prominent cowlick.
Clokey was also the title designer for 1965’s Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine.
Clokey was married twice. His first marriage, to Ruth Parkander, ended in divorce. Hs second wife, Gloria, died in 1998. He is survived by his son from his first marriage, a stepdaughter, a sister, a half-sister, and three grandchildren. His daughter Ann, from his first marriage, died in 1974.