Background
Mercedes McCambridge was born on 16 March 1918 in Joliet, Illinois, United States.
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Mercedes McCambridge was born on 16 March 1918 in Joliet, Illinois, United States.
Graduated from Mundelein College in Chicago.
She had worked in theatre and radio before she made her debut—flat-out brilliant—as the political manager in All the King’s Men (49, Robert Rossen), for which she won the supporting actress Oscar. Thereafter, she did Inside Straight (51, Gerald Mayer); Lightning Strikes Twice (51, King Vidor); The Scarf (51, E. A. Dupont); riveting in Johnny Guitar (54, Ray); nominated again and bv far the most Texan figure in Giant (56, George Stevens); the hospital matron in A Farewell to Arms (57, Charles Vidor); in black leather, so scary we’re still catching up with the fear, in Touch of Evil (58, Orson Welles—one of her greatest admirers); Suddenly Last Summer (59, Joseph L. Mankiewicz); Cimarron (60, Anthony Mann); magnificent in Angel Baby (61, Paul Wendkos); in the womens-prison picture 99 Women (69, Jess Franco); the uncredited voice of Satan coming up out of Regan in The Exorcist (73, William Friedkin); Like a Crow on a June Bug (72, Lawrence Dobkin); Thieves (77, John Berry); a Russian gymnastics coach in Concorde: Airport 79 (79, David Lowell Rich); Echoes (83, Arthur Allan Seidelman).
She is a great, uncommon actress who never possessed a trace of conventional loveliness. Of course, in certain dark moods she could seem beautiful—but beauty is another matter next to that serene, alluring, unthreatening look that was essential when McCambridge was a young woman. Add to that her major bout with alcoholism in the 1960s and her foundation of the Livengrin organization as a means of help for drunks. But then, in the late eighties, her son (by second husband Fletcher Markle) shot his wife, their two daughters, and then himself.
Of course, these disasters came after the small body of her film work. Which leaves one helpless with that retrospective understanding—the way of seeing hints of future agony in her fierce, twisted, desperate face.
