Bob Clampett: From Bugs to Beany

In my book Chain of Fools, I wrote about how animated cartoon shorts took over where live action silent comedy films left off — they were the natural successor, in a way. I left it as vague as that, for the logic is obvious, but if I ever have occasion to update the book I’d add specifics. Walt Disney, for example, was a Chaplin fan, and had been inspired by the 1912 version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. With Bob Clampett (1912-1984) the line is even clearer.

Clampett was a Hollywood kid. He literally grew up next door to Charlie Chaplin and his brother Sydney. His father played handball with Harold Lloyd. Clampett was inspired by these comedians, as well as Buster Keaton, Douglas Fairbanks (who began as a light comedian), and Lon Chaney. He was a huge fan of the pioneering sci-fi classic The Lost World, which turned 100 years old a few weeks ago, with its stop motion dinosaurs. He was already making his own live action silent movies as a tween. One of them, called The Golf Widow (1927) survives, and it is utterly charming. It could have been made yesterday.

But Clampett has other skills as well. He had been drawing since age five. He was also very much into puppetry. When still a teenager he helped his aunt Charlotte Clark design the first Mickey Mouse dolls for Disney. He was only 17 when he joined the legendary staff under Leon Schlesinger (along with Friz Freleng, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, et al). that created the classic characters for Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, including Bugs Bunny,Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and Tweety. Starting out as an animator, Clampett was directing films by 1937, remaining a key part of the team on the Warner Brothers lot for about a decade. (His first directing job was an animated sequence for the 1937 Joe E. Brown comedy When’s Your Birthday?)

At the height of his powers, Clampett was lured away to Columbia briefly in 1946, and made one short for Republic It’s a Grand Old Nag (1947) starring a character named Charlie Horse.

By this point, television was becoming popular, and Clampett changed gears wildly, much to the delight of kids everywhere. His puppet-driven children’s show Time for Beany ran from 1949 through 1955. Beany (Daws Butler) was a boy in a propeller hat, which was a brand new invention at the time. (A guy named Ray Nelson had invented them a couple of years earlier as a kind of jokey sci-fi costume. The idea circulated in cartoons and when Clampett adopted it for Beany’s character, it became a fad. It was mostly a nerd thing, and in short order that’s what it became symbolic shorthand for, and it was strictly used satirically in later years.) Beany’s pal was Cecil, an eager and loyal Seasick Sea Serpent (Stan Freberg) not unlike the brontosaurus from The Lost World. Other characters included a sailor named Captain Huffnpuff (played by Butler, and surely an inspiration for Puffnstuff), and the melodrama style villain Dishonest John (Freberg). Time for Beany was one of those shows that used lots of clever, satirical humor that went over kids heads but was appreciated by adults. Both Groucho and Harpo Marx are said to have been fans of the show.

While Time for Beany was on the air, Clampett also debuted a couple of other short-lived kids shows: Thunderbolt the Wondercolt (1952) with Walker Edmiston and John Carradine; Willy the Wolf (1954), an all-puppet variety show with Edmiston, Don Messick,the King Sisters, et al; and Buffalo Billy (1954), which Clampett performed himself.

In 1952, Clampett had the opportunity to merge his two great loves when he created an animated Beany and Cecil sequence as a special prologue sequence to the 3-D movie Bwana Devil. A decade later the animated version of the characters got their own show on ABC television. 26 episodes were created, and aired through 1965.

In 1962 Clampett experimented with combined live action and animation (putting human heads on animated bodies). He took an old Judy Canova radio show for the audio, and had Canova lip sync to her own voice, with Benny Rubin lip syncing Mel Blanc’s very Yosemite Sam-sounding character. Hans Conried provided narration, and Billy Gilbert did his trademark sneeze, with Vera Felton playing a character named Cactus Annie. Called Tex and Judy it’s quite an oddity, and like The Golf Widow, is available to watch on Youtube.

For related reading, please check out Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, and don’t miss my upcoming Electric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.