great tribute Scott
Happy graduation Eric.. sounds like her had some Fun experience and
helped keep the motion picture indistry
God bless Eric
all the best to Friends and family
Tom
Hollywood dream factory®\
since 1977
On 2024-07-10 17:06, Scott Burns wrote:
I'm posting this for those of you who may have encountered Eric
Spilker, the ultimate film fan, at the Columbus Cinevent. He was a
regular for many years and that's where I became acquainted with him.
Eric was one of a kind, as his obituary posted below, clearly shows.
His sense of humor was unusual--eating in a restaurant with Eric was
always memorable as he often would place a plastic cockroach on his
dinner plate to harass the staff. Eric knew a lot of golden age
celebrities and I have him to thank for my "Wizard of Oz" 8X10
autographed by the Wicked Witch herself, Margaret Hamilton. I always
found it interesting that Eric wrote many of the movie plot
descriptions used in TV Guide magazine. He became a film distributor
in 1971 when he purchased the rights to "The Gang's All Here" from
20th Century Fox and had dazzling new technicolor prints
struck--helping to revive public interest in classic Hollywood films,
long before AMC or TCM would enter the scene. Eric loved the old
neighborhood movie houses around Columbus, so it wasn't surprising
that in the early 1980's he spearheaded an effort to restore and
reopen the suburban Arlington Theatre. The theatre opened in 1935 but
closed in 1950. The effort sadly did not succeed. Declining health
kept Eric from travelling back to Ohio for many years, so I lost touch
with him. But I will always remember him….and will miss him greatly.
Scott
MoPo List Owner
Eric Spilker 1939-2024
Eric James Spilker, 84, film distributor and writer, passed away in
Manhattan July 6, 2024. He is preceded in death by his parents,
Francis Spilker and Bernice Buege Spilker of Upper Arlington, Ohio,
and his brother, Allan J. Spilker of Grove City, Ohio. A number of
Buege cousins in Ohio survive. There will be no services.
Fascinated with movies from an early age, Eric was born August 13,
1939, in Toledo, Ohio, moved to Columbus in 1941, and graduated from
suburban Upper Arlington High School in 1957 along with friend Jack
Nicklaus. As a child he took buses by himself all over Columbus to see
movies in small neighborhood theaters, a passion he never lost. He
also developed a habit of never passing a dog on the street without
petting it: no dog in New York went unpetted. And few farmers markets
went unvisited. As a young man he worked for the Columbus Dept. of
Water, and served in the Army. Following a stint as a floor director
for WLW-C (now NBC4) and WBNS-TV in the early 1960s, he moved to New
York, writing for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, ASCAP and TV
Guide, where he crafted capsule film reviews. He worked a year at the
1964 NY World's Fair, then returned to Columbus and graduated from The
Ohio State University in 1968 with a B.A. in Journalism and a member
of Kappa Sigma fraternity.
Returning again to New York, he was a reporter for Variety, a
researcher at Photofest photo agency, a witness to the Stonewall riot,
and as a continuing education teacher at Marymount Manhattan College,
he brought Celeste Holm, Otto Preminger, Margaret Hamilton and others
to speak to his classes.
His life changed In 1971 when he purchased the distribution rights for
the 20th Century Fox film, Busby Berkeley's "The Gang's All Here,"
(1943) famous for its psychedelic Technicolor and iconic appearance by
Carmen Miranda. After a clip featured on the Johnny Carson show piqued
public interest in the film, Eric took it on the road. He was its sole
distributor for a number of years. He later licensed reissue rights to
ten more 20th Century-Fox classics, including "Laura" and "All About
Eve."
He remained self-employed as the Spilker Film Company, renting films
to museums and film festivals around the world. In 2019 he sold his
collection of 2,000 film titles in both 16 and 35mm to the Harvard
Film Archive. For many years he was the proud owner of Clark Gable's
personal print of "Gone With The Wind."
Eric counted stars of Hollywood's golden age among his friends,
including Carleton Carpenter, Gale Sondergaard, Piper Laurie, Robert
Osborne, and many more. Kitty Carlisle once tried to identify a film
industry person on CBS's "To Tell the Truth" quiz show by asking, "Do
you know who Eric Spilker is?" Besides his large film collection, he
was known for his encyclopedic knowledge of Hollywood films of the
1940s and '50s. He is cited in accounts of the history of Technicolor
and the history of film. His final credits ran on July 6, 2024.
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