Chaplin's Goliath: In Search of Scotland's Forgotten Star [DVD] [1996] [US Import] [NTSC]

"Chaplin's Goliath" uses rare footage and historical documents, along with interviews with Campbell's granddaughter and such Chaplin experts as biographer David Robinson, to tell the actor's story from his roots in Scotland to his long delayed burial in a Hollywood cemetery. Indeed, the documentary essentially begins and acts with the placing of plaques commemorating Campbell in those two locations. The result is not only a compilation of pretty much everything that is known about Eric Campbell, but a look at what comedy was like during the silent film era, especially when Chaplin had become the most famous face on the planet. There are film clips of music hall comedians of the period and not only of some of the comedians who impersonated Chaplin (e.g., Billy West), but poignant screen tests of Chaplin trying to find a replacement for Campbell and no less a film icon than Oliver Hardy doing an impersonation of Campbell is a silent comedy.

Of course, there are also clips of Campbell's best scenes with Chaplin from "The Immigrant," "Easy Street," and other Mutual comedies. Like "Unknown Chaplin," MacDonald takes advantage of outtakes that survive from those films to show how Campbell fit into Chaplin's creative process. The prime example is that Campbell was not originally cast as the waiter in "The Immigrant," and so we get to see before and after footage as Chaplin tries to make a scene work and gets what he wants once Campbell becomes part of the comedic equation. If watching this documentary makes you want to check out both the original Mutual comedies and the three-part documentary looking at the painstaking creative process by which Chaplin created his films then you should go with the impulse, especially if for some strange reason you are interested in "Chaplin's Goliath" having never seen them in the first place.

The documentary also tells about Campbell's personal life, which included lying about his age to get married, the sudden death of his first wife, and the rather strange marriage and divorce that followed. Unfortunately Campbell's life had become unstable at the point when he was killed and while we would like to believe that he would have gone on to a long and successful film career, it is just as likely that he was in the process of self-destructing and that the accident ended what his behavior was already destroying. This is especially true when you get to the story of what happened to Campbell's ashes, which provides his life store with a final tragic touch as one of the larger real-life Pagliacci's of the silent comedy era.