Eric Campbell may refer to:
Eric Campbell (born August 6, 1985 in Owensville, Indiana) is a minor league baseball third baseman in the Atlanta Braves farm system. Listed at 6-feet and 190 pounds, Campbell bats and throws right-handed. Entering 2007, he was rated by Baseball America as the No. 6 prospect in the Braves organization. He currently plays for the Myrtle Beach Pelicans.
Alfred Eric Campbell (26 April1878, Dunoon - 20 December1917, Hollywood) was a Scottish silent film star, who was featured in eleven films 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 fanous 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, but his ashes remained unclaimed for over 30 years, until they were finally laid to rest.
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 Film Era, would all but be forgotten were it not for the memorial plaque installed in 1996 in Castle Gardens, Dunoon.
Campbell was born in Dunoon, Scotland in 1880 and began acting as a boy. He married fellow music hall performer Fanny Gertrude Robotham on March 30, 1901 and was later hired by English music hall impresario Fred Karno for his "Fun Factory" comedy troupes that featured other comics like a young Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel. Campbell arrived in New York with a Karno troupe in July, 1914 and was soon hired by Broadway producer Charles Frohman. In late 1915 fellow Karno alum Chaplin and his brother Sid found Eric working in a George M. Cohan play "Pom Pom" and in March, 1916, brought him to Hollywood. Built like a wrestler, over 6' tall and over 250 pounds, topped by small shaved head. Chaplin smeared his face with exaggerated eyebrows and darkened eyes, with a scraggly and long beard. He was the menacing bearded ogre opposite Chaplin in his most famous silents. His first Chaplin film was The Floorwalker (1916), playing the role of the villainous heavy, reprised in subsequent classics like The Rink (1916), The Pawnshop (1916), The Adventurer (1917), The Cure (1917), The Immigrant (1917), Easy Street (1917) and Chase me Charlie (1917). By the summer of 1917 Campbell was Chaplin's favorite co-star and foil, and almost as famous as the little comedian. In early 1917 Campbell filmed his last Chaplin Mutual, The Adventurer, after which Chaplin began construction on his own studio on LaBrea Avenue in Hollywood (which still stands today). During the five-month construction period, Chaplin lent Campbell to Mary Pickford, the world's biggest star, to appear in her film Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley (1917). He was on the verge of becoming a world-wide star as filming began. But at the same time that he was becoming famous his personal life was beset by tragedy and scandal. On July 9, 1917 his wife died suddenly of a heart attack after dinner at a Santa Monica restaurant near their home. Walking to a nearby store to buy a mourning dress, his 16-year-old daughter Una was hit by a car a seriously injured. At a September 12th party given for Artcraft Studio publicity man Pete Schmid, Campbell met Pearl Gilman, a diminutive vaudeville comedienne with a family reputation for gold-digging. She had been married to candy heir Charles W. Alisky in 1912, and a few years later divorced and married another wealthy man, Theodore Arnreiter. Her sister Mabelle was married to elderly steel magnate William E. Corey, the owner of U.S. Steel. Just five days after they met, Campbell and Gilman Alisky-Arnreiter were married at the home of Elaine Hardy at 824 5th Street in Santa Monica. His daughter Una, still recuperating at a friend's home in Santa Monica canyon, was not told of the wedding for several weeks. Less than two months after marrying the gentle giant, Gilman Alisky-Arnreiter sued him for divorce. He moved out of the Santa Monica bungalow and into the Los Angeles Athletic Club, taking a room next to his best friend Chaplin. A month later later on December 20, Campbell attended a Christmas party at the Vernon Country Club, and drove back to L.A. in a drunken stupor. Approaching the intersection of Wilshire Blvd. and Vermont Ave. at over 60 m.p.h., he lost control of his car, crossed Wilshire and hit another car head-on. He was killed instantly, his massive body locked in the crumpled wreckage for over five hours. Heartbreak never left Campbell, even in death. After his remains were cremated, his ashes were sent to the Rosedale Cemetery, where they remained for six months while the cemetery waited in vain for someone to pay for his funeral. When the bill remained unpaid, the urn was returned to the Handley Mortuary, where it sat unnoticed in a closet from 1917 until late 1938. When the mortuary closed the urn was sent back to Rosedale, where it sat in another closet for still another 13 years. In 1952 a kindhearted office worker arranged for Campbell's remains to finally be buried. But, unfortunately, he forgot to record exactly where Campbell was buried, so the burly Scotsman is lost among the markers and statues in the quiet cemetery. In conjunction with a Scottish film about Campbell's life, a memorial plaque was laid in 1996. Campbell's death had a profound effect on Chaplin, and a quieter effect on movie history. After that time, Chaplin's movies lost some of their comic mystery; that certain something that his Mutual films had but subsequent films did not. His later works were much more self-centered and missing the comic give-and-take of his work with Campbell. There's no telling how famous Eric Campbell would have become, or what different films Chaplin may have done with his burly best friend.
