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Dig A Hole: DAVEY AND GOLIATH co-creator Richard Sutcliffe

May 22nd, 2008 by Scott Marks

Gee, Davey, Richard Sutcliffe died.

Along with Gumby creators Art Clokey and Ruth Clokey Goodell, Dick Sutcliffe devised the religious claymation TV show Davey and Goliath. He died May 11in Dallas of complications from a stroke. He was 90.

If it looks like a Gumby and walks like a Gumby, it must be a Gumby, right? Not necessarily. I don’t ever remember Gumby feeding his orange ass Pokey a theological dissertation before mounting him.

Davey and Goliath was a Christian-themed children’s show that creeped the hell out of me. While Gumby was a source of great entertainment, even as a kid I could smell D&G’s religious propaganda a mile away.

In 1959, the United Lutheran Church contracted with Clokey Productions to produce the series. The stop-motion sermon about a suburban boy and his talking dog aired early Sunday mornings on Chicago’s Very Own WGN. The Church provided the show free of charge to any station willing to air them, so no wonder ‘GN took them up on their offer. The shows were aired without commercial interruption.

Sutcliffe launched the series to spread a religious message without losing younger viewers with overly complicated concepts, his daughter, J.T. Sutcliffe, told The Dallas Morning News. By “overly complicated concepts” I assume Ms. Sutcliffe meant character animation, narrative structure and moralist decla(y)mation.

The stories followed a dim formula that was even more rudimentary than it’s brightly lit backgrounds. Each week Davey would encounter a moral obstacle that could only be resolved through inspirational dogma that was generally delivered by a dog.

To a five-year-old Jew, these characters offered more dread than solace. Long before I grasped the concept of Valium, these brainwashed zombies appeared to be self-medicated.

Church leaders approached Sutcliffe about using television to reach young people when he was director of Lutheran radio and television ministry in New York. He chose a format that would offer sound theology while being entertaining, his daughter told the newspaper. One out of two ain’t bad.

Ironically, the voice of Davey’s father was provided by Hal Smith, better know as Otis the Drunk on The Andy Griffith Show.

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Filed Under Obituaries