Joe Camp
Matthew Simmons/Getty Photographs
Joe Camp, the author, director and producer who taught that outdated canine Hollywood new tips about animal motion pictures because the artistic power behind the 1974 franchise-spawning Benji, has died. He was 84.
Camp died Friday morning at his residence in Bell Buckle, Tennessee, following a protracted sickness, his son, filmmaker Brandon Camp, informed The Hollywood Reporter.
Camp additionally directed and co-wrote the comedies Hawmps! (1976), in regards to the U.S. Cavalry changing horses with camels within the 1850s, and The Double McGuffin (1979), which revolved round children making an attempt to thwart a terrorist (Ernest Borgnine) and featured a number of in-jokes about Hitchcock motion pictures.
Apart from serving as an additional on the Robert Mitchum-starring Dwelling From the Hill (1960), Camp had no Hollywood expertise when he raised about $500,000 to make Benji, a narrative a few stray blended breed — not a flowery pure breed like Lassie! — who helps rescue two children from kidnappers.
Essential to the film’s success, he managed to get Higgins, who had appeared for years hanging across the Shady Relaxation Resort on the CBS comedy Petticoat Junction, to return out of retirement to play the title character.
Camp accomplished his movie, then confirmed it to each studio in Hollywood, and each single one needed nothing to do with it. “I used to be actually within the dumps, I used to be down low,” he recalled in a 2023 interview. “What are we going to do? We will throw it within the trash, or we will determine it out.”
He shaped Dallas-based Mulberry Sq. Releasing to distribute the function independently in October 1974, and it wound up grossing almost $40 million ($250 million in at present’s {dollars}), delighting audiences properly into the subsequent summer time.
Joe Camp with Higgins, star of 1974’s Benji
Courtesy Everett Assortment
Benji was adopted by motion pictures that includes the scruffy canine in 1977, 1980 — counting Oh! Heavenly Canine, starring Chevy Chase as a detective reincarnated as a pooch — 1987 and 2004; two telefilms that aired in 1978 and others that aired in 1980 and 1981; and the 1983 CBS children collection Benji, Zax & the Alien Prince. (More often than not, Benji was performed by Higgins’ daughter, Benjean.)
By one estimation, the movies have grossed about $600 million if adjusted for inflation, making Camp probably the most profitable indie filmmakers of all time.
He then contributed to the 2018 Benji reboot at Netflix that was directed by his son Brandon Camp and produced by Jason Blum.
Joseph Shelton Camp Jr. was born in St. Louis on April 20, 1939. His dad’s job took him and his household to stay in locations together with Little Rock, Arkansas; El Segundo; Jackson, Mississippi; and Memphis, Tennessee, the place he and his pals made motion pictures whereas attending East Excessive Faculty.
On the College of Mississippi, Camp bought to be an additional when MGM got here to Oxford to movie elements of Dwelling From the Hill, directed by Vincente Minnelli. Nonetheless, his scenes — all with Yvette Mimieux — have been reduce. She’s not within the film, both.
Camp needed to switch to UCLA movie faculty after his sophomore 12 months however was rejected, so he completed up at Mississippi, graduating in 1961 with a level in promoting and advertising. He then took a job with McCann Erickson, first in Houston after which Dallas.
When Camp and his first spouse, Carolyn, noticed a clip from the animated Disney basic Girl and the Tramp (1955) on TV, he requested her, “Do you assume it might be attainable to try this sort of a film with an actual canine? We got here to the conclusion that it wouldn’t be attainable, as a result of you inform a narrative with out phrases?”
However after she retired for the evening, Camp stayed up with Benji, their Yorkshire terrier, and “bought intrigued with watching his expressions on issues … I bought down on the ground in a nook all huddled up and acted afraid, and the canine’s me like, ‘Have you ever misplaced your thoughts?’ You would learn that in his face. I went to mattress realizing canine do discuss.”
The subsequent morning, Camp wrote the whole remedy for Benji and mentioned it made his spouse cry when he learn it to her. “We bought it by depicting what the animal was feeling, not what the animal was doing,” he defined.
Camp then found that considered one of his faculty classmates, Tom Lester, was starring on CBS’ Inexperienced Acres, and the actor helped him discover contacts in Hollywood.
Benji’s theme, “I Really feel Love,” recorded by Charlie Wealthy, acquired an Academy Award nomination for greatest authentic track however misplaced out on Oscar evening to “We Could By no means Love Like This Once more,” sung by Maureen McGovern for The Towering Inferno.
Higgins additionally was nominated — for a PATSY Award for greatest animal efficiency of the 12 months in a function. Alas, he misplaced as properly, to the cat from Harry and Tonto.
Camp did win an Emmy for excellent youngsters’s program for Benji at Work. He additionally wrote a number of Benji-related books and different books about horses, together with the well-regarded The Soul of a Horse: Life Classes From the Herd, first revealed in 2008.
Survivors additionally embody his second spouse, Kathleen, an legal professional, photographer and instructor (they married in 2001); son Joe Camp III, an assistant director; and step-children David, Dylan and Allegra. He was married to Carolyn from 1960 till her loss of life from a coronary heart dysfunction in 1997 at age 58.
Ryan Gajewski contributed to this report.
Joe Camp with Benjean on the set of 1987’s Benji the Hunted
Walt Disney Co. / Courtesy Everett Assortment