Elmer Simms Campbell
American, 1906 – 1971
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Elmer Simms Campbell was an American commercial artist best known as the cartoonist who signed his work, E. Simms Campbell. The first African-American cartoonist published in nationally distributed, slick magazines, he created Esky, the familiar pop-eyed mascot of Esquire.
Campbell was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of educators, Elizabeth Simms Campbell and Elmer Campbell. His father was the assistant principal of Summer High School in St. Louis and had been a track and football star at Howard University. His father died when Campbell was four years old.
With his mother, he moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she attended the University of Chicago. Campbell graduated from that city's Englewood Technical Prep Academy. There he was the cartoonist for the high school's weekly newspaper, which was edited by future International News Service general manager, Seymour Berkson. He then enrolled in the University of Chicago. After one year, Campbell left the University of Chicago and transferred to and received his degree from the Chicago Art Institute.
During a job as a railroad dining-car waiter, Campbell sometimes drew caricatures of the train passengers, and one of those, impressed by Campbell's talent, gave him a job in a St. Louis art studio, Triad Studios.
He spent two years at Triad Studios before moving to New York City in 1929. A month afterward, he found work with the small advertising firm, Munig Studios, and began taking classes at the National Academy of Design. During this time, he contributed to various magazines, notably Life, & Judge.
Following the suggestion of cartoonist Russell Patterson to focus on good girl art, Campbell created his "Harem Girls", a series of watercolor cartoons that attracted attention in the first issue of Esquire, debuting in 1933. Campbell's artwork was in almost every issue of Esquire from 1933 to 1958 and he was the creator of its continuing mascot, the cartoon character in a silk top hat.
He also contributed to The Chicagoan, Cosmopolitan, Ebony, The New Yorker, Playboy, Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, Pictorial Review, and Redbook.
His commercial artwork for advertising included illustrations for Barbasol, Springmaid, and Hart Schaffner & Marx.
Campbell also was the author of a chapter on blues music in the 1939 book Jazzmen, a seminal study of jazz's history and development.
Campbell died in White Plains, New York, in 1971.