Nell Campbell was living in London, working as a tap dancing soda jerk and selling clothes at Kensington Market, when she met Jim Sharman. The producer and director of a new show called Rocky Horror was looking for another groupie to tend to Dr. Frank-N-Furter. After an impromptu audition, Campbell was booked as Columbia.
Campbell appears Friday, Oct. 11, at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts, hosting a Rocky Horror screening with live shadow cast performing in front of the film.
The musical was a hit when it premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in 1973. This Frankenstein story with a twist involves a newly engaged couple getting caught in a storm and finding themselves at a cross-dressing scientist’s doorstep. Dr. Frank-N-Furter is in the middle of making his “creature,” a bronzed body builder named Rocky.
“I was 19 when I started rehearsals and 20 while I was doing the show,” Campbell said in an interview for WGLT’s Sound Ideas. “I left one of the biggest hits in London to go busking in the south of France. So that just shows you where my ambitions lie. After seven months, I’d done the Time Warp enough times to last a lifetime—or so I thought.”
Campbell revived Columbia in a subsequent 1975 film, Rocky Horror Picture Show, the now cult classic film starring Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick.
“We made the movie in less than six weeks,” Campbell said. “Six or seven months later it opened. It was not received well at all, and it was shelved by 20th Century Fox. They gave it a very small release in England and America.”
Rocky Horror’s cult following stems from midnight screenings beginning in 1976. It was the brainchild of Tim Deegan, who worked in advertising at 20th Century Fox. By the next year, about 30 cinemas were hosting midnight screenings. The year after that, is was more than 200, moving Rocky Horror from a flop to a phenomenon.
Campbell said her career circled back to Rocky Horror in the past 10 years as the film approaches its 50th anniversary, but it has not been a constant presence. After completing the film, the singularly squeaky soprano landed a recording contract with A&M Records and released a few singles. She appeared in several heavy hitters on stage and screen, including the 1982 film version of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, The Killing Fields and the 2003 Broadway revival of Nine, and owned a nightclub and two restaurants in New York before returning to her home country, Australia, for the birth of her daughter. Most recently, she developed a solo show, All’s Nell that Ends Nell, and has reveled in opportunities to meet the Rocky Horror fandom.
“It has been an amazing experience for me,” Campbell said. “Unlike any other film, the Rocky Horror Picture Show resonates with people in such a personal and special way and has been so beneficial to the LGBTQIA+ community. It’s profoundly affected hundreds of thousands of people.”
Many Rocky Horror groupies fall under the LGBTQ umbrella, who filled midnight screenings as part of an underground—but not entirely secret—community. Fans of the film laud its queer representation, celebration of sexual liberation and overarching message of uninhibited self-discovery.
“It is so joyous for me to discover how much that film means to so many people,” Campbell said. “When the show opened in 1973, homosexuality had only been legal in England for seven years. And whenever it was represented in films, books, television and the press, it tended to be very sad, negative and depressing. The Rocky Horror Show was the total opposite.”
Five decades later, Campbell said the show’s impact has not wavered. She hears from young fans who've been inspired to come out or find community in Rocky Horror. Campbell’s appearance at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts coincidentally coincides with National Coming Out Day.
“It is as relevant as the day it first opened,” she said.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show with live shadow cast takes place at 7 p.m. Oct. 11 at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts, 600 N. East St., Bloomington. Tickets are $27-$65 at 309-434-2777 and artsblooming.org. V.I.P. tickets are $165 and include a meet and greet with Nell Campbell.
