Bob Clampett

Robert Emerson Clampett Sr. was born on May 8, 1913 in San Diego, California to Robert Caleb Clampett and Mildred Joan Merrifield. His father was born in Nenagh, County Tipperary, Ireland in 1882, and immigrated to the United States with his parents at age two in 1884. Clampett showed art skills by the age of five. Living in Hollywood as a young boy, he and his mother Joan lived next door to Charlie Chaplin and his brother Sydney Chaplin. Clampett also recalled watching his father play handball at the Los Angeles Athletic Club with another of the great silent comedians, Harold Lloyd. Clampett attended Glendale High School and Hoover High School in Glendale, California, but left Hoover a few months short of graduating in 1931. He found a job at a doll factory owned by his aunt, Charlotte Clark. Clark was looking for an appealing item to sell, and Clampett suggested Mickey Mouse, whose popularity was growing. Unable to find a drawing of the character anywhere, Clampett took his sketchpad to the movie theater and came out with several sketches. Clark was concerned with copyright, so they drove to the Disney studio. Walt and Roy Disney were delighted, and they set up a business not far from the Disney studio. Clampett recalled his short time working for Disney: "Walt Disney himself sometimes came over in an old car to pick up the dolls; he would give them out to visitors to the studio and at sales meetings. I helped him load the dolls in the car. One time, his car, loaded with Mickey's, wouldn't start, and I pushed while Walt steered, until it caught, and he took off." ==Career==

Looney Tunes (1931–1946) As an animator '' was inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2000, deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." Clampett was, in his words, so "enchanted" by the new medium of sound cartoons that he tried to join Disney as an animator. While Disney wanted to hire Clampett, they ultimately turned him down due to them having had enough animators at that time, so Clampett instead interviewed with Harman-Ising Pictures, producers of Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons for executive producer Leon Schlesinger. Schlesinger viewed one of Clampett's 16mm films and was impressed, offering him an assistant animator position at the studio; '', short film directed by Clampett, released in 1942 Clampett left the studio in May 1945, leaving a handful of shorts unfinished before they were picked up again by other studio directors. The generally accepted story was that Clampett left over matters of artistic freedom, despite some people claiming that he left the studio on his own. Clampett's style was becoming increasingly divergent from those of Freleng and Jones. In any event, Clampett was fired by Leon Schlesinger's successor, Edward Selzer, who was far less tolerant of him than Schlesinger had been. The Warner style that he was instrumental in developing was leaving him behind. Warner Bros. had recently acquired the rights to the entire Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies studio from Schlesinger, and while his cartoons of 1946 are today considered on the cutting edge of the art of the period, at the time, Clampett was ready to seek new challenges. Later career and Beany and Cecil (1946–1984) Around the time Clampett left Warner Bros. Cartoons, Henry Binder and Ray Katz, the studios assistant producers and his key executives, went to Screen Gems, the cartoon division of Columbia Pictures, and asked Clampett to join them as the studio's creative head. He ultimately worked as a screenwriter and gag writer for the studio. Clampett took his direction credit under the name "Kilroy". In 1949, Clampett turned his attention to television, where he created the famous puppet show Time for Beany. The show, featuring the talents of voice artists Stan Freberg and Daws Butler, would earn Clampett three Emmys. Groucho Marx and Albert Einstein were both fans of the series. In 1952, he created the Thunderbolt the Wondercolt television series and the 3D prologue to Bwana Devil featuring Beany and Cecil. In 1954, he directed Willy the Wolf (the first puppet variety show on television), created and voiced the lead in the Buffalo Billy television show. In the late 1950s, Clampett was hired by Associated Artists Productions to catalog the pre-August 1948 Warner cartoons it had just acquired. He also created an animated version of the puppet show called Beany and Cecil, whose 26 half-hour episodes were first broadcast on ABC in 1962 and were rerun on the network for five years. Clampett's studio was at 729 Seward Street in Hollywood, later a Klasky Csupo studio. In his later years, Bob Clampett toured college campuses and animation festivals as a lecturer on the history of animation. In 1974, he was awarded an Inkpot Award at the San Diego Comic Convention. In 1975, he was the focus of a documentary entitled Bugs Bunny: Superstar, the first documentary to examine the history of the Warner Bros. cartoons. Clampett, whose collection of drawings, films, and memorabilia from the golden days of Termite Terrace was legendary, provided nearly all of the behind-the-scenes drawings and home-movie footage for the film; furthermore, his wife, Sody Clampett, is credited as the film's production coordinator. In an audio commentary recorded for Bugs Bunny: Superstar, director Larry Jackson claimed that in order to secure Clampett's participation and access to Clampett's collection of Warner Bros. history, he had to sign a contract that stipulated Clampett would host the documentary and also have approval over the final cut. Jackson also claimed that Clampett was very reluctant to speak about the other directors and their contributions. ==Controversies==

Though Clampett's contribution to the Warner Bros. animation legacy was considerable and inarguable, he has been criticized by his peers as "a shameless self-promoter who provoked the wrath of his former Warner Bros. colleagues in later years for allegedly claiming credit for ideas that were not his." Beginning with a magazine article in 1946, shortly after he left the studio, Clampett repeatedly referred to himself as "the creator" of Bugs Bunny, often adding the side-note that he used Clark Gable's carrot-eating scene in It Happened One Night as inspiration for his "creation". (Clampett can be observed making this claim in Bugs Bunny: Superstar) The other two directorial fathers Bugs is claimed to have had are Tex Avery, who directed A Wild Hare, his first official short; and Robert McKimson, who drew the definitive Bugs Bunny model sheet. However some argue that, based on a viewing of the early Bugs cartoons of the late 1930s and early 1940s, the character was not "created" by one director, but evolved in personality, voice, and design over several years through the collective efforts of Clampett, Avery, Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, McKimson, Mel Blanc, Cal Dalton, Ben Hardaway and Robert Givens. In Bugs Bunny: Superstar, Clampett also takes credit for several model sheets drawn by other artists, such as one from the first Porky Pig cartoon, ''I Haven't Got a Hat'' (1935), even though it was actually drawn by Freleng. Rivalry with Chuck Jones Chuck Jones, despite initially working alongside Clampett in their formative years, would become his most outspoken detractor by the 1970s. Animation historian Milton Gray details the long and bitter rivalry between Clampett and Jones in his essay "Bob Clampett Remembered". Gray, a personal friend of Clampett, calls the controversy "a deliberate and vicious smear campaign by one of Bob's rivals in the cartoon business". He reveals that Jones was angry at Clampett for making numerous generalizations in his 1970 interview with Funnyworld that gave Clampett too much credit, including taking sole credit for not only Bugs and Daffy but also Jones's character Sniffles and Freleng's Yosemite Sam. He writes that Jones began making additional accusations against Clampett, such as that Clampett would "go around the studio at night, looking at other directors' storyboards for ideas he could steal for his own cartoons." Jones sent a letter to Tex Avery in 1975 (a week before release of Bugs Bunny: Superstar) that jotted down numerous alleged false claims made by Clampett from a 1970 interview with Michael Barrier, Jones would later not include Clampett as one of Bugs' "fathers" in his 1979 compilation film The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie, which was made to refute claims made in the documentary, though he did briefly mention working with Clampett in his 1989 autobiography Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of An Animated Cartoonist and his 1998 interview for the American Television Archive. ==Death==

Clampett died of a heart attack on May 2, 1984, in Detroit, Michigan, six days before his 71st birthday, while touring the country to promote the home video release of Beany & Cecil cartoons. He is buried in Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills. ==Legacy==

Since 1984, The Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award has been given each year at the Eisner Awards. Recipients of the award include June Foray, Jack Kirby, Sergio Aragonés, Patrick McDonnell, Maggie Thompson, Ray Bradbury and Mark Evanier. Clampett's Tin Pan Alley Cats (1943) was chosen by the Library of Congress as a "prime example of the music and mores of our times" and a print was buried in a time capsule in Washington, D.C., so future generations might see it. Animator John Kricfalusi, best known for being the creator of Nickelodeon's The Ren & Stimpy Show, got to know Clampett in his later years and has reflected on those times as inspirational. Kricfalusi cited Clampett as his favorite animator and Clampett's The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946) as his favorite cartoon: "I saw this thing and it completely changed my life, I thought it was the greatest thing I'd ever seen, and I still think it is." Animation historian Leonard Maltin has called Clampett's cartoons "unmistakable". Milton Gray believes that Schlesinger put Clampett in charge of the black and white cartoon division in order to save it, and many historians have singled out a scene in ''Porky's Duck Hunt'', in which Daffy exits, as a defining Clampett moment. Maltin called it "a level of wackiness few moviegoers had ever seen". Historian Charles Solomon noted a rubbery, flexible animation quality visible in all Clampett's shorts, and Maltin noted an "energetic, comic anarchy". While Clampett's cartoons were not as well known in the latter half of the 20th century because television syndicators only had the rights to the post-1948 Warner cartoons, his creations have increased in notoriety and acclaim in recent decades. Martha Sigall recalled Clampett as "an enthusiastic and fun type of guy". She describes him as consistently nice to her and very generous when it came to gifts or donations to a cause. She had left the Termite Terrace in 1943 and did not meet Clampett again until 1960. She did, however, hear from people whom Clampett helped break into the animation business and/or mentored. Clampett is survived by his three children, who preserve his work. They are Robert Clampett Jr., who worked for his father as a puppeteer at Bob Clampett Productions; Ruth Clampett, an author of several books, including a book about an animated couple (she also founded Clampett Studio collections after her father's death); and Cheri Clampett, a therapeutic yoga specialist. The Clampett family auctioned off Bob Clampett's extensive collection of memorabilia on March, 2025. ==Filmography==

Warner Bros • ''When's Your Birthday?'' (1937) (animated sequence directed by Clampett and photographed in Technicolor) Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies (LT/MM) shorts • Porky and Gabby (1937) (supervised by Ub Iwerks, assisted by Clampett and Chuck Jones) • ''Porky's Super Service'' (1937) (supervised by Ub Iwerks, assisted by Clampett and Jones) • ''Porky's Badtime Story (1937) (first Looney Tunes'' short supervised by Clampett and assistant Chuck Jones, first supervisory credit) • Get Rich Quick Porky (1937) (co-directed with Chuck Jones) • ''Rover's Rival'' (1937) (co-directed with Chuck Jones) • ''Porky's Hero Agency'' (1937) (co-directed with Chuck Jones) • ''Porky's Poppa'' (1938) (co-directed with Chuck Jones) • What Price Porky (1938) • ''Porky's Five and Ten'' (1938) • Injun Trouble (1938) • ''Porky's Party'' (1938) • Porky & Daffy (1938) • Porky in Wackyland (1938) • ''Porky's Naughty Nephew'' (1938) • Porky in Egypt (1938) • The Daffy Doc (1938) • The Lone Stranger and Porky (1939) • ''Porky's Tire Trouble'' (1939) • ''Porky's Movie Mystery'' (1939) • Chicken Jitters (1939) • Kristopher Kolumbus, Jr. (1939) • Polar Pals (1939) • Scalp Trouble (1939) • ''Porky's Picnic'' (1939) • Wise Quacks (1939) • ''Porky's Hotel'' (1939) • Jeepers Creepers (1939) • Naughty Neighbors (1939) • Pied Piper Porky (1939) • The Film Fan (1939) • ''Porky's Last Stand'' (1940) • Africa Squeaks (1940) • Ali-Baba Bound (1940) • Pilgrim Porky (1940) • Slap-Happy Pappy (1940) • ''Porky's Poor Fish'' (1940) • ''The Chewin' Bruin'' (1940) • Patient Porky (1940) • Prehistoric Porky (1940) • The Sour Puss (1940) • The Timid Toreador (1940) (co-supervision with Norm McCabe) • ''Porky's Snooze Reel'' (1941) (co-supervision with Norm McCabe) • Goofy Groceries (1941) (first Merrie Melodies short directed by Clampett) • Farm Frolics (1941) • A Coy Decoy (1941) • Meet John Doughboy (1941) • We, the Animals Squeak! (1941) • The Henpecked Duck (1941) • The Cagey Canary (1941) • Wabbit Twouble (1941) • ''Porky's Pooch'' (1941) • Aloha Hooey (1942) • Crazy Cruise (1942) • Any Bonds Today? (1942) • Horton Hatches the Egg (1942) • The Wacky Wabbit (1942) • Nutty News (1942) • Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid (1942) • Wacky Blackout (1942) • ''Eatin' on the Cuff or The Moth Who Came to Dinner'' (1942) • The Hep Cat (1942) • A Tale of Two Kitties (1942) • Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs (1943) • Tortoise Wins by a Hare (1943) • The Wise Quacking Duck (1943) • Tin Pan Alley Cats (1943) • A Corny Concerto (1943) • Fighting Tools (1943) • Falling Hare (1943) • An Itch in Time (1943) • ''What's Cookin' Doc?'' (1944) • Booby Traps (1944) • Tick Tock Tuckered (1944) • Russian Rhapsody (1944) • ''Hare Ribbin''' (1944) • Birdy and the Beast (1944) • Buckaroo Bugs (1944) • The Old Grey Hare (1944) • Draftee Daffy (1945) • Tokyo Woes (1945) • A Gruesome Twosome (1945) • Wagon Heels (1945) • The Bashful Buzzard (1945) • Book Revue (1946) • Baby Bottleneck (1946) • Kitty Kornered (1946) • The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946) • The Big Snooze (1946) Republic Pictures • ''It's a Grand Old Nag'' (1947) (credited as Kilroy) == References ==