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Alumni Interview — January/February 2005

By Amy F. Reiter

Erickson

If the life of C.O. "Doc" Erickson '43 ACES were a movie, critics might call it a fantasy.

Picture it: Boy grows up in rural Midwest (complete with one-room schoolhouse), studies agriculture at the University of Illinois, moves to California to see the ocean and ends up a big-time Hollywood producer, working on landmark films like "Rear Window," "Blade Runner" and "Chinatown."

Yeah, right.

Well, yeah. That is right.

"When you think of what the Hollywood version of a Hollywood producer is, he doesn't fit it at all," said Pat Gill, a UI professor in media studies, calling Erickson "clearly dedicated and hardworking and modest."

And now the 81-year-old Erickson, who hasn't returned to campus in 61 years, sits in the Illini Union, remarking on how vivid his memories are of the building, how little it has changed. But while the Union may remain static in Erickson's mind, his life certainly has had an overflow of momentum.

It's a life that has been filled with unlikely-but-true stories, a life lived large but nonetheless behind the scenes, and a life that has helped shape the face of cinema. Erickson's films have arguably formed the pinnacle of a crisscross of genres: from horror to comedy, romance to crime thriller, "55 Days in Peking" in 1963 to "Groundhog Day" 30 years later.

It's a life Erickson will share with UI students, faculty and friends later this October day, when the UI College of Com-munications launches a pilot, "Media Studies Presents ...," for a potential WILL-TV show about media. Gill and communications research professor Andrea Press will put Erickson and his career center stage, an experience that may remind the veteran producer just how much has changed since his UI days 60-some years before.

Urbana Cowboy

Back then, Erickson was a green kid from Kankakee. In a country schoolhouse, his teacher had combined a couple of grades to keep young Clarence occupied. At 15, he graduated from Manteno High School to become the first one in the family to go to college and insists he never would have gone except his agriculture teacher helped him find an ag scholarship and hassled him until he agreed to go.

Erickson's first year at the University was rough. "I was very immature at that age — 15 — with no money and trying to make ends meet, raking leaves and washing windows," Erickson said. "After the first year, I didn't want to come back. It was just too hard making ends meet. But [the agriculture teacher] wouldn't hear of it. He forced me to come back."

Charles "Chuck" Erickson '49 ACES, MS '53 ACES, remembers his big brother differently, saying that in college Doc was mature beyond his years. "Certainly he knew a little bit about a lot of things," Chuck said.

"A very little," Erickson countered, joking.

After a year of nothing but schoolwork and work-work, Erickson started enjoying college life more when he was introduced by a housemate to another university pastime: extracurricular activities. It was also that year that a classmate decided Erickson was "not a Clarence" and christened him "Doc." It stuck.

Two years, one Homecoming co-chair position and one Senior Ball co-chair position later, the Delta Upsilon fraternity member graduated with an agricultural degree and no real goals except to find a job that didn't involve farming in Kankakee.

He was drafted in the Army only briefly before a heart murmur forced his discharge. Working in DeKalb for Inter-state Aircraft Engineering Co., Erickson met a colleague from California. When Erickson's project was canceled, that colleague "talked me into coming to California with him," Erickson said. "I thought, 'Great. It'd be nice to see the ocean.'

"We arrived there in June of '44, and all I did was look for work."

Welcome to Hollywood.

L. Brian Stauffer Photos