Bob Clampett was an impressive figure in animation. As a teenager he helped his aunt, Chaflotte Clark design a doll of the new cartoon character Mickey Mouse, which she took to Walt Disney at his studio not far away. He liked it and her design became the first Mickey dolls. The doll encapsulated two interests of the young Bob Clampett, to which he would devote his career: animation and puppetry.
When Warner Bros cartoons began, young Bob Clampett joined the new studio, led by Hugh Harmon and Rudolph Ising, who started the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons. By the later 1930s Bob became a director, and the wild madcap style of cartoons was born. He created Porky Pig and Tweety and Sylvester, and worked on other Warner characters. His Bugs Bunny was on the wild side, especially during the war years.
When you think of Warner directors names like Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng come to mind, but before them there was Bob Clampett. Theyworked for him and learned their craft under his guidance and influence. The Warner cartoons we've known from television are all after 1948. The network TV deal was to show post-1948 cartoons. Bob left Warners before 1948, and so his cartoons have not been as widely seen as those of other and later Warner directors. Nonetheless, they are a major part of Warners animation.
Bob left and went into television in its earliest days. He had a puppet show starring his new characters Beany and Cecil, who later became stars of their own animated TV series. I firs thad contact with Bob when he sent me an issue of FUNNYWORLD, Mike Barrier's fine animation magazine. I didn't have the Bob Clampett issue and my friend Steve Schneider, the great Warner Bros animation enthusiast arranged for him to send me a copy. Correspondence with Bob followed His letters had his Beany and Cecil characters on his letterhead, but he often drew his own air mail symbol on the envelope made up of drawn rabbit ears, an homage to his Warner Bugs Bunny days he wrote as “:Hare Mail.”
I didn't actually meet him until we were both at a convention in Boston later in the 1970s. He was the animation guest of honor and everyone enjoyed his presentation of his cartoons and his stories of the early days of animation. One very interesting piece of film he showed was a test for a feature animation he wanted to make, JOHN CARTER OF MARS. It was a fully finished test in color that was very impressive. The closest thing to it, to give an idea of what it was like, are the realistic SUPERMAN cartoons that the Fleischers did. Unfortunately he was not able to get the large budget such a feature would require.
I got to meet and talk to Bob at that show and we spent some time together with his engaging wife Sody. He was to do a radio interview the next day and invited me along, so we did it together. I found him similarly generous in the years to come. I know that he championed Hugh Harmon, who was still alive, and I thought highly of Bob the man as well as his talents. I know that he helped students who were interested in animation as they relayed his generosity with his time and contacts to me.
On a visit to Montreal he asked if I would be interested in looking after his interests in Canada, His animation show was still playing and there was always some merchandising being done. It was a dream assignment and I welcomed the opportunity to get to work with him and to know him further. As these things often happen, he died suddenly before we could really get going.
Now the hard part to write: Some of the people at Warners that Bob worked with would take pot shots at him in their later years, which I consider to be cheap shots. I have a letter between Chuck Jones and Tex Avery filled with such shots each wrote. It is my belief that they stem not from facts but from jealousy.
At the time Chuck was qwriting and animating his horrible Sniffles cartoons at Warners, with their rotten timing and boring characterization, there was no inking that ne would become, as I regard him, the best director animation ever had. He was learning, as were the other “later” directors while Bob, tough younger than Chuck, was directing and making better films.
Whenever I would talk to Chuck about the early days, he would end up overcome by anger at management and anyone in authority over him. There were no grays in his portraits- all black and white and what angered him most was that they made more money than he did. This would come up over and over. And so I don't think it's unreasonable to think that he saw Bob as one of those people. On another point, Bob had the guts, the courage and the talent to strike out on his own, leave the Warner womb and made a success of his own characters on his own. Those who badmouthed Bob never had the guts to do it themselves.
Remember that Bob was in on the ground floor of television. More people saw his work in a given week than ever saw a Warners cartoon. Until the early 1960s, Warner cartoons could only be seen in theatres, on a catch as catch can basis. The only Warner cartoons seen on TV before the 1960s were the pre-1948 cartoons that had been sold on a station by station basis-- including Bob Clampett's Warner cartoons. The public knew Bob Clampett as a household name, seeing his name on his own TV show, on merchandising and on old Warner cartoons on TV. How galling this must have been to jealous minds.
I once asked Chuck, who by the 1970s was finally a household word himself, with all the accolades and recognition he deserved now coming to him, if he could put the past in the past and enjoy the present. I didn't have the nerve to put it so bluntly, of course, but I expressed my sadness at his not seeming to be able to enjoy his “new” career as an animation icon and its status. He said he couldn't forget the past (and I suppose its imagined injustices) and we never spoke of the old old days again. We still had some fine talks and good laughs to be sure and I think I should write about those soon.
Still, when I see on the internet that some people are saying that Bob wasn't well liked by his co-workers in the old days. I think some clarification, opinion and context is appropriate. I never saw or experienced anything other than a warm, funny and generous person. We spoke of the old days at Warners many times, and he only spoke well and highly of Harman and Ising, of Carl Stalling and Leon Schlesinger, and yes, of Chuck, Tex and others. Any time spent with Bob was relaxed, positive in nature and golden.
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