Bob Clampett

Greetings family and friends!  Today's memorable character is a animated cartoonist icon that Cindy and I crossed paths with here in Fremont five decades ago......Bill

Memorable Character

BOB CLAMPET T- Animator & Puppeteer 

I spent an unforgettable evening in 1978 with animation legend Bob Clampett who was touring high school and college campuses, and animation festivals lecturing on the history of animation and specifically his years directing hundreds of iconic films and creating dozens of classic cartoon characters. Clampett’s presentation was in a Mission San Jose High School classroom where a dozen or so like minded fans listened intently to his stories and watched samples of his classic wacky cartoons that Sody Clampett, his wife and manager, played on their own vintage 16mm sound projector. Clampett described how, after dropping out of high school in 1931, his first job was working at a doll factory owned by his aunt Charlotte Clark. He proposed that they produce a Mickey Mouse doll, but because of copyright concerns they went directly to the Disney Studio and obtained Walt and Roy’s approval. Unable to keep up with the success of the popular product the Disney brothers rented a building, dubbed the Doll House, where Clark’s team produced 300 to 400 Mickey Mouse dolls a week and established design standards for all future Disney plush products. Still a teenager Clampett joined Harman-Ising Productions in 1931 and made a name for himself working on Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies short subjects, and beginning a career that took him to Warner Brothers two years later. Clampett developed a wacky irreverent and sometimes violent style of animation that emphasized gags and action setting the studios cartoons apart from Disney and their other competitors. Over the next twelve years he directed nearly a hundred cartoons and created some of the most famous Warner Brothers cartoon characters including Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Tweety and a contested claim of originating Bugs Bunny. In 1949 Clampett turned his attention to television creating the popular children’s puppet show Time for Beany, and later an animated version featuring the silly characters Beany and Cecil. The entertaining and informative evening nearly five decades ago passed too quickly, however I was able to snag some conversation, a personalized autograph, and lifetime memories of an animated  cartoon legend....That’s all Folks!       -Bill