A new home for TV’s Icky Twerp in Texas Archive video collection

TV’s Icky Twerp has a new home, and so does Gorgon, and what other 1960s video is out there to save?

The slapstick local kids show host lives on in the Austin-based Texas Archive of the Moving Image, an online treasure chest for film keepsakes.

Five clips from KTVT/Channel 11’s Slam Bang Theater have been restored and posted online at texasarchive.org, along with the horror show Nightmare and other work of host-comic Bill Camfield, “Icky Twerp.”

“This is an unbelievable gift — to have all Dad’s work digitized and online so people can enjoy it,” said Paul Camfield of Fredericksburg, keeper of the family memories since cancer took his father in 1991 at 62.

“Now — do more people in Fort Worth have old home movies?” Camfield asked: “What about something of President Kennedy? Is there something in the attic or garage?”

On this 53rd anniversary week of the Kennedy assassination, there must be another unseen movie of the motorcade through Fort Worth and River Oaks, or of his 1960 campaign stop.

But the archivists also want film of everyday life.

“We’re really looking for a wide range of film showing Texans throughout the 20th century,” said University of Texas professor Caroline Frick, the founder and leader of archive efforts, on a Friday visit.

“I would be so excited to see something from the JFK era. But we’re also looking for home movies of the oilfields, or ranching. We’re trying to tell the story of Texas in moving images.”

The archive stages regular “roundups” looking for movies.

Some Fort Worth residents found the online archive with the discovery of Fort Worth: The Unexpected City, a 1970s promotional film with footage of the historic Stockyards when it still hosted cattle sales.

Other local films in the archive include everything from Radio Shack commercials and travelogues to the Camfield outtakes, including Bill Camfield’s acting cameo in a Three Stooges movie and his cowboy-character commercials for Texas Consumer Finance.

For years, baby boomers asked where to watch Slam Bang Theater again or hear the New Orleans-style theme (Didn’t He Ramble from the Bill Cullen Minstrels, 1959).

Lately, younger viewers and foreign audiences have clicked over more to see Nightmare, a special-effects-heavy show where a menacing Camfield as “Gorgon” introduced a thriller.

“The sci-fi crowd is interested to see early special effects, and what they could do back then in this little local TV studio,” Paul Camfield said.

In 2001, Bill Camfield’s local work was recognized by the Dallas Video Festival with the national Ernie Kovacs Award for comedy. A Slam Bang clip even made it into one of Fort Worth native Bill Paxton’s movies.

“It’s hard to explain,” Paul Camfield said: “My dad was just Billy Joe Camfield from a poor upbringing in Mineral Wells, but he could play a Gothic character in Nightmare and the next day play a North Texas hillbilly.”

No need to explain. Just check the archive.

This story was originally published November 19, 2016 at 6:03 PM with the headline "A new home for TV’s Icky Twerp in Texas Archive video collection."