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Creator / Bob Clampett

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The Man from Wackyland.

If it was Tex Avery who realized that animation can do anything and Chuck Jones who took subtle humor and stylization to new heights in animation, then it was Robert Emerson "Bob" Clampett (May 8, 1913 – May 2, 1984) who took the good, old-fashioned "rubber hose" style that animation had in the 1930s and gave it a wackier makeover. One of the most popular directors of the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoon shorts made by Warner Bros. during The Golden Age of Animation (second only to Chuck Jones in popularity), Bob Clampett was nothing short of a mischief maker, being both a real life version of Bugs Bunny, in addition to being a real life Daffy Duck (of the early, screwy variety).

Being inspired by the strange works of artist Salvador Dalí, as well as the other animation studios like Disney and Fleischer and even newspaper comic artists like Milt Gross, Clampett eventually began working at the Warner Bros. distributed animation unit of Leon Schlesinger, after failing to get a job at the Disney studios. (Disney had wanted to hire him, due to Clampett's excellent drawing skills, but they had all the animators they needed.) There, Clampett and his soon to be mentor, Fred "Tex" Avery, went to work in a crumbling wooden shack assigned to them, not far from the main Schlesinger lot. There, they discovered they were not alone — specifically, said shack appeared to be infested with termites. Still, being comfy there, the duo blessed upon the place the affectionate nickname Termite Terrace, which would soon become the unofficial name for the entire Looney Tunes animation studio as a whole.

Avery left the studio in 1941, but Clampett, having learned quite a thing or two from him, began experimenting with his own style of animation — a very wacky, surreal one which combined the early principles of rubber hose animation from The Silent Age of Animation, with the more modern, higher quality principles and art productions of a Disney short. The results were some of the finest cartoons ever made in general, let alone by the Warner Bros. animation unit.

Mainly because of restlessness, Clampett left Warner Bros. in 1945, bouncing between other studios' animation units for a few years, then scoring an early television success by creating the puppet show Time For Beany. He later started his own animation studio, and adapted the earlier show into Beany and Cecil. By The '70s he more publicly embraced his Looney Tunes legacy, giving numerous talks and interviews and appearing prominently on camera in the 1975 documentary Bugs Bunny Superstar (featuring a bunch of archival material from the Termite Terrace years that Clampett had saved). He died in 1984 in Detroit after suffering a heart attack while on a tour promoting a Beany and Cecil video release. Interestingly, news coverage of his death tended to list his creation of Tweety Bird as his main accomplishment.

While for many years he was considered a less-prominent director (his influenced downplayed in favor of the other directors, plus his smaller output compared to them limiting his profile), his cartoons have gained a surprisingly large fanbase in recent years, receiving praise and admiration from professionals like Milt Gray, Eric Goldberg and John Kricfalusi (the latter being his protege and biggest fan, is heavily influenced by him, and is also partly responsible for getting Bob's shorts back into the limelight).

    Filmography 

1927

  • The Golf Widow: An independently made silent live action comedy filmed by Clampett, and also starring Clampett as one of the actors.

1937: All entries are Porky Pig shorts.

1938: All entries are Porky Pig shorts.

  • Porky's Poppa 1-15
  • What Price Porky 2-26
  • Porkys Five And Ten 4-16
  • Injun Trouble 5-21: This short would later be remade in color as "Wagon Heels". Curiously, the cartoon was aired on Cartoon Network in a digitally colorized form despite the Native American stereotyping and the fact that the precense of a color remake made it superfluous to air it, but the airings always trimmed out a small gag from it. This short should also not be confused with the 1969 Robert Mc Kimson cartoon of the same name, which was the last Looney Tunes ever made.
  • Porky's Party 6-25
  • Porky & Daffy 8-06: First teamup of Porky Pig and Daffy Duck.
  • Porky in Wackyland 9-24: One of The 50 Greatest Cartoons, and one of The 100 Greatest Looney Tunes.
  • Porky's Naughty Nephew 10-15
  • Porky in Egypt 11-05
  • The Daffy Doc 11-26: A Daffy and Porky teamup, although Porky is a victim to him. Both Clampett and Chuck Jones grew to hate this short due to the backlash they got for using an Iron Lung as a gag prop when Polio deaths were on the rise.

1939: All entries are Porky Pig shorts.

1940: All entries are Porky Pig shorts.

1941

1942

1943

1944

1945

1946

  • Book Revue: 1-05: One of The 50 Greatest Cartoons and one of The 100 Greatest Looney Tunes. A ruthless parody of the "Things come to life in a store" genre of cartoons, and is cited as the short that put the final nail of the coffin of the already passe genre of cartoon.
  • Baby Bottleneck 3-16: A Porky and Daffy cartoon. One of The 100 Greatest Looney Tunes.
  • Kitty Kornered 6-08: A Porky Pig cartoon, featuring a prototype of Sylvester. One of The 100 Greatest Looney Tunes, and runner-up on The 50 Greatest Cartoons.
  • The Great Piggy Bank Robbery 7-20: A Daffy Duck short, and No. 16 of The 50 Greatest Cartoons, and one of The 100 Greatest Looney Tunes.
  • Bacall to Arms: 8-03: A oneshot short started by Clampett, but finished by Art Davis (both uncredited).
  • The Big Snooze 10-05: Last released Clampett cartoon. A Bugs Bunny short. One of The 100 Greatest Looney Tunes, and runner-up on The 50 Greatest Cartoons list.

1947

  • The Goofy Gophers 1-25: Planned by Clampett, but finished by Art Davis.
  • Its A Grand Old Nag: Last theatrical cartoon Clampett produced, independently produced for Republic Pictures. For years it was lost until it resurfaced, along with storyboards and a pencil test, on Vol. 2 of the Beany and Cecil DVD sets. See it here, with commentary by historians Jerry Beck and Mark Kausler.

1962 (Beany and Cecil series)note 

  • Spots Off A Leopard / Invasion of Earth By Robots / Singing Dinosaur
  • Little Ace From Outer Space / Super Cecil / Wildman From Wildsville
  • Davey Crickett / Strange Objects / Tearalong The Dotted Lion
  • Trip to the Schmoon / Grime Doesn't Pay / Beany's Buffalo Hunt
  • Monstrous Monster / Tommy Hawk / Yo Ho Ho and a Bubble of Gum
  • 7th Voyage of Singood / Cecil Meets Cecilia / Thunderbolt the Wondercolt
  • Rat Race for Space / Beany & the Boo-Birds / B & C Meet Ping Pong
  • Greatest Schmoe on Earth / B & C Meet Billy the Squid / Capture of the 3-Headed Threep
  • Beany & The Jack-Stalk / Humbug / Custard's Last Stand
  • Hero By Trade / Illegal Eagle Trade / Cecil Gets Careless
  • Sleeping Beauty And The Beast / Quackers In Bed / D.J. Meets Cowboy Starr
  • Beany's Beany Cap Copter / Indiscreet Squeet / Phantom of the Horse Opera
  • 20,000 Little Leaguers / Malice In Blunderland / Buffalo Billy
  • Dirty Birdy / Man Eater Skeeters / Leading Lady Bug
  • Rin Tin Can / Vild Vast Vasteland / Invisible Man Has Butterfingers
  • Here Comes The Schmoeboat / T'aint Cricket, Crickett / Cecil Always Saves The Day
  • Ain't I A Little Stinger? / Warring 20's / B & C Meet Invisible Man
  • Ain't That A Cork in the Snorkel? / Makes a Sea-Serpent Sore / So What & The Seven Whatnots
  • Cecil's Comical Strip / Beany's Resid-jewels / Wot the Heck
  • Dragon Train / 10-Foot Tall and Wet / Dirty Pool
  • Thumb Fun / Living Doll / Beanyland
  • Beany Blows His Top / Beany Flips His Lid / Fleastone Kop Caper
  • Mad Isle of Mad-hatten / Hammy Awards / Hare-cules & the Golden Fleecing
  • Cheery Cheery Beany / Nya-Ha-Ha! / Swingin' Singin' Sea Serpent
  • There Goes A Good Squid / Ben Hare / Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow
  • Oil's Well That Ends Well / No Such Thing / D.J. The Dee Jay

    Lost Works 
This section refers to a variety of projects Bob worked on outside of his mainstream cartoons.

1936

  • John Carter of Mars: An independently made short film for a proposed cartoon adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter series.

1938

  • Unnamed Stop Motion Project: In 1938, Clampett briefly opened his own studio across the street from the Warner Bros. cartoon plant and created a few sequences of silent stop motion animation for an unspecified projet.

1948

  • St. George and the Dragon: A TV pilot that experimented with drawn animation that didn't require the use of cels.
  • Around this time, Clampett pitched a potential series called "The Monster Family" to Universal, but it never got past the storyboard stage.

1950

  • Man From Mars: An unrealized Science Fiction project that never got beyond the script stage.

1952

  • Time for Beany 3D Feature: At one point, Bob planned to do a feature length movie based on his Time for Beany puppet show and shoot it in 3-D, but the project failed to take off due to the 3-D film craze crashing and burning. Only some test footage was completed for the project.

1955

  • Rocket to Riches: A pitch for a Game Show concept, featuring live actors and puppets.

1957

  • Twig: A potential project with Don Fedderson (creator of "My Three Sons") for a TV puppet/stop motion show about a boy living on a mystical, magical isle. Only some story art, music and a few fragments of an unfinished film were done.

1959

  • Beeper and his Guided Muscle: A pilot for a cartoon show that would've combined hand drawn animation and puppetry.

1961

  • The Edgar Bergen Show: A proposed fully animated program that would've starred Ed Bergen. Audio for a pilot and production art was conceived, but nothing came of the project.

1962

  • Tex and Judy: A proposed adaptation of the Tex and Judy radio show, using a process called "Cut Up" animation, a mix of real life cartoon heads and animated bodies. A pilot film with storyboards and some animation was made.

1970

  • The Wheel: An unrealized project that never got beyond the script stages.

1975

  • Three Dimensional Man: An abandoned pitch for a TV cartoon, notably inspired by science fiction and the films of Douglas Fairbanks Sr.

Tropes in the work of Bob Clampett:

  • Animation Bump: Shorts directed by Clampett had some of the most fluid, well-drawn animation to ever come out of the Warner Bros. cartoon studio. Even his B&W cartoons had surprisingly good animation, considering he was saddled with shoestring budgets of $3,000 per cartoon, had the least skilled animators in the studio working under him and only had 4 weeks to slam together each one. Surprisingly, even his Beany & Cecil cartoons had above-average animation for a 1960's TV cartoon, despite relying on Limited Animation and (proportionally) having even lower budgets than his black and white Looney Tunes.
  • Author Appeal: Bob was a big movie buff, a huge fan of jazz music, and absolutely loved comic books and newspaper and magazine comics, particularly those of cartoonists Milt Gross, Bil Holman and George Litchty. You can find the influence of these in virtually all of his cartoons, but most notably in The Great Piggy Bank Robbery, which was a big love letter by Bob to both comics like Dick Tracy and film noir movies. He was also a big fan of Fleischer Studios, and basically made Porky in Wackyland as a tribute to their surreal style of cartoon animation.
  • Catchphrase: Clampett often ended his cartoons with a funny vocal sound effect (usually rendered as "Bee-woop!") that he performed himself. This would end up becoming a Stock Sound Effect occasionally used by other directors, such as Friz Freleng.
  • Creator Cameo:
    • Clampett occasionally inserted caricatures of himself into his cartoons, such as a statue in Porky's Hero Agency, his head being part of a Motion Blur gag in Porky and Daffy (you need to still frame it to see it clearly) on a wanted poster in The Lone Stranger and Porky, and as a gremlin in Russian Rhapsody.
    • Clampett would also insert caricatures of his staff into some his cartoons (and also name drop or make puns of them in backgrounds as little in-jokes). The picket line of statues in Porky's Hero Agency and the tourists in Porky in Egypt are made up of many of these. Animators John Carey and Ernest Gee also make a freeze frame cameo in Porky and Daffy. Business manager Ray Katz also makes a cameo on a wanted poster in The Lone Stranger and Porky. Assistant Henry Binder and animators Cal Dalton and Ken Harris cameo in Nutty News. Many of the gremlins in Russian Rhapsody are based on the Looney Tunes staff.
  • Depending on the Artist: Clampett gave his animators far more leeway in deviating from the model sheets and animating in their individual styles than his contemporaries. As a result, his cartoons are some of the easiest to pick out individual artist styles from.
  • Deranged Animation:
  • Digital Destruction: Unfortunately, several of his cartoons have gotten hit with this on the DVD releases, some worse than others.
    • A Corny Concerto and Book Revue both got hit with a nasty case of Digital Interlacing when it was included on Vol. 2 of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection, which made the picture super flickery and hard to watch. The issue with Book Revue was rectified for its inclusion on The Essential Daffy Duck, same with Concerto's inclusion on the Platinum Collection Vol. 3 Blu-ray.
    • Several of his cartoons got hit with DVNR on the Golden Collections, most notably The Big Snooze. This was rectified for its inclusion on Vol. 3 of the Platinum Collection, though.
    • While the prints of his cartoons on the Porky Pig 101 DVD set have no interlacing or DVNR problems, four of the cartoons accidentally use the wrong opening music cuesnote  This is especially egregious in Naughty Neighbors, because not only is the music looped twice in a row, the misplaced cue completely ruins the opening gag, which was dependent on its music abruptly changing after the peaceful opening.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: His black and white cartoons have a fairly different drawing and animation style from the cartoons he made once he inherited Tex Avery's unit in 1941 (likely due to the cartoons made at his old unit having a much lower budget), and due to a studio mandate, Porky Pig was the star (but not always the focus) of almost all of his b&w cartoons.
  • Jump Cut: At their peak, Bob's cartoons had very sophisticated film cutting and timing. Some of his fastest scenes, like the scene in A Tale of Two Kitties where Catsello is falling towards a pitchfork and the camera cutting back and forth between his reactions and the fork, barely last a few frames on screen.
  • Magic A Is Magic A: Clampett's cartoons have surreal elements, but they're always consistent with how they go about being crazy by having their own internal logic that prioritizes engaging the audience with the weird world and surprising them (while still making some kind of sense in the context of the cartoon) instead of trying to rationalize the weirdness. His films often use their weird elements as a way to surprise the audience with a foreshadowed punchline later in the cartoon—for example, in The Bashful Buzzard, it's established that Killer's brothers have ludicrous strength that allows them to carry things like a parade of elephants to their nest. Later in the cartoon, we see Killer get in a fight with a dragon, and his fate is uncertain at first. Later that night, it's revealed that not only did he survive the fight, he somehow won and carried the massive dragon all the way back to his family's nest.
  • No Budget: His B&W cartoons were made on shoestring budgets of $3,000 (even in 1937, that was paltry) and tight deadlines of just four weeks. He still directed many very good cartoons in spite of all this.
  • Pun: Clampett loved cheesy puns and frequently used them in his cartoons. His Beany and Cecil show relies heavily on puns in the dialogue.
  • The Prankster: Clampett preferred to work with this archetype. His interpretations of Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny are notable for being wackier, sillier and more sociopathic than anyone else's.
  • Seen-It-All Suicide: A frequent gag in many Looney Tunes cartoons, but especially Clampett's. Notable examples include Horton Hatches the Egg, An Itch in Time, and The Sour Puss. A variant also occurs in Tortoise Wins by a Hare (the gangsters shoot themselves after Bugs reveals he's the rabbit).
  • Stock Footage: Several of Clampett's cartoons occasionally reuse bits of animation from previous Looney Tunes shorts. Most of the examples only consist of brief and minor scenes, but What's Cookin, Doc? is especially liberal with this—the cartoon only has around two minutes of new animation, with the rest either being still photos, footage reused from A Star Is Born (1937) and Hiawatha's Rabbit Hunt (1941).
  • Strictly Formula: Defied. Bob hated formula and went out of his way to avoid it in his cartoons. Part of the reason he made so few Bugs Bunny cartoons was because he felt the series had already fallen into a formula and made him feel "trapped", and the few he did direct often went out of their way to subvert what the character was about.
  • Surrealism: Many of Bob's cartoons employ surrealistic elements. While his mentor Tex Avery and contemporary Frank Tashlin tinkered with parodies and Chuck Jones tinkered with postmodernism, Bob's films tended to be fun little cartoon worlds that had all sorts of crazy, impossible things happening, yet the characters believed in what was going on, and the cartoons still operated on their own silly internal logic, with only mild hints of irony (but plenty of tongue-in-cheek humor) popping up. Porky in Wackyland and The Great Piggy Bank Robbery are probably the most oft-cited examples of him using this, if just because of how weird they are all around.
  • World of Ham: It'd be easier to list off characters who aren't over the top and extroverted in Clampett's cartoons.

Alternative Title(s): Robert Clampett

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