Art Clokey

Who was Art Clokey?

Arthur "Art" Clokey was an American pioneer in the popularization of stop motion clay animation, best known as the co-creator of the character Gumby. Clokey's career began in 1955 with a film experiment called Gumbasia, which was influenced by his professor, Slavko Vorkapich, at the University of Southern California. Clokey and his wife Ruth subsequently came up with the clay character Gumby and his horse Pokey, who first appeared in the Howdy Doody Show, and later got their own series The Adventures of Gumby, with which they became a familiar presence on American television. The characters enjoyed a renewal of interest in the 1980s when American actor and comedian Eddie Murphy parodied Gumby in a skit on Saturday Night Live. In the 1990s Gumby: The Movie was released, sparking even more interest.

Clokey's second most famous production is the duo of Davey and Goliath, funded by the Lutheran Church in America.