MORE ABOUT THE YOUNG BOB CLAMPETT

This excerpt from Bob Clampett's audio taped biography is a swipe from "Beany and Cecil's Official Site," linked to below. Refer to that site for coryright info. My heavily-edited excerpt is just a teaser. To read the whole fascinating article be sure to click on the link at the bottom. 


MILTON GRAY:  Hi, this is Milton Gray.  The oral history you are about to hear was actually edited together from several different taped interviews, done mostly in the 1970s.  The audio quality varies widely, from one recording to another, since none of these were intended to be heard as recordings.

Bob Clampett was born on May 8, 1913.  And here, to tell us the rest, in his own words, is Bob Clampett.


I, very early, was drawing comic strips -- I would be doing the characters of Happy Hooligan, or Boob McNutt, or Jiggs and Maggie, and so forth.  I would actually learn to draw those characters.  And then I would take whatever the Sunday paper was, where it ended after, say, twelve frames, I  would then start making new frames in which I would carry on the characters doing a continuation of the story, and so forth, and I would go on for maybe a great number of frames, and so I was actually writing original material, and putting the characters through new things.

For different years I was emulating different styles of cartoonists -- one year it was Pat Sullivan's Felix, and another year it was Milt Gross, and at other times other people.  But I got Milt Gross down to where I could draw Nize Baby and Mr. Feetlebaum and Louie Dot Dope very well.  And then the kids started coming to me, and they were paying me what was then a very big amount, I think it was fifty cents to a dollar, to make drawings on their sweatshirts, or on their yellow raincoats.  If you see some of those early John Held Jr. drawings of college boys wearing slickers, and they've got things drawn or painted -- you know, wording all over their car, their Tin Lizzie, or over their raincoat -- that's what I was doing, and they were paying me to do this.

When I was twelve I had some cartoons published in the L.A. Times -- colored pages of a pussy cat and so forth -- and Hearst saw it.  He was real big, he used to look for future comic strip artists.  So they offered me a contract, for $75 a week when I got out of school.  Then I went down every Saturday to the Examiner and worked in the Art Department. 


You know Robert Day of the New Yorker?  He was there, and Webb Smith who became one of Disney's original great story men, the one that's credited for that first Pluto sequence, he was there.  And I was there with these wonderful newspaper artists, and they'd show me how to do it, y'know.  And then the Examiner paid my way to Otis Art School, and they would every so often publish one of my drawings in the paper, to encourage me.

Originally, I had a contract to go to be a newspaper cartoonist for King Features when I got out of high school.  My dad had that contract for several years.  Now when sound came in, and Disney's came out with the first Mickey Mouse, suddenly all the things that I wanted, hoped to do at some point in my life, seemed to all merge together, y'know?  Making comedies for theaters -- doing some voices -- drawing -- writing -- directing -- all the things that I tried to do in isolated instances as a kid all seemed to come together.  So I got so excited about it that I insisted on trying to get out of the Hearst contract -- $75 a week was the starting salary -- and go to work in a cartoon studio, for $10 a week.  

Now my uncles were very good business men, and when I told them I'd rather do this, they said, "You're crazy, because animated cartoons will be just kind of a passing novelty."  But in spite of all the advice, I made the move, I told Walt I wanted to get into animation when I got out of school.  He says fine, and he gave me some of the comic strips, the first Mickey Mouse comic strips to work from, and some other sketches.  And I worked on Mickey Mouse, and so I was expecting to go to work for Walt.  But right at the time I got out of school, and I said, "Okay, I'm ready," they were at that time building -- they had animators working across the street, across Hyperion there in garages, and in apartments, I think.  They said, "Gee, we have no room, we're building on this annex, it'll take a month or so, and when we do that there's plenty of room and you're with us." And you know how it is when you get out of school, you think, "Wow, two months seems like a lifetime," y'know?  At that very moment I got the idea to go over to Warners.  I took my sketches and so forth ....

That's the end of my swipe from the Beany and Cecil site. There are four installments of the Clampett story on that site, with several more on the way.This has been an excerpt from installment number four. 

The site...

http://beanyandcecil.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=46&Itemid=34&limitstart=3

...and, while I'm at it, here's a link to an article Milt wrote about building cartoon web sites:

http://www.viagriampleten.com/cartoon-site-index/ 

THE LATEST FASHIONS

Oops! I changed my mind! I was going to start with women's fashion (above), but I think I'll do the men's thing first. Don't worry, I'll come back to this.

Here's (above) the latest in men's suits. I kinda like it. I only wish I was thin enough to wear it.

Wow! A mod James Bond look! Interesting!

Cuffs are higher now. The Jerry Lewis look is back! 

This year's losers, the designs that didn't catch on, include the Lincoln-style frock coat.  Here (above) the coat is teamed with Jerry Lewis pants, but the combination doesn't work.

Failure never deters the frock enthusiasts. Next year they'll try again, and I imagine that one of these days they'll succeed. I hope they do, because that design lends itself to cartooning. Long coats and interesting hats make for funny silhouettes.

Colored suits are in this year, but I don't expect to see many on the street. How many people can afford a suit they can only wear a few times?

A colorful sport jacket, on the other hand...hmmmm, that (above) might actually catch on. The color that everybody seems to be interested in is indigo. Somebody figured how to dye high-chroma color onto jacket fabrics. 

The example in the picture looks like silk. Vast quantities of inexpensive silk have come out of China in recent years. They must have figured out how to make it without caterpillars, or maybe there are vast caterpillar farms in that country now. Don't wear a wool sweater if you visit China. The moth population there must be staggering.

Okay, what about those women's bikini pants? I don't know, I'm conflicted. As a dad and a solid citizen I think they're decadent, and a menace to society. As a guy, on the other hand, I think they should be absolutely mandatory for all women under 30. 

I asked a fashionable woman I know what the latest in womens gear is, and she said it was custom bras. They're selling like crazy. You get them fitted by specially trained technicians...a good job if you can get it. They're three times the price, but they last three times as long. 

That's not a custom bra above, but I like the picture.

Apparently there's a lot of variables in women's physiques that off-the-shelf bras don't take into account. Very few women are said to have a bra that fits. When it does fit, like the example above, the difference is said to be enormous.

NO "HAMLET" TODAY: INSTEAD, CHE GUEVARA!

That's Che Guevara and Fidel way back when, after the Cuban Revolution. Boy, Che looked good in pictures. Come to think of it, so did Fidel. Communist leaders like Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot and Kim Jong-il looked horrible in photos, but the camera loved these guys. They looked like somebody you could joke with...somebody it would be fun to pal around with.

Che in particular got a reputation for being cool. Rock musicians and Hollywood stars used to wear Che t-shirts. That's (above) Carlos Santana sporting his at an Oscar ceremony.

That's (above) Johhny Depp wearing his.

Johnny Depp isn't a communist. I imagine he just saw Che as a symbol of rebellion against the Man, and maybe of his belief that communism, if it does nothing else, at least feeds the poor.

I don't think that's true, but at least I understand why somebody would believe that. What I don't understand is why Che would be the focus of that belief.  Che was a food destroyer, not a food creator. He and Fidel turned an up and coming country into an economic basket case. Before the revolution Cuba had a higher per capita income than Austria, Japan, and Spain. It had the third highest protein consumption in the Western Hemisphere. What has it been since the revolution? It's a poor country which requires the dollars sent from relatives living in exile to prevent disaster.

It's time to ask some questions: when has communism ever made a country rich? Was China better off under Mao's communism or under the present state capitalism? Was India better off under Nehru's socialism, or under capitalism? Who's feeding their people better, North or South Korea? Remember how everybody predicted economic doom for Chile when Allende was kicked out? Today it's one of the most successful countries in South America. Look at post-war Vietnam. Why would anyone who cares about the poor have anything good to say about communism?

But I digress from my topic, which is Che. I hate to say it, but Che was not a nice guy. He was a Stalinist. He couldn't sign the death orders fast enough. Che's Cuba hated rock and roll, which they regarded as American music, and had young people beaten and arrested for wearing long hair. Gays were put into a forced labor camp with a sign over the gate that read, "WORK WILL MAKE A MAN OUT OF YOU." He had utter disdain for blacks...all this, and yet only a short time ago he was the darling of American Rock and Roll. Go figure.

But...I have to admit...he took a good picture.

BTW: My information about Che comes from a book I'm reading now called "Exposing The Real Che Guevara" by Ernesto Fontoya.

A READING FROM "HAMLET"

I'd intended to put up my own reading of Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech, but I had too much wine at dinner and I buggered it up. Let me try again tomorrow morning. I'll put it up during the day on Monday. 

VACATION!

Boy, that Western Town post was one of the least popular that I ever did. Oh well, you can't win 'em all. Maybe I need a vacation to get my perspective back. I'll take off til Monday 8/8/11 and see if that helps. I still have major computer problems, so that'll keep me busy. See ya' then!

THE ARCHITECTURE OF WESTERN TOWNS

I love Westerns, especially the ones by Sergio Leone.

I always find myself peeking over the shoulders of the actors at the beautiful town behind them. Western towns are great! They make a powerful statement, even though most towns like that were little more than villages.

Since most American cowboys were of European descent, you'd think that the Western villages would have resembled the old European models (above), but they didn't. Maybe that's because Europeans lived in their villages and the frontiersmen didn't. Our frontier towns were mostly commercial properties. People did most of their living in the outback.

So why were Western buildings built shoulder-to-shoulder in long, straight strips? It doesn't seem like a very practical design from the point of view of fire prevention. If one store burned down, they probably all burned down. Maybe it was a useful design for breaking the wind and dust that came off the prairie. I'm not sure.

If I had to guess I'd say that the design came out of the ethnic origins of the cowboys. Most were English, Irish and Scots, and Britons in the Old Country loved those kind of linked-up, row house structures (above). Even the U.K. Prime Minister lives in a row house!

But wait...where did those tall colonnades (above) come from? I could swear I've seen them somewhere before....wait a minute...they're all over the place in New Orleans! Holy Mackerel! Does that mean Western towns were influenced by New Orleans!? It's not as crazy as it sounds. Wasn't N.O. considered a frontier town way back when? Maybe it influenced the template.  It sounds like we're talking about British row house structures trimmed with French American colonnades!

Of course clean, designer-driven towns like the one above may have existed only in movies. Real old frontier towns weren't as photogenic.

Maybe the exception was Dodge City, Kansas. That always looked pretty good relative to other Western towns. No wonder Wyatt Earp wanted to live there.

Notice the colonnades. You can argue that they were there only there to protect pedestrians from the sun, but that's only half true. Notice how high they are. If protection from the sun was the only consideration, they'd be lower. My guess is that people thought a high colonnade was classy...like The French Quarter in New Orleans, or the old Southern Plantation house facades. In fact, I wonder if the colonnades made people in the pre-Civil War North East antsy because they indicated a Southern influence on the frontier, and the possible extension of slavery to the territories.

But I'm digressing from the point I wanted to make: that Westerners may have perceived their structures not as shacks, but as cutting-edge symbols of cultural refinement. The buildings came out of their belief that they were spreading high culture to the wilderness.

Here's (above) a slightly later picture of Dodge. I guess the city had a lot of strangers passing through and the locals thought it wouldn't hurt to advertise. I wouldn't be surprised if the townspeople regarded the glitzy street with awe, the way we think of The Miracle Mile in Las Vegas now. We see a dirty, gritty town, but I'll bet the proud inhabitants saw Disneyland.

Here's (above) Tombstone, Arizona. It looks like Dodge. My guess is that Dodge impressed people so much that everybody wanted their town to look just like it: British row house-type structures with fancy French, Southern trim and lots of those exciting, beautiful, modern signs.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Westerners regarded those signs almost as works of art. They probably got sentimental about them. It can't be an accident that even tiny, remote towns had beautiful, hand-lettered signs.

Here's Tuscon (above), which is also in Arizona, but which was built on the Mexican/Spanish model. The oldest buildings are mostly Adobe and mud brick, which made sense given that the town was in a desert. Even so, my guess is that cowboys preferred what they considered the eye-dazzling, high culture glitter of the Dodge model.

BTW: what do you think of that wide, arid, sun-exposed center space? Maybe they needed it for cattle, or horse auctions. I hope it had some kind of practical purpose, because it sure is an eyesore. You'd think that desert dwellers would be better at creating shade.

I'm amazed that so many of these God-forsaken desert towns had fancy saloons. Walking into one of these places after a day in the dust must have been like entering a starship. The bars even staged Shakespeare! Oscar Wilde went on a poetry-reading tour of frontier towns like this!

Truly, humans are amazing creatures! We don't mind baking in the sun all day, and doing strenuous, boring work, so long as we can periodically indulge our vices and fortify ourselves with romantic, exciting, Utopian visions!

ALL THINGS CARL BARKS

I stumbled on a great Carl Barks comics site on the internet, only I forgot to bookmark it, and now I can't find it. Anyway it was great to be reminded of what a terrific storyteller Barks was. His best stories, like the Uncle Scrooge "Klondike" story pulled no punches. In Klondike he seemed to tell kids that getting rich was doable but hard work and great sacrifice were the price, and kids should man up so they'll be ready to do battle when enormous difficulties come their way.

In the Northern gold fields Scrooge encounters Glittering Goldie, the only love of his life, and she steals from him.

Scrooge forces her to repay him. He puts her to work digging for him. They both live together in the same shack til the debt is paid. Try to imagine the modern Disney corporation printing stories like this!

The site talks a lot about bloopers in the stories...little nitpicky things like Donald's car (above) having a windshield in one panel and no windshield at all in the next.

BTW: I LOVE the design on Donald's little red convertible! Somebody should build a real car that looks like that. Wait a minute. They did! Thanks to Glenn for the cool picture.

Anon sent a picture of a late 30s Bantam Roadster, which may have been the inspiration for Donald's car. The end of the link dropped out, so I didn't get to see Anon's photo, but I looked up the car on the net and discovered lots of terrific pictures.

Back to Barks' bloopers: sometimes they were glaring. Here (above) Barks adds a fourth nephew for one panel only, just to add to the weight it takes to hold a man down.

Barks was proud that he was able to work what he called his "cynical" worldview into his stories. He created Gladstone Gander (above), the lucky friend of Donald who never has to work hard for anything. We all know and secretly envy somebody like that. Gladstone reminds me of the character Al Pacino played in David Mamet's "Glengarry, Glen Ross". Come to think of it, Scrooge reminds me of the character John Wayne played in "Red River."

The site has plenty to say about Barks' wife Gare, a landscape painter (sample above) whose pictures convey enormous good cheer.

That's (above) Gare when she was young. Wow, she was a looker!

In her retirement years Gare ceased to look like a babe, and morphed into something even better...the sweetest person you could ever hope to meet; a first-rate human being. Thanks to Milt Gray I was able to spend an afternoon with Carl and Gare and was taken by how much they seemed to enjoy each other's company. I'm so happy that she and Carl found each other.

Carl recommended me to his friend Mik, the artist who did the newspaper comic strip "Ferd'nand."  Mik was looking for an assistant to help draw the strip, and offered to give me a tryout. Wow! What an opportunity! Unfortunately I had to decline. I'd only recently discovered Clampett and my mind was full of the possibilities offered by funny, full animation.

Let me take a stab at the site where I got all these Barks pictures...could it have been this one?
http://www.cbarks.dk/indexint.htm