Pinto Colvig

Biography

Vance DeBar Colvig Sr. (September 11, 1892 – October 3, 1967), known professionally as Pinto Colvig, was an American actor, animator, cartoonist, and circus and vaudeville performer. He was best known for being the original performer of the Disney characters Goofy and Pluto, as well as Bozo the Clown and Bluto in Popeye. In 1993, he was posthumously made a Disney Legend for his contributions to Walt Disney Films, including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Fun and Fancy Free. His schtick was playing the clarinet off-key while mugging. He was born in Jacksonville and named Vance DeBar Colvig. At age 7 (because of too many freckles, and goony antics) he was nicknamed 'Pinto the Village Clown' (which he has used professionally during his circus and other show business activities, besides occasional jobs as a newspaper cartoonist.) Colvig performed chalk talks in vaudeville. In 1916, Colvig worked at the Animated Film Corporation in San Francisco where he made Creation, reported to be the world's first feature-length cartoon. Only five 35 mm frames survive, housed at the Southern Oregon Historical Society. Animated Film Corporation in San Francisco, ended with the entry of the U.S. into World War I (April 1917). In 1919, Pinto produced "Pinto's Prizma Comedy Review" the first color cartoon, it is now considered a lost film, and published in the San Francisco Bulletin (May 1919—February 1920), the "Bulletin Boob" column, and photographs. In 1922, Colvig created a newspaper cartoon panel titled "Life on the Radio Wave" for the San Francisco Chronicle. The feature ran three or four times per week on the newspaper's radio page, was syndicated nationally, and lasted six months. In 1922, Colvig and his family moved to Hollywood, working as an animator, title writer and comedian in silent comedies and on sound cartoons, working first for Mack Sennett. By the late 1920s, Colvig became associated with Walter Lantz, with whom he attempted to establish a cartoon studio, creating a character called "Bolivar, the Talking Ostrich", which would have appeared in sound shorts. When Lantz became producer of Universal's Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons in 1929, Colvig was hired as an animator, also working as a storyman and voice artist, briefly voicing Oswald. In 1930, Colvig signed an eight-year contract with Walt Disney Productions as a writer, also providing sound effects, including the barks for Pluto the Pup. The following year he began voicing Goofy, originally known as Dippy Dawg. Other notable characters he voiced include Practical Pig, the pig that built the "house of bricks" in the Disney short "Three Little Pigs", and both Grumpy and Sleepy in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. After a falling out with Walt Disney, Colvig did not work for the Disney studio between 1939 and 1943. He was offered a job with Fleischer Studios, then planning to produce a competing feature-length animated film in the wake of Disney's success with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He moved to Miami, then Fleischer's location, in early 1938. For Fleischer, Colvig worked on 1939's Gulliver's Travels, for which he voiced town crier Gabby, who was spun off into his own short-lived series. He also voiced Bluto for the studio's Popeye the Sailor cartoons, replacing Gus Wickie, who elected to remain in New York rather than move to Miami when the studio relocated. Colvig began working in radio, providing voices and sound effects, including the sounds of Jack Benny's Maxwell car for The Jack Benny Program, later performed by Mel Blanc. In 1939, Colvig returned to California, and began to devote himself to acting and doing voices in several cartoons for the Warner Bros. animation studio and for MGM, where he voiced a Munchkin in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. In 1946, Colvig was cast as Bozo the Clown for Capitol Records. He played the role for a decade, which also included portraying the character on television. During this period, Colvig also recorded the "Filbert the Frog" song, which featured Colvig's virtuoso use of the glottal stop as a musical instrument in itself. In 1967, Colvig's last known performance, as Goofy, was for the Telephone Pavilion at Expo 67. Colvig's dialogue for this exhibit was recorded six months before his death.