A magazine cartoonist and illustrator whose clients included Esquire, New Yorker, Collier's, Saturday Evening Post and Judge, Elmer Simms Campbell was born in St. Louis, Missouri, studied in Chicago at the Art Institute, and in New York at the Art Students League. From 1957 to 1970, he lived in Neerach, Switzerland. He was married to Vivian Campbell.

His exhibition career began in Minneapolis when he was eighteen, and five years later the Harmon Foundation in New York exhibited his work.

For Esquire magazine, where in 1933 he began regular contributions including cover illustration, he created the cartoon character, Esky, "the white-mustached, pop-eyed, bulbous-nosed connoisseu...