William Campbell

William S. Campbell (June 12, 1884 – February 7, 1972) was a film director, scenarist and producer of Hollywood's silent and early talkies era, recognized for his skill in working with children and animals.

Biography Campbell, originally from Ashley, Pennsylvania, began his career working with animals when he ran away with a circus. His transition to the film business began when opened a movie theater, and then connected with Selig in 1908, for whom he wrote scenarios (today called screenplays). His animal picture work including "lions for Fox," It was inexplicably never released, at least under that title. Campbell also produced and directed the Snooky the Human-zee series of chimpanzee comedies for Chester Comedies. In 1922 it was reported that he had directed "nearly all the famous monkeys that have appeared in motion pictures the past six years." While filming a Snooky film, a string sextet performing Mendelssohn's Spring Song yielded a suitable chimpanzee facial expression suggestive of pathos; this was said to "prove that animals can be affected by melody as well as human beings."

Campbell also directed an Our Gang knock-off for Educational Pictures called Assorted Heroes.

In spring 1924 it was announced that Campbell would direct an adaptation of Tarzan and the Golden Lion. J.P. McGowan is the credited director of the 1927 release. Campbell sued Edgar Rice Burroughs over the screen credits for Tarzan and the Golden Lion in 1929, claiming he had contracted with Burroughs to market the book and sold the scenario to Film Booking Office.

In 1926, his wife apparently filed for divorce, charging desertion and claiming that he spent more time with animals than with her.

Perhaps most infamously, Campbell directed the 1930 exploitation picture Ingagi about ritual virgin sacrifice to a gorilla. The purported "documentary" element of Ingagi was promptly debunked and the American Society of Mammalogists "denounced" the picture. Ingagi was, if nothing else, a huge box office hit. In short order, RKO Pictures, Ingagi 's distributor, released Bring 'Em Back Alive (1931), another "documentary" wherein Frank Buck appears to capture a wild mature male orangutan, and then in 1933, the landmark giant-primate picture, King Kong.

Campbell died in Los Angeles in 1972.