One person towers ahead of other bad guys. Standing at 6’5, and just under 300 pounds, it’s Eric Campbell.
He worked with Chaplin back in the Fred Karno days in England, and later found his way to America. Chaplin brought him into his cast at Mutual, and they worked on 11 of Chaplin’s 12 Mutual films from The Floorwalker in 1916 to The Adventurer in 1917. His last appearance was as a golfer in the unreleased How to Make Movies.
He was great as the big bully, his Goliath to Charlie’s David. And those make-uped eyebrows! He was a bit of a cartoonish bad guy, but he was fantastic at it. Sadly he died young in 1917 in a car accident.
