If you have been tuning in to the Cartoon Network, you have doubtless found a half-hour tidbit called The Tex Avery Show. If you don't like to watch TV, fine. There are several books on Tex Avery available, lavishly illustrated and full of richly-deserved praise for the man. Tex's cartoons are also the exclusive subject of several videotapes and laserdiscs. In short, if you don't know who Tex Avery is by now, may an anvil fall upon your head, followed by a kitchen sink and a luxury liner. Chuck Jones? Author of not one but TWO autobiographies and the subject of a third book, not to mention countless interviews, numerous tributes, and enough retrospectives to cushion a coyote's fall from a thousand-foot cliff? The one American animator immediately and unreservedly revered with the title "genius"? I do believe you have heard of him, and if you quibble with any of the above, may Pepe LePew espy you with a wide white stripe down the center of your back.
Hanna and Barbera, of course, are the people you most likely grew up with; if you were too young for Huck and Yogi's coming-out parties, you were hooked on The Flintstones. If you were a couple of years behind that, then The Jetsons caught your fancy. Or maybe it was Peter Potamus, The Wacky Races, or even - (a revered hush) - Scooby Doo. (A revered hush? For that crap? Why? -- Webkeeper) Not only were these lords of limited animation honored with a coffee-table book venerating their necktied creations, they each published autobiographies within months of each other. How about Walt Disney? Shall we count the books, documentaries - what's that you say? Don't even go there? Very well. All of the people mentioned above are legends of animation, but one man today is no more than a quasi-legend, and is is high time to discover why he has not achieved the highest honors that are due to him. Those who are true aficionados of animation (and have read the title of this essay) already know to whom I refer: the great Robert Clampett.
Bob Clampett (1913-1984) was one of the greatest minds ever to grace the world of animation. Yet there no books about Mr. Clampett, and his retrospectives have been comparatively few. Books concerned with the history of animation give him his due, to be certain, but mostly as one light in the hallowed creative community that began as Termite Terrace. In many histories, Bob Clampett disappers after 1946. Cartoon historian Jeff Lenburg, in his book "The Great Cartoon Directors", confirms what I have always observed: "... for some ineffable reason, Bob Clampett hasn't received the recognition given to several of his Warner Brothers contemporaries". Let me be frank here: This site is for the most knowledgeable fans of the genre, and I can tell by my e-mail who I am writing for. Nearly all of you reading this are aware of what Mr. Clampett has contributed to the art and history of animation and besides, a recounting of his awesome achievements would take up three column's worth of space. I am more interested in offering my theories as to why Bob Clampett has not achieved the full recognition due to him and thus, in some way, try to make the ineffable accessible.
Many chroniclers of animation believe that the current boom in that medium's popularity began in 1988 with the release of Who Framed Roger Rabbit and that an extra push came the following year with the "revival" of the Disney feature. This is partially correct. While there has been an explosion in books, tapes, magazines, and features since 1988, the true roots of the modern boom goes back farther. It was during the mid-1970's that Leonard Maltin, Jerry Beck, Greg Ford, and other seminal figures among the historically literate began to make their rounds of the studios, archives, and commercial art houses seeking the animators and directors who created the beloved cartoons of their childhoods. At that time there were magazines and fanzines such as Funnyworld, Mindrot, and The Velvet Light Trap (to name a few) where the worship of old shorts and the sages who made them ran rampant. Almost no book on animation published today could have been written without this pioneering work, and as the old guard of studio cartoons depart this Earth, the records of these early historians have become increasingly important.
Bob Clampett was still very much alive during the 1970's, and was always good (and good material for) an interview. It was this proclivity that inadvertantly tainted his reputation, but this may have been no fault of Clampett's. His crime? Having a different version of largely unprovable events than his contemporaries did. One thing is certain; few, if any, of the early Warners characters were the work of one person exclusively. The highly specialized and fraternal units of the later 1950's did not exist per se, and ideas flowed freely from one animator to another. Although there has been some great research done, it will never be known, for example, who truly created Bugs Bunny. From all accounts, it seems to have been a collaborative effort; we know who was involved, but stories differ and often the differing is considerable.
In the eyes of Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett went too far in an interview with Funnyworld. Jones accused Clampett of trying to take credit for the direct or indirect creation of nearly every major Warners character. In strong langauge, Jones decried his ex-colleague and then circulated his charges in an open letter to the film community (1975). However, it is nearly impossible to untangle the true credit due to anyone. During the time that Bugs, Daffy, Elmer, Porky, and all the other immortals were spawned, Termite Terrace was a throwaway, back-lot operation that produced cartoons the studio barely even wanted. There are few remaining records, no more than couple of hours of film shot while the guys were fooling around, and no offcial history that was kept at the time. In other words, one person's word against another.
Clampett and Jones were not the best of friends; there is considerable evidence that the two disliked and mistrusted one another deeply. This possibly stemmed from a Leon Schlesinger gaffe in which Clampett was promoted to a directorial position that Schlesinger may have promised to Jones. At any rate, when Jones later published Chuck Amuck, Clampett is barely mentioned at all. By his second book, Jones has mellowed to the point where he concedes that the long-dead Clampett made some funny Bugs cartoons, but in Jones' "official" history of character development (published in Chuck Reducks), Clampett is given credit for the initial supervision of Tweety (in his superior pink-naked psychopath version -- Webkeeper) and nothing else. When modern animation fans read these tomes, the impression is given that Bob Clampett barely existed. The only difference is that Jones lived to write the history and Clampett did not; in The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie (1979), Jones had the final say by excluding Bob Clampett from any aspect of Bugs' creation.
In 1980, Clampett took yet another hit when one of the few existing books to critically address animation hit the shelves. Gerald and Daniel Peary edited recent interviews, essays, and critiques done by animation writers into a book entitled The American Animated Cartoon (now out of print). One contributor, Patrick McGilligan, entered an eight-page chapter on Bob Clampett. The initial part of the piece addresses Clampett's clash with his fellow animators over the issue of credit, but the chapter goes on to offer the author's insights on Mr. Clampett, and the conclusions are dim: Clampett was a "straight arrow" compared to Frank Tashlin, "satisfied with clever gimmickry" compared to Jones more cerebral approach, "incorrigibly mainstream" and "traditionally hidebound". His best cartoons are said to "rely strongly on derivation". One wonders how many of Clampett's cartoons Mr. McGilligan actually saw before writing this, but what can be expected in a piece where Bob Clampett is given credit for creating Natasha Fatale for the Beany and Cecil show?
Although other authors such as Leonard Maltin, Steve Schneider, and Jeff Lenburg wrote sterling praise for Clampett, someone else always seemed to be waiting in the wings with a vicious sideswipe. Mel Blanc, in his 1988 autobiography, savaged Clampett as an egotistical credit-monger whom Blanc rates as inferior to the other Warners directors. It is very difficult to find such mugging of Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Bob McKimson, or many other leading lights anywhere in print. There is no doubt that Clampett was a brash self-promoter who may have been a tad less humble than his contemporaries, but it is foolish and misguided to consign him to lesser status on the basis of personality clashes with his contemporaries.
Clampett was guilty of one other "crime", touched upon but not explored by McGilligan: Bob Clampett was an independent success. After leaving Warners Clampett turned to his first love, puppetry, and managed to sell Time for Beany to television. This show, starring Cecil the Sea Sick Sea Serpent and the rest of the beloved crew of the Leakin' Lena, went on to win three Academy Awards and drew raves from fans such as Albert Einstein and Groucho Marx. These characters were later carried over into an animated series which was universally recognized as one of the most sophisticated cartoons ever developed for television. Clampett also went into advertising and animated sequences for many commercials during the 1960's and 70's. This past master of animation died of a heart attack in 1984 while promoting a marvelous deal he had just closed with RCA-Columbia to release all 78 episodes of Beany and Cecil to home video.
How difficult were these feats? I refer my readers to Shamus Culhane's book (recently re-released) Talking Animals and Other People. His grim, maudlin tales of independent business ventures makes for a sobering read. After the studios began to close, few animators were able to eke out a living or gain very much fame. Television would eventually change that, but even so great a figure as Culhane was reduced to eating rice and beans as he struggled with sponsors, agencies, and unions. It was here that Clampett's self-promotion skills were actually an asset, and many of the behaviors that so incensed his contemporaries enabled Clampett to survive and thrive as an independent. Nevertheless, these traits were taken by some as proof that Bob Clampett was nothing more than an overblown showman; there is more than a touch of envy in this point of view, especially from those whose paths were not as easy.
Robert Clampett, charter member of the Animation Hall of Fame, is still bereft of the full recognition he deserves. Whatever flaws Mr. Clampett may have possessed, he has taken far too many cheap hits which have unfairly tarnished his reputation in spite of the fact that Clampett directed some of the most brilliant cartoon shorts of this century. After his successes in animating, producing, and directing (not to mention mentoring a new generation of young animators including John Kricfalusi), his time is due. A book devoted to Clampett's life and achievements would be a good start; his family is still very much alive, and so are some of his later contemporaries. I implore someone with the time and inclination to take up this task. The home video episodes of Beany and Cecil should be placed back into circulation, whatever sort of deal it takes. The Cartoon Network owes this man a retrospective, as do more museums and galleries. It only befits a legend.
(Webkeeper's Note: Bob Clampett was also remarkable for his collection of memorabilia he collected from his earliest days in Termite Terrace on. He kept things like sketches and cels in a time when sketches were burnt and cels were washed off and reused. Sody Clampett and their children are now custodians of a remarkable treasure-trove of literally priceless animation treasures, including a gorgeous maquette of Bugs Bunny used by his unit at Warner Bros. in the 1940s that I had the privelege to see during a visit to Clampett Enterprises in Hollywood. Time Warner should put on a permanent display of this matchless collection either in the Warner Bros. Museum on the main WB lot in Burbank or at a new facility. It deserves to be seen.)
Dr. Toon awaits your commentary on this month's column.
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