Eric Campbell (actor)

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Alfred Eric Campbell (April 26, 1878, Dunoon – December 20, 1917, Hollywood) was a Scottish actor.

A silent era star, he was featured in 11 movies starring Charlie Chaplin where he typically played the intimidating large villain of the story.

He began his career as a stage actor in "fit-ups" (local theatres) in Scotland and Wales, playing a number of melodramatic roles. It was in one such role that he was discovered by Fred Karno, the famous English impresario who also discovered Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel. Karno, who was impressed by Campbell's enormous size and rich, baritone voice, took him to London and introduced him to the slapstick comedy style of Karno's troupe, the Fun Factory, for which Campbell would later become famous.

Campbell sailed to New York City in 1914, following in the footsteps of Chaplin and Laurel, who had relocated there a year earlier. Campbell soon became established in America as a stage actor. He is said to have appeared in at least one Gilbert and Sullivan musical. In 1915, Chaplin was in New York to sign his contract with Mutual (then the highest sum ever paid to an entertainer). He saw Campbell performing in a play on Broadway, remembered him, and invited him to Hollywood to join the cast of actors in the new films that Chaplin had contracted to make.

Campbell's first film with Chaplin was The Floorwalker (1916). In it, he achieved some recognition for the "escalator scene," in which he chased Chaplin through a department store. It was in their second film together, The Fireman (1916) that Campbell really developed the role that would feature throughout all of his successive work with Chaplin. A towering figure weighing almost 300 pounds (136 kg), he became the villain and comic foil to the "Little Tramp's" antics. His most famous appearance is probably in Chaplin's Easy Street (1917), in which local bully Campbell demonstrates his strength to timid policeman Chaplin by bending a gas lamp-post.

Chaplin was then the most recognised film star in the world, with countless imitators, including his old friend Stan Laurel. It was therefore inevitable that Campbell, who was a key figure in Chaplin's films of this period, would also have imitators. The most famous of these was tall, heavy-set Oliver Hardy, who played second banana to Chaplin impersonator Billy West. Ten years later, Hardy was paired with Stan Laurel to create the Laurel and Hardy comedy team.

While Campbell's career soared, his personal life suffered when he lost his wife in an automobile accident. Within a month, however, he had remarried to Cleda Pearl Gillman, after a romance of just five days. The marriage lasted only months, however, before Gillman divorced him, citing his drunken behavior and use of profanity.

That same year, Chaplin ended his relationship with Mutual to sign a million-dollar contract with First National (again, the highest amount ever paid to an actor). He planned on taking Campbell with him, but in the interim, between films, Chaplin lent Campbell to his friend, Mary Pickford, who cast him in her film Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley (1918). According to reports, he had been drinking heavily at a cast party held just a few days later, and finally left for home at 4:00 a.m. He was driving drunk when his car spun out of control and crashed, killing him instantly.

Campbell was cremated and his ashes remained unclaimed for over 30 years, until they were finally laid to rest at Rosedale Cemetery. No marker was set on his final resting place, and it is unknown where his remains were placed.

Campbell, one of the most recognised faces of the silent movie era, would all but be forgotten were it not for the memorial plaque installed in 1996 in Castle Gardens, Dunoon.

[edit] Filmography

[edit] External links

• Eric Campbell at the Internet Movie Database