In the summer of 1964, I was invited to visit the studios of Clokey Productions, home of Gumby and Pokey, then located in Glendora, CA. My father, Les Brown (himself a commercial photographer), took 8mm movies of the visit.

Below are scanned frames from the film. I hope you enjoy them.

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Here is Art Clokey showing me how characters are molded using latex rubber.

Here is puppet animator/sculptor, the late Ray Peck, putting the finishing touches on Pokey before placing him on the set.

The finished Pokey.

This is the "hot" set. It was used for one of the opening scenes in the Gumby Adventure, "The Lawn Party." Notice the Kodak Cine Special ll 16mm camera. The early Gumby Adventures were shot on Ektachrome Commercial, a low contrast reversal film with an ASA of 16.

A closer look at the set. The TV had a 16mm projector behind it which showed an image on the screen.

Here we see Ray adjusting the focus after measuring the distance. The shot consisted of moving Gumby and Pokey's head, mouth and eyes and advancing the film in the rear projection system a frame at a time.

Here we are at the front of Clokey Productions. I'm holding an actual early 60's clay Gumby which was used in one of the films. I still have that Gumby.

Here is the finished scene.

(requires QuickTime 7)