McCambridge, (Carlotta) Mercedes (“Mercy”)

(b. 16 March 1916 in Joliet, Illinois; d. 2 March 2004 in La Jolla, California), radio, film, television, and stage actress with a distinctive, versatile vocal quality who became known for her portrayal of intense, often bitter and eccentric, emotionally charged women.

McCambridge was the only daughter among the three children born to flamboyant, high-spirited, devoutly Roman Catholic Irish-American parents, John Patrick McCambridge and Marie (Mahaffry) McCambridge. Although both came from farming families, McCambridge’s parents did not farm, and neighbors could only speculate about what they did to earn a living. When McCambridge was five years old, her family moved from Joliet to the South Side of Chicago. By that time McCambridge’s parents had decided to call her Mercedes McCambridge, which they felt was a more “poetically alliterative” name than Carlotta McCambridge. On the South Side, McCambridge attended Catholic primary schools and then Saint Thomas the Apostle High School, where she excelled in speech and drama. During McCambridge’s senior year at Saint Thomas the Apostle, George Cardinal Mundelein of Chicago attended a school play in which McCambridge appeared and was impressed with her performance. The cardinal encouraged her to audition for a drama scholarship to Mundelein College, a Catholic college for women on the North Side of Chicago. McCambridge won the scholarship and began her college studies the following year. She became the drama department’s most popular thespian. McCambridge later said that the excellent coaching and direction of her drama teacher, Mary Leola Oliver, BVM, of the Sisters of Charity, were primarily responsible for her ultimate success. McCambridge received her BA from Mundelein in 1937.

Performing as a soloist with Sister Mary Leola’s innovative verse-speaking choir, McCambridge displayed a commanding stage presence and distinctive vocal qualities that attracted the attention of the radio network executive Sid Strotz. He persuaded officials at the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) to sign the young student to an exclusive contract with NBC Blue Network. Over the next five years, in Chicago and then in Hollywood, California, McCambridge established herself as one of NBC’s most sought-after actresses. She was heard on popular radio shows such as The Guiding Light, Lights Out, The First Nighter, Lorenzo Jones, The Jack Benny Show, The Bob Hope Show, and I Love A Mystery.

In 1941, while working in Chicago, McCambridge fell in love with and married an aspiring young writer named William (“Bill”) Fifield. Because Fifield was the son of a Protestant minister, the marriage deeply upset McCambridge’s devoutly Roman Catholic mother. Soon after they were married, the newlyweds left Chicago and moved to Hollywood, where McCambridge continued to fulfill her NBC contract. On 24 December 1941, only hours after playing Tiny Tim in a Christmas skit on Rudy Vallee’s The Sealtest Show, McCambridge gave birth to a son.

The Fifields moved to New York City in the fall of 1942, when McCambridge was offered the title role in the NBC radio situation comedy series Abie’s Irish Rose. McCambridge completed her six-year contract with NBC in 1943 and decided to remain in New York City, where she easily established herself as one of radio’s busiest freelance actresses. For the next several years McCambridge was regularly featured on popular New York City–based radio programs such as Gangbusters, Inner Sanctum Mysteries, The Adventures of Bulldog Drummond, Orson Welles’ Mercury Summer Theater, Cavalcade of America, Grand Central Station, The Adventures of the Thin Man, and Dick Tracy. McCambridge also had sustaining roles on the daytime radio serial dramas Big Sister, This Is Nora Drake, and The Romance of Helen Trent. McCambridge’s extensive work as a radio actress led the director, writer, and actor Orson Welles to dub McCambridge “the world’s greatest living radio actress.” In spite of her busy radio acting assignments in New York City, McCambridge was determined to establish herself as a serious actress on Broadway, and she managed to obtain roles in several short-lived plays, including The Hasty Heart (1945), Hope for the Best (1945), A Place of Her Own (1945), Twilight Bar (1945), Woman Bites Dog (1946), and The Young and the Fair (1948).

By 1946 McCambridge’s relationship with Fifield had become distant and contentious, and the couple divorced that year. Despondent about her personal life and feeling as if her acting career had reached a standstill, McCambridge took a year off to see the world with her young son and hoped to obtain work as an actress on the London stage. Unable to find roles in war-torn, post–World War II Britain, McCambridge reluctantly returned to New York City. She easily resumed her radio acting career as if she had never been away. McCambridge wrote a book about her year abroad called The Two of Us, which was published in London in 1960 but never released in the United States.

In 1947 McCambridge joined a repertory company regularly heard on the critically acclaimed, hour-long, weekly dramatic anthology program Studio One (1947–1948) broadcast on the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. The show’s director and guiding light was a young Canadian named Fletcher Markle. McCambridge and Markle, who was five years her junior, fell in love and began a long-term romantic relationship.

In 1949 McCambridge’s career changed direction when she was cast in a major supporting role in the film adaptation of Robert Penn Warren’s best-selling novel All the King’s Men. The film, directed by Robert Rossen, was released in 1949 and won an Academy Award for Best Picture and several Golden Globe Awards. McCambridge won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and Golden Globes for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture and for New Star of the Year, Actress. On 19 February 1950, days before the 1950 Academy Awards ceremony, McCambridge and Markle married.

The 1950s were very busy years for McCambridge, who had prominent roles in several films, including The Scarf (1951); Lightning Strikes Twice (1951); Inside Straight (1951); Johnny Guitar (1954); Giant (1956), for which she received a second Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role; A Farewell to Arms (1957); and Suddenly Last Summer (1959). Throughout the 1950s McCambridge continued to work regularly on radio and starred in the weekly radio series Defense Attorney (1951–1952). The actress also had guest starring roles on popular television programs such as A Letter to Loretta, Four Star Playhouse, and Climax and had a starring role in her own television series, Wire Service (1956–1957).

Throughout the 1950s McCambridge, a lifelong liberal Democrat, diligently campaigned for the twice-nominated Democratic candidate for president of the United States, Adlai Stevenson, with whom she developed a close personal friendship. By 1961 Markle had become disenchanted with his wife’s ever-increasing consumption of alcohol, and he sued her for divorce, which became final in 1962. Even though McCambridge’s alcoholism unquestionably contributed to her two miscarriages, two divorces, and two suicide attempts, she continued to function as an actress and was featured on the television series Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Dr. Kildare, The Defenders, and Bewitched, among others, She also starred in the off-Broadway play Cages (1963) and had important roles in the feature films Cimarron (1960) and Angel Baby (1961).

In 1965 and 1966 McCambridge received critical acclaim when she played Martha in Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf on Broadway and then on tour. During the play’s run at the Billy Rose Theater on Broadway, McCambridge developed a close relationship with the businessman, theater owner, and financial genius Billy Rose. The relationship ended a short time before Rose died in 1966. McCambridge managed to gain control of her alcoholism in 1967 after, on a doctor’s advice, she committed herself to an alcohol rehabilitation facility in Peru. For the rest of her life McCambridge was an active spokeswoman against alcohol abuse and remained in control of her addiction.

With her life and career back on track, McCambridge appeared on Broadway in 1972 in Romulus Linney’s play The Love Suicide at Schofield Barracks and received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play. From 1974 through 1978 McCambridge returned to the medium that had first introduced her to the public, radio, and she was frequently featured on Himan Brown’s CBS Mystery Theater. The actress also received worldwide attention in 1973 when she supplied the voice of the devil, Pazuzu, for William Friedkin’s very successful and highly publicized film The Exorcist. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s McCambridge acted mainly on stage. She toured the country in celebrated plays such as The Madwoman of Chaillot, The Miracle Worker, The Subject Was Roses, The Glass Menagerie, Agnes of God, and ’night, Mother. McCambridge lectured frequently and taught classes in drama at various colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. She guest starred on television series such as Magnum P. I., Cagney and Lacy, and Amazing Stories. McCambridge’s autobiography, The Quality of Mercy—Mercy being her nickname—was published in 1981.

Tragedy struck in 1987 when McCambridge’s son, John Lawrence Markle, a financial adviser for Stephens and Company in Little Rock, Arkansas, killed his wife and two young daughters and then committed suicide after being accused of mishandling clients’ accounts, including his mother’s. A despondent McCambridge immediately went into seclusion. In 1991 she made a reluctant but ultimately triumphant return to Broadway in Neil Simon’s play Lost in Yonkers (1991), in which she also toured.

McCambridge retired to her home in La Jolla in 1992. She lived there until her age and declining health forced her to enter a La Jolla nursing home in 2003. On 2 March 2004 McCambridge died of natural causes, fourteen days before her eighty-eighth birthday. She was cremated and her ashes were scattered at sea.

McCambridge’s autobiography is The Quality of Mercy (1981). A detailed biography is Ron Lackmann, Mercedes McCambridge: A Biography and Career Record (2005). Obituaries are in the New York Daily News (3 Mar. 2004), Newsday (4 Mar. 2004), the Boston Globe, Newark Star-Ledger, New York Times, USA Today (all 18 Mar. 2004), and Variety (22–28 Mar. 2004).

Ron Lackman