Pinto Colvig – the original Bozo the Clown – September, 11, 1892 – October 3, 1967
Bozo the Clown
What do Bozo the Clown, Walt Disney’s Goofy and Popeye’s nemesis Bluto have in common? The answer is Pinto Colvig. “Who?” you ask. Pinto Colvig is possibly the most popular celebrity whose name you’ve never heard.
As a teenager, Vance “Pinto” Colvig ran away to join the circus, eventually performing as a circus clown. He later came to work at Walt Disney Studios, first as an animator and later doing voice talent. Pinto Colvig was the voice of some of Walt Disney’s most famous characters, including Pluto, Goofy and two of the Seven Dwarfs (Sleepy and Grumpy). He also was co-composer of the well-known children’s song “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” in Three Little Pigs, in addition to being the voice of Practical Pig in that film. Other roles at other studios included Gabby in 1939’s Gulliver’s Travels, the Grasshopper in 1934’s The Grasshopper and the Ants and Bluto in the Popeye cartoons. See Pinto Colvig’s Filmography for a complete list of his film work.
Pinto Colvig was the quintessential clown whose own identity was always hidden but whose innate warm-hearted character always came through his many talents. His humor tickled the funnybone and touched the heart. Incredibly gifted in music, art and mime, he spoke to different generations in different roles:
- as a child clown playing a squeaky clarinet
- a full-fledged circus clown under the big top
- as a newspaper cartoonist
- as a film animator
- a mimic and sound effects wizard
- and as the voice of dozens of well-known characters on film, records, radio and television.
Pinto Colvig’s youth
Vance DeBar Colvig was born in Jacksonville, Oregon, on September 11, 1892. His school friends nicknamed him after a spotted horse named “Pinto” because of his freckled face. And just like his freckles, the name stuck for his entire life. He learned to make people laugh by making faces and playing pranks. He also spent hours mimicking the sounds around him: a rusty gate, farm animals, sneezes, wind, cars, trains, etc. Along the way he picked up his instrument of choice, the clarinet. Soon he played well enough to join the town band.
Clarinet and show business
It was the clarinet that got Pinto into show business when he was 12. Visiting Portland’s “Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition” with his father William, he was magnetized by “The Crazy House” on the Midway where a huckster attracted the crowd with a bass drum and shouts of “Hubba Hubba!” Pinto told the man he could play “squeaky” clarinet and ran back to the hotel to get his instrument. He was hired on the spot and given some oversized old clothes and a derby. And, for the first time, white makeup and a clown face. The man told Pinto, “Now you look like a real bozo” (“bozo” was a name given to hobo or tramp clowns in those days). Pinto’s act was to play a screechy clarinet while distorting his face and crossing his eyes at the high notes. He later recalled,
“I never was able to get circuses and carnivals out of my blood after that.”
Cartooning
He became known for his clever cartoons in student publications, his funny “chalk talk” performances improvising a monologue while quickly sketching cartoons, and his unconventional lifestyle. In Seattle, Washington he joined a circus band and traveled throughout the country struggling to make ends meet. In 1914 he landed a job as a newspaper cartoonist at the “Nevada Rockroller” in Reno, and later the “Carson City News” in Carson City. When the Al G. Barnes Circus came through Carson City, Pinto dropped everything and joined the troupe. Once again, clowning and playing his clarinet in the circus band.
In those days circuses closed down each winter and Pinto returned to newspaper cartooning wherever he could find a job. He greatly enjoyed cartooning and considered it another form of clowning. “A cartoonist,” he said, “is just a clown with a pencil”. While Pinto toiled daily to meet newspaper commitments, he began to spend evenings experimenting with the animation of cartoons. Eventually he set up his own studio, Pinto Cartoon Comedies Co. There he created one of the first animated silent films in color called “Pinto’s Prizma Comedy Revue (1919)”. In 1922, after realizing that San Francisco was not the place to break into the movie business, he moved his family to Hollywood.
Hollywood
There he would be able to continue his animation work and find a wealth of other things that he could do. He was overjoyed one day to get an offer to join Mack Sennett, the reigning king of movie comedies. Sennett had developed one of the most successful studios of the day, the Keystone Film Co. It was home of the famous Keystone Kops, Charles Chaplin and many others. Sennett needed an experienced animator for his own films. But Pinto soon found himself also writing and acting in comedies and dramas. In 1928 he teamed up with his friend Walter Lantz to create an early talking cartoon, “Bolivar, the Talking Ostrich (1928)”. But unlike Walt Disney’s Steamboat Willie (1928), it failed to become a hit.
Pinto and Lantz, who would later be the voice of Woody Woodpecker, gave up and went to larger studios. Disney, who was making “Mickey Mouse” and “Silly Symphony” cartoons, signed Pinto to a contract in 1930. Pinto worked on stories, co-wrote songs such as the lyrics to “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” He was the original voice of animated characters such as Goofy and Pluto, Grumpy and Sleepy in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and the Practical Pig in “Three Little Pigs.” Disney cartoonists copied many of Pinto’s facial expressions while drawing animal characters for the cartoons.
Warner Brothers
He left Disney in 1937 following a fallout with Walt and Disney proceeded to reuse his old voice tracks. Meanwhile, Pinto freelanced voices and sound effects for Warner Bros. cartoons, sang for some of the Munchkins during Dorothy’s arrival scenes in MGM’s The Wizard of Oz (1939), and also joined Max Fleischer Studios in Miami. There he did the voice of Gabby in Gulliver’s Travels (1939) and the blustering of Bluto in “Popeye the Sailor” cartoons. He returned to Disney in 1941 and continued to freelance for them and on radio programs for others.
Bozo the Clown
He was the original Maxwell automobile on Jack Benny’s show, the hiccupping horse for Dennis Day, and a variety of voices for “Amos`n Andy”. His live radio experience and contacts introduced him to the recording industry. He did several albums before encountering one of his best-known characters, Bozo the Clown. It was 1946 when Capitol Records in Hollywood hired Alan Livingston as a writer/producer. His initial assignment was to create a children’s record library, for which he came up with the soon-to-be-legendary Bozo character.
Bozo the Capitol Clown
He wrote and produced a popular series of storytelling record-album and illustrative read-along book sets. Beginning with the September 1946 release of “Bozo at the Circus“. His record-reader concept, which enabled children to read and follow a story in pictures while listening to it, was the first of its kind. The Bozo image was a composite design of Livingston’s, derived from a variety of clown pictures, then given to an artist to turn into comic-book-like illustrations. Livingston then hired Pinto to portray the character.
“Pinto came in,” Livingston recalls, “and turned out to be a very jolly, likable fellow with the kind of warm, folksy voice I wanted. He didn’t talk down to children.”
Alan Livingston
Not only did Livingston get a perfect Bozo voice in Pinto, he also got most of the animals and odd creatures under the sea and in outer space, all for the price of one. On some of the records, Pinto provided as many as eight other voices. The series turned out to be a smash hit for Capitol. It sold over eight million albums in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The character also became a mascot for the record company and was later nicknamed “Bozo the Capitol Clown“. Pinto, as Bozo, also starred in the very first Bozo television series, “Bozo’s Circus” (1949) on KTTV-Channel 11 (CBS) in Los Angeles. He made numerous guest appearances on radio and personal appearance tours all over the country.
Larry Harmon
He especially enjoyed his visits to children’s hospitals and orphanages, according to Pinto, “doin’ my silly stuff to make them laugh”. Pinto’s Bozo ended in 1956 when Larry Harmon, one of the several actors hired by Livingston and Capitol to portray Bozo at promotional appearances, formed a business partnership and bought the licensing rights to the character (excluding the record-readers) from Capitol and Livingston. In 1958 Jayark Films Corp. began distributing Bozo limited-animation cartoons to television stations, along with the rights for each to hire its own live Bozo host. Harmon produced and provided the voice of the character in the cartoons.
On January 5, 1959, Bozo returned to television beginning with a live 30-minute weeknight show on KTLA-Channel 5 in Los Angeles. Although Pinto’s Bozo days were over, it was his son, Vance Colvig Jr., whom KTLA chose as the live Bozo host. Vance’s portrayal and the KTLA show lasted for six years. At that time Harmon bought out his partners and continued to market the character through his Larry Harmon Pictures Corp.
Later life
If Pinto had any dark years, they were during World War II. Four of his five sons were of eligible age and his wife felt the dread that millions of mothers felt. This may have complicated an illness that made her a semi-invalid for several years. Pinto took care of her until her death in 1950. Throughout his life, Pinto was upbeat and cheerful, convinced that laughter was the world’s best medicine.
“Sure, there have been kicks in the pants and occasionally an empty gut,” he once said, “but those are the jolts what pushes a guy upward and onward!”
His letters, though touching on his philosophy, were never serious but always funny and filled with odd typing effects, extraneous capitalization, underlining, misspellings and strange made-up words. He also lavished his letters and envelopes with outrageous cartoons and balloons filled with gags. Pinto kept regular correspondence with clown legends Felix Adler, Emmett Kelly, Lou Jacobs and Otto Griebling. He also visited “clown alley” whenever a circus came to the Los Angeles area.
On May 28, 2004, Pinto Colvig was inducted into the Clown Hall of Fame for his portrayal as the original Bozo the Clown.