The Curious Career of Mercedes McCambridge

The story goes that attending an open audition for the part of Sadie in All the King's Men (1949), Mercedes McCambridge got angry. Whilst waiting for her chance, she grew appalled with the treatment of the candidates being herded in and out of the office. She went in to meet the director furious and gave Robert Rossen a piece of her mind. She got the part, there and then, by unintentionally giving Rossen the rough edges and passion of the Sadie he wanted. For that role, her first feature film role, she went on to win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

Another example of her off-beat, abrasive nature was on the set of Johnny Guitar (1954). There were tensions between her and her female co-star, Joan Crawford, who she described as:

"a mean, tipsy, powerful, rotten-egg lady."

This comment was made whilst McCambridge was struggling with her own battle with alcohol.

Mercedes was by all accounts, even by those who admired her, a difficult woman.

As an aspiring 1940s screen writer, I would struggle to write Mercedes’ story for the screen. I love a difficult woman. I love a strong woman with guts. But it is hard to get to the core of Mercedes.

Mercedes writes in her autobiography.

“I am by nature a liar and some of the things I remember didn’t happen that way at all, but I keep thinking that out of these embellished ruminations will come emotional stability and then I will be able to cope with any situation on a natural level.”

This flair for the dramatic probably came from her mother who gave her the very Spanish sounding names – “Carlotta Mercedes” – despite being definitely Irish from all sides of her family. Mercedes admitted that because of her name, she actually invented a story about having a Spanish grandmother. In studio publicity she would refer to her “Hispanic background.”

But maybe as a screenwriter, I could give her a redemptive arc.

I would set her up as an impetuous, impulsive woman talented, but with an alcohol problem.

Let's start with her days as a radio actress trying to make her way in Hollywood, married with a young son. Looks wholesome, but there's an edge, something isn’t right. Her first marriage ended in divorce in 1946. She wrote:

“When war was declared he was a conscientious objector. He went away, came back some two or three years later and we were not the same people at all. It was tragic.”

There is an aching in those words, alongside a glib dismissal of her plight.

She keeps trying to make it work, starring in radio plays in between stage flops. Then in 1947 she packs up everything in two suitcases and with her young son goes on a tour of the Caribbean and Europe.

She wrote of this time:

I'm glad I am a woman who once danced naked in the Mediterranean Sea at midnight.

She comes back to win her Oscar, but struggles to find a place in Hollywood. She has a reputation for being difficult, impulsive, argumentative. She makes ends meet by radio acting.

She finds love again. Her second husband, Fletcher Markle adopts her son. He may also be a part of the problems on the set of Johnny Guitar having also once dated Joan Crawford.

Between 1951 and 1954 Mercedes had two still births.

And something tips her from social drinker to problematic drinker.

Merecedes and Fletcher divorce in 1961. She writes:

My second marriage had a lot to do with alcohol.

In a redemptive arc story she has to hit rock bottom. And that came in 1963. Her son, now 21, was beaten by a gang of muggers and suffered a skull fracture. Just as he recovered from this, he was in a car accident, fracturing his skull again. The day of the crash, Mercedes broke her foot and two fingers while rehearsing for a stage play. When she left the hospital, she had been warned that her son was unlikely to recover. She was in a state of shock, expecting her son to die, and went home to attempt suicide.

Both her and her son pulled through. She found success on Broadway in Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf? A contemporary review says:

“Miss McCambridge brings to her role a good range of emotional response, plus a deadly effective way of holding herself in check for a few seconds, before triggering her anger. It’s like the good backswing of a golf club.”

Following advice from a doctor she checked herself into a rehabilitation centre in Peru and got herself sober.

Now for the big finale.

In 1969 she testified before the Senate Sub-Committee on Alcoholism and Narcotics. Senator Harold Hughes wanted a familiar face to bring attention to the welfare needs of addicts and to move the conversation away from their criminalisation. He struggled to find anyone who would brave the stand and admit their own failings. But Mercedes rose to the challenge, knowing it would cost her work and opportunities.

She stood and said:

It has never been more remarkable to me than it is at this moment when I am aware that perhaps my own survival, when so many have died, is for this purpose, so that I can sit with you at this level with the utmost respect and talk to you about this matter of life or death – my life or my death. As I sit here, scores of women like me are being arranged on slabs in morgues throughout this country with tickets tied to their toes that read “acute alcoholism,” or if they have been protected as I was, those tags may read “liver ailment,” “pneumonia,” “chronic bronchitis,” “massive haemorrhage,” but the mother of all of those veiled, protective tickets may well be alcoholism, pure and simple.”

What a speech! Cut!

And then just before the credits roll, there will be an on-screen announcement that the actress gave up work to run the Livengrin Foundation, an organisation dedicated to alcoholic rehabilitation.

What a feel good movie, I’ve just written. Barely a dry eye in the house.

Except this is not the full story and glosses over the particular difficulties and talents of Mercedes.

Perhaps instead I should aim for a flawed genius type script. Like Amadeus, or A Beautiful Mind where we forgive the character foibles because of their innate talent.

And Mercedes was a rare talent. She had a voice.

If I had only ever read about Mercedes, I would know that her voice was her fortune.

Hagen and Warner say that she:

“used consonants like Cagney used bullets”.

Orson Welles described her as:

“the world’s greatest living radio actress.”

I first heard her voice a few weeks ago when I went to see Johnny Guitar (1954) in which she plays Emma. Emma is bad, evil. Not sultry, sexily bad – just unimaginative, vengeful, rotten. Her voice has a slight smoker’s rasp. She spits her words out with malice. There is no attempt to seduce.

I’ve since seen her in All the Kings Men (1949). Her film debut that earned that Oscar and again there is a snarl to the way she delivers lines.

What Johnny Guitar and All the Kings Men have in common is that Mercedes McCambridge is surrounded by men. She dominates traditionally male spaces, like a Western desert or a news room. And her strong voice means she can hold her own.

Also, if I concentrate on voice I can write a script that includes probably her most notorious role – the voice of the demon in The Exorcist (1973). It is spooky season after all. Now would be a good time to release a film about Mercedes McCambridge – tortured genius and satanic possession.

When Mercedes took on the role in The Exorcist she was promised a screen credit. But at the first preview, she was incensed to see her name missing as the credits rolled. The argument was made that the demon voice was a sound effect that was edited and manipulated rather than a credited acting role. And yet to provide that ‘effect’ McCambridge had put herself through a tortuous process. She gargled raw eggs, chain-smoked and was physically restrained, tied to a chair, to get to the desperation of a voice that has no freedom. She filled her mouth with cornflakes so that the cackle of obscenities sounded like vomit. Most importantly and, potentially damaging, she broke her sobriety, knocking back bourbon to give her voice a rough edge.

That difficult woman organised an interview with the New York Times to express her anger at the omission of her name. The producers had no choice but to add a credit to the final print. As a result of her anger and stubborness, her contribution to the Exorcist is now more widely known than if it had just been acknowledged in the first place.

Cut to her leaving the premier, with a knowing smile and wink to the camera.

That’s a wrap!

But actually as it is October and Halloween is just around the corner. Maybe I should write her story as a horror.

The problem here is I don’t have the stomach for it. I don’t feel right about scaring my audience with real life details of an horrendous crime.

In November 1987 a failed futures trader, found guilty of embezzlement and released from his job, murdered his wife Christine and their two daughters, Amy (13), Suzanne (9). All of the dead were found to have a sedative in their bloodstream. He had shot them whilst wearing a Halloween mask. Nightmare on Elm Street was in the VCR. After the killing spree, the murderer called a friend to get the police to his house. Then he turned two guns on himself. Next to his body was a long letter that the murderer had written to his mother that called her an absent, inattentive parent. He took responsibility for the crimes, whilst also laying them at her door.

His mother was Mercedes McCambridge.

I have read many Domestic Homicide Reviews, including those where the perpetrator has killed himself. The obliteration of a family follows a pattern of a controlling, high-achieving man facing a social or financial fall. What no Domestic Homicide Review can uncover is what life was really like for the victims of such crimes. They have no voice. Instead we hear:

“He seemed so nice.”

“He was a dedicated family man.”

“We had no idea.”

“They kept themselves to themselves.”

“He was a little odd, but no-one suspected…”

Mercedes McCambridge never commented publicly on the deaths of her son, daughter-in-law and granddaughters.

Her distinctive voice fell silent.

I baulked at writing those details.

All three films could be made: the redemptive arc of an alcoholic, the tortured genius who gains their rightful recognition, the horror story. But none of them would capture the whole weird, flawed majesty of Mercedes, her talent, her troubles, her triumphs and trauma.

I am not sure I would have liked to meet her, but I admire the career of Mercedes McCambridge. It has a dogged determination to it. It can’t be easily squeezed into a genre or simple narrative. It is not top-line stardom, but the life of someone who just kept going.

Mercedes continued to act on stage, radio and small screen, until declining health forced her into retirement. She died of natural causes, just a few days short of her 88th birthday.

If you've enjoyed what you have read, consider subscribing to my writing on Vocal. If you'd like to support my writing, you can do so by a regular subscription or leaving a one-time tip. Thank you.