He was born October 30, 1934, in London, England. After World War II, he moved to Canada and then to Long Beach with his mother and sister, where the siblings performed in USO shows. In 1946, he made his first movie, Bedlam starring Boris Karloff as an extra (as Bobby Camp) and continued in that vein until he played Thorpe, one of Dean Stockwell's classmates in Kim (1950).
After Kim he received some more slightly prominent parts in films: a messenger boy in Titanic (1953); and a mailroom attendant in Executive Suite (1954), but overall, Camp was never a steadily working child actor.
Camp relocated to Chicago in the late '50s and rediscovered his childhood passion - music. He began playing in small clubs around the Chicago area, and he struck oil when he partnered with a New York based folk artist, Bob Gibson in 1961. The pair worked in clubs all over the midwest and they soon became known for their tight vocal harmonies and Gibson's 12-string guitar style. Late in 1961, they recorded an album - Gibson and Camp at the Gate of Horn, the Gate of Horn being the most renowned music venue in Chicago for the burgeoning folk scene. The record may have aged a bit over the years, but it is admired as an important progress in folk music by most scholars, particularly as a missing link between the classic era of Woody Guthrie and the modern singer-songwriter genre populated by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.
Gibson and Camp would split within two years, and after recording some albums as a solo artist and a brief stint with Chicago's famed Second City improvisational comedy troupe, Camp struck out on his own to work as an actor in Los Angeles. His changed his name to Hamilton from Bob, and despite his lack of vertical presence (he stood only 5-foot-2), his boundless energy and quick wit made him handy to guest star in a string of familiar sitcoms of the late '60s: The Monkees, Bewitched, and Love, American Style. By the '70s there was no stopping him as he appeared on virtually every popular comedy of the day: The Mary Tyler Moore Show, M*A*S*H, Laverne & Shirley, Three's Company, and WKRP in Cincinnati.
Eventually, Camp's film roles improved too, and he did his best film work in the latter stages of his career: Blake Edward's undisciplined but still funny S.O.B. (1981); Paul Bartel's glorious cult comedy Eating Raoul (1982); and Clint Eastwood's jazz biopic on Charlie Parker Bird (1988). Among his recent work was a guest spot last season as a carpenter on Desperate Housewives, and his recent completion of a Las Vegas based comedy Hard Four which is currently in post-production. Camp is survived by six children and thirteen grandchildren.
by Michael T. Toole
