Oscar Profile #316: Mercedes McCambridge

Born March 16, 1916 in Juliet, Illinois, Mercedes McCambridge was the daughter of an Irish-American farmer and his wife, who was of Irish, English and German extraction. Educated in Catholic schools, she graduated from Mundelein University in Chicago before embarking on a career as an actress. Called by Orson Welles “the greatest living radio actress”, her radio career began in the 1930s and continued through the 1940s.

McCambridge married her first husband, William Fifield, in 1939. Their son, John Lawrence Fifield was born in December, 1941. The couple divorced in 1946, the year after McCambridge made her Broadway debut in A Place of Our Own.

The actress made her both her TV debut in the first season of the soap opera, One Man’s Family and her film debut in All the King’s Men in 1949. She promptly won a Golden Globe Award and then a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the latter. Later in 1950 she married second husband, TV actor/producer/director, Fletcher Markle. Her son John would later take Markle’s name.

On screen in undistinguished roles in 1951’s Inside Straight, The Scarf and Lightning Strikes Twice, McCambridge augmented her film roles with TV work. Her best screen roles in the 1950s were in Johnny Guitar and Giant for which she received a second Oscar nomination. She also had showy supporting roles in A Farewell to Arms, Touch of Evil and Suddenly, Last Summer. Her only 1960s films of note came early in the decade with Cimarron and Angel Baby. Her marriage to Markle ended in 1962.

Having battled alcoholism for much of her adult life, McCambridge finally achieved sobriety in 1969 after years of trying with Alcoholics Anonymous. In 1973 she became known to a new generation of film-goers as the voice of the devil in The Exorcist. In mid-decade she took a job at a Pennsylvania rehabilitation facility while writing her autobiography, published in 1981.

McCambridge made headlines in 1987 when her son John, then a disgraced futures trader, murdered his wife and daughters, aged 13 and 9, and then killed himself. He had been caught charging his stock losses to his employer and depositing his gains in a trust account in the actress’s name through his power of attorney. His employers brought a $5 million lawsuit against his estate and McCambridge. She was later acquitted of any wrongdoing.

Although she still had a few TV performances yet to give, McCambridge was to make only three more films, 1977’s Thieves, 1979’s The Concorde…Airport ‘79 and 1983’s Echoes. Her last role was as a nun in a 1988 episode of TV’s Cagney & Lacy.

Mercedes McCambridge died on March 2, 2004, exactly two weeks before her 88th birthday.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

ALL THE KING’S MEN, directed by Robert Rossen (1949)

Robert Penn Warren’s Pultizer Prize-winning novel was based on the life of Huey Long, the flamboyant Governor and U.S. Senator who was assassinated in 1935. The demagogue in the film is called Willie Stark. He’s played by Broderick Crawford who won an Oscar for his performance as did McCambridge as his sharp-tongued assistant, and the film itself. Fifth billed McCambridge, in her very first film, is a revelation as a hard-as-nails political operative. With only a handful of scenes she easily steals the film from Crawford, John Ireland, Joanne Dru, John Derek and Anne Seymour.

JOHNNY GUITAR, directed by Nicholas Ray (1954)

McCambridge and star Joan Crawford hated one another. Their on-screen shouting matches were nothing compared to their off-screen fireworks. At one point after a day’s shoot, Crawford is alleged to have pickup up all McCambridge’s costumes in a drunken rage and scattered them along the Arizona highway outside of picturesque Sedona where the film was being made. The crew had to pick them up. The rage between the two completely overwhelms the film and the rest of the cast that included Sterling Hayden in the title role, Scott Brady as the man the two are fighting over, Ward Bond, Ben Cooper, Ernest Borgine and John Carradine.

GIANT, directed by George Stevens (1956)

Edna Ferber’s sprawling multi-generational novel formed the basis of Stevens’ epic film for which he won an Oscar for his direction, the film itself receiving a total of 13 nominations including both Rock Hudson and James Dean for Best Actor and McCambridge for Best Supporting Actress, largely because of her agonizing death scene. Hers is, however, just one of many memorable performances in the film which also features fine work from not only Hudson and Dean, but Elizabeth Taylor, Carroll Baker, Dennis Hopper, Sal Mineo, Jane Withers, Chill Wills and Earl Holliman as well.

ANGEL BABY, directed by Paul Wendkos (1961)

Filmed in 1960, but held back from release until May, 1961 to avoid conflicting box office with United Artists’ similarly themedElmer Gantry, this Allied Artists release was also based on a novel about phony evangelists. The title character is played by Salome Jens who is “cured” by preacher George Hamilton and becomes an evangelist herself. McCambridge is Hamilton’s wife, a fellow evangelist, who is determined to expose Jens, who is assisted in her phony cures by Joan Blondell and Henry Jones. It all ends in flames as Jens redeems herself by really curing a crippled boy. McCambridge’s over-the-top performance is the standout.

THE EXORCIST, directed by William Friedkin (1973)

Friedkin promised McCambridge screen credit for voicing the devil, but reneged on his promise forcing her to file a grievance with the Screen Actors Guild who ruled in her favor, forcing a reissued print in which her appears in the credits. Initial audiences, unaware of McCambridge’s participation, were led to believe that it was fourteen-year-old Linda Blair’s voice that was coming out of her body voicing all those obscenities that were delivered with such ferociousness by McCambridge. The voice of “the greatest living radio actress” as Orson Welles called her, combines with Blair’s great physical performance to deliver a knockout.