Shortly after his birth the family moved to Leadville, Colorado where Samuel made money in the mining boom there.
Instead of establishing a practice, Campbell went into journalism, working for the New York Herald, covering the Spanish–American War, and later becoming the assistant city desk editor.
His output included at least 14 films between 1920 and 1925, including Oh, Lady, Lady (1920), starring Bebe Daniels in a version of a popular play by P. G. Wodehouse, An Amateur Devil (1920), Burglar Proof (1920), She Couldn't Help It (1920), First Love (1921), The Speed Girl (1921), Two Weeks with Pay (1921), The March Hare (1921), Ducks and Drakes (1921), One Wild Week (1921), Through a Glass Window (1922), Midnight (1922), The Exciters (1923), and Wandering Fires (1925).
Campbell's enthusiastic enforcement efforts, including a massive series of nightclub raids in New York City while New York state's "wet" governor, Al Smith, was being nominated at the Democratic national convention,[5] were politically embarrassing to Republican party leaders.
Campbell accused Assistant Treasury Secretary Seymour Lowman and others of asking him to reduce Prohibition enforcement in New York City for political reasons, publishing a series of articles in the New York World about the matter and later complaining directly to President Hoover about Lowman's conduct.