Saturday, September 6, 2014

Gold Rush Gumby (1967)

GOLD RUSH GUMBY
Producer:
ART CLOKEY

Writers-Directors:
RAYMOND PECK
PETE KLEINOW

Voices:
NORMA MacMILLAN, DAL McKENNON

Music:
"Gumby theme"/PETE KLEINOW [opening]
"GM-592 Western Saloon"/IB GLINDEMANN
No music at all-(Most of Gumby, Pokey and Nopey driving)
"Light Movement"/PHIL GREEN (From Capitol S-??)(Gumby digging for and getting gold nugget)
"(?Indian Theme?)/SPENCER MOORE (from Capitol X series)(?)(We see our old pal the Chief of the Peskies with nasty toothache.)
No music for most of the episode till end
Light Movement/PHIL GREEN (repeat of above)
"repeat GM-592"/GLINDEMANN (Gumby,Pokey, and Nopey leaving cured Chief)
"Gumby eneding theme"/KLEINOW(?)

Originally broadcast:1967

Synopsis: The Peskies's chief's got an even "Peskier" toothache, and he's got the bandgades tying up
his head to prove it, and it's up to Dr.Gumby, Dentist and Golddigger (the mining type) to the rescue.

The Pesky Indians had been used for many years by the Clokey staff for many years and they feature them here..
as usual, they're friends. Meanwhile, the stfaff takes Pokey,Gumby, and the newly created dog who just says "No",
"Nopey", on a desert/mountaiun mining trip. the three, in Gumby's dune buggy or jeep,m stop to get a mother lode.

Gumby stars digging as Pokey jokes "If you don't stop by now, Gumby, you'll dig yourself all the way to China"!

But then Gumby:

"Eureeka".

They all then back away from the hole when, YIPES-Peskie indians, and they take Gumby to the Chief. He's not angry,
as he's a very close friend of Gumby, just his bad tooth. Gumby ties a rope between Pokey and the chief's loose tooth and it works,
but the chief's Alfred E.Neuman like gap makes him the laughingstock of the Indian Chief, who's not upset at all..as Gumby does
the gold sacfrifice of the tooth in the gap. Now.."Chief SHINY Tooth" as one other Indian says...Now Gumby and the gang leave and wave
all of them especially the chief ("And remember Chief, keep smiling",possibly a reference to Mel Blanc's old radio "Happy Postman" on
the 1940s George Burns and Gracie Allen network radio show).

The famous Indian music heard in the middle is used for a pretty later episode the famous Indian cue whose actual composer, at least credited,
or title/description is STILL not known. The Clokey animators did a heap pretty-um task replicating for the Chief as potential and actual dentaL
patient of Dr.Gumby, the standard neckerchief 'round someone's head, when their tooth's acting up in those old shows,
is pretty easy to DRAW, but this is clay, and the animation of Pokey putting that
tooth out is ptetty good too. No background music generally used for of the short,though.. The open and end has been identified from a confidential mp3 source as Ib Glindemann's
GM 592 Western Saloon, also in Disneyland (Orange County, anyway) Frontierland as greeting music until aroud late 90s due to the rights (but aren't all of the
IG cues,m being later, still issued, or payment or other issues caused Disney Califronia to stop usiing that Western music for Frontierland, the banjo piece.)

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Gumby Business

GUMBY BUSINESS
Producer,Writer, Director:
ART CLOKEY

Music:
Gumby theme/B.LOOSE (when show opens)
Unknown, but probaly G.Hormel or Bill Loose (Gumby cranking out the title in clay through one of those old-fashioned Clay things)
"Pleasant Neautral Walker"/JACK COOKERLY, BILL LOOSE, EMIL CADKIN (from OK Records)(panning up to Gumby's digs in toystore)
"ZR-42 Light Movement"/GEORGE HORMEL (from Capital "L-4 METROPOLITAN MOVEMENT" HI-Q)(Gumby and Pokey approaching the wondrous toys that await that)
"ZR-42A Light Movement"/GEORGE HORMEL(This and all similiar are from the above)(Gumby and Pokey looking at the toys)
"ZR-43A Light Movement"/GEORGE HORMEL (the entire toy "sampling")
"TC-205 Light (or, if you wish, "Western") Movment"/JOHN SEELY, DAVID ROSE (contractually uncredited), and BILL LOOSE (from Capitol "L-2 Comedy-Animation"Hi-Q)(Pokey tries Gumball)
"ZR-44 Light-Showbiz"/GEORGE HORMEL (the gumball and train scenes)
"ZR-45 Metropolitan"/GEORGE HORMEL (the train and the rest of the episode)
"Gumby Close"/LOOSE
Originally shown:1956-57
Synopsis: Gumby and Pokey get iunvolved with a doll, a trombone, a gumball machine and a train, all in a toystore.
________________________________________
Toy stores had figured a lot in Gumby shorts, even as the personal digs, even if BRIEFLY (check 1955-56's "Toy Crazy"'s opening scene).
This shows the kind of toy-based world that the show often was built around, and the wordless capers..and sometimes with no real moving or plotline. This was part of a longer film along with "Toy Fun" after it (provable
to anyone who's taken the the time to see both, in successive order especially!). A pan, especially an openming pan, might not spell Gumby, but opening one does. We get,
with Clokey taking us up to Gumby's Place. The top of a toy shelf. Gumby wakes up, does the usual get up stretch, then comes down with Pokey. The two go to a trombone whose music blows Pokey across the Room. Gumby walks right
over and goes to a baby doll, press it, and gets blown in his face by it. All the time, the camera looks straight down at the boys.
George Hormel's cues, part of the ones that dominate this, play as now, with Seely-Loose's Western Tinged (but
not so-named)"Light Movement TC-205" playing right after as Pokey puts in his money in a gumball machine, and gets some guballs, and then Gumby tries but has to go in, and then climb out when the
gunballs roll a few feet away. Gumby decides to forget the gumballs and he and Pokey skate and trot, respectively, over to the toy railroad tracks.
Pokey walks offstage but then Gumby goes to the tracks, is almost stuck, but then
steps out JUST as the train is COMING, arches himself high above the Lionel or Marx train,
and the train can go underneath, and Gumby can now go as Pokey trots out (and "Toy Fun" begins).
Unlike the next one, :Toy Fun", Geordie Hormel music from "METROPOLITAN MOVEMENT", Hi-Q L-4, Capital, 1956, is dominant.
"Toy Fun", which continues where this one left off, is more "upbeat" and has more mix of composers represented for those waiting for much more..
(thanks to Yowp, the late Daws Butler Jr.aka EarlKress,Judgebear69,ewtc for music info,
and Wiley207 for the train info.

Saturday, February 1, 2014

TAIL TALE (1967)

TAIL TALE
Writer-Director:PETE KLEINOW, ART CLOKEY, RAYMOND PECK
CAST
Gumby/NORMA McMILLAN
Pokey;space critter(?)/DAL McKENNON
Executive/Producer;ART CLOKEY
Synopsis: Gumby's space age expiriment goes haywire when Pokey's tail and mane keep getting transposed with a pot of
flowers and then an alien in a scienfitic test.

TV TROPES:
Aliens are bastards: Averted with the alien that helps Gumby nad Pokey
Einstein's mc2: Variated with Gumby's control on the machine
Horse compartisionm: When Pokey notes slowness of the flowers, he comments that he's no race horse.
Nerd: Gumby
Teleportation: The machine that Gumby is using can teleport anyone faster (the whole plot).



The space age and the jet age of the 50s-60s really showed "Gumby the Scientist" being inventive as ever, with a real
strange contraption even more odd that what we presented last time ("Do-It-Yourself Gumby").
The short has as a major gimmick two transportation booths, and a Einstein-esque couple of selection on a computer
panel rotary knob-EC=M and some variants with 3 and 4 but NO EC=M2.
The episode starts out with Gumby in his science laboratory with the familiar late 60s brass unidentified sunny music
also heard opening shorts like "Shady Lemonade" around this time, standing by his machine and myself, Pokey, as summoned
up by Gumby, answers Gumby "sending for him" (before the episode started.) Gumby tells Pokey, "You see those two cells over
there", indicating the aforementioned machine cells, to which Pokey, ever the wisecracker:"If you say so..."
Gumby then says: "Be SERIOUS Pokey"...then explains his transportation idea that Pokey's to be a guinea pig, or guinea PONY, for:
to have Pokey stand in one of the rounded cell-booths while Gumby turns the knob mentioned above, while Gumby places a flowerpot
(with flowers, natch) in the other, and wierd computer hums play, and Pokey and the flowers are transported-sort of.
Pokey says that even not being a race horse, that he's faster.
The tail is sticking out so Gumby reactivates machine, tail flies off, and then flowers on Pokey's back, with the TAIL replacing the flowers in their pot!
After Gumby tries again both Pokey, and pot with Gumby occuyping another cell,
 disappear only with Pokey's mane now replacing the tail, which is now gone, with the mane restored to
Pokey but the flowers and their pot gone.
The REAL bizzare thing is when Gumby tries yet AGAIN and one of those strange bizarre aliens that only turns up in Gumby appears, with single
curled hair, about Gumby's height, in one cell, and scoots to the machine and (to the EC=M) adds the needed "2", with Pokey then Gumby ad-
mitting that Gumby goofed, with the alien and Gumby in one cell and Pokey in the other, and now, the alien is gone but Gumby, the flower pot
and its intended contents, and in their rightful places Pokey's tail and mane are back.
Gumby explains that the weird space alien just got suddenly pulled out of the solar system by Gumby's computer and sent everyone and everything,
faster than the speed of light. "You're no racehorse Pokey, but you're the fastest horse on earth".
I'd sure like to know who did the Bill Loose-David Rose like eerie music used here when the alien appears-it's also in "Dragon Daffy" (the sequel or predecessor
to the aforementioned, unrelated "Shady Lemonade") when Gumby goes into the stone age book, in "Moon Boggles" when we first meed the 'Boggles, and in "Grub
Grabber Gumby" when Gumby has his nightmare with Pokey as a fright-mare (of the male gender) stuffing him a la "Clockwork Orange" and the earlier Warner Bros.
cartoons "Pigs is Pigs", 1937, not related to the 1905 E.P.Butler/1954 Disney story, and "Wholly Smoke" with Porky Pig, 1938); it's very similiar to the Loose-Rose-Seely music
so well known from the often-discussed shorts from Hanna-Barbera's Huckleberry Hound episode from 1960-61 "Astro-Nut Huck" that opens it, and the WB cartoons from the musicians strike
era in 1958, "Gopher Broke", that closes it; George Hormel also had a well known cue like it in HB, Clokey, and others. Seely, Hormel,etc. had a lot of spooky, beautiful cues like this. But D.M.Lackey & G.Kauer are
believed to composed for this.
"Gilligan's Island" episode for 1965-66, 4/7/66, #66, "Friendly Physician", used booths in a way similiar to the booth-rounded cells in this short.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

DO-IT-YOURSELF-GUMBY (1967)


DO-IT-YOURSELF-GUMBY (1967)
Writers-Directors: PETE KLEINOW, ART CLOKEY & RAY PECK
CAST
Gumby;Goo/NORMA MacMILLAN
Pokey/DAL McKENNON
Prickle/ART CLOKEY (?)
Machine/?
Exec.Producer ART CLOKEY
Mus.GENE KAUER, D.LACKEY.
Synopsis:Gumby's a computer whiz bang whose "wish granting" device gives more than the wishers (himself included) ever bargained for.
----------------------------------
Sometimes, in the late 1960s many shows started becoming stale. Gumby may sometimes have been among them, but generally it still remained quite
surprsingly good and creative. This episode's no exception.
How many times have YOU heard that "if you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself".
Well, this almost touches on that. In a way.
Gumby has invented a "progessive type" computer with keyboard, which, when TYPED, can produce JUST the
right command. For instance. Vanilla milkshake? Gumby types and a distorted voice (kinda lika a Siri, Clokey-style, or a Scarlett Johanssen-less "Samantha" a la Spike Jonze's "Her") comes up to repeat it
and "ta-daaa" there it is! Rowboat? No problemo. Gumby types up the order (to coin a phrase-ahem) and it appears.
All on a special stage.
The story has all four of the late 60s/80s show principals, Gumby, Pokey, Goo and Prickle. First Gumby wants something, roast turkey, after which Pokey says, "Yum Yum"
Roast tukey appears. Nothing wrong here but Gumby decides to add something else, a PIANO
It shows up on the stage.
But then the piano comes to life itself, doing a dance.
Goo:"It's playing by ITSELF".
Prickle: "Huh. A SMART aleck PIANO" Next, please...Prickle comes up, places his order, for a train,and hey, hey, Gumby types
away.  The camera then cuts to a scene where the computer's got it down, reciting it. "Coming right up". The soundtracks play a few familiar 60s stock cues.The train starts taking off, so Gumby cancels/


Goo finally makes a wish,a kitty, which Gumby then types. Computer distorted voice: "One....kitty....meow...coming right up".
But the computer produces a roaring tiger, so Gumby then types in "Cage",("Cage" says the computer).





ThenPrickle suggests a robot, but no sooner does he get the order
repeated by his marvellous machine than the robot comes over and types
too much so that Gumby takes a sledgehammer and smashes BOTH the robot and the MACHINE..
The distorted sounding machine has a good final moment here:"Work work work work" as the robot types a ltitle too much
so that the room is almost magically crowded with unwanted stuff.


Goo:"tsk.."
Pokey:"If you want something done RIGHT...
Prickle:"You gotta do it yourself".
The machine agrees.
End.
This had some definite use of fade ins to depict the realising of the four friends wishes, which must have involved special matte-ing process over the stop motion.