MERCEDES McCAMBRIDGE: No Mercy

Films of the Golden Age
Issue Number 98
Fall 2019

“My best teachers have been the ones who have been hardest on me … who kept insisting I had more to give … who believed it wasn’t so important that I’d make a fool of myself by overdoing something.”

From the highly esteemed ranks of World War II radio (Orson Welles considered her “the greatest”), MERCEDES McCAMBRIDGE (1918-2004), of Irish stock, ventured into post-war Hollywood films and made a stunning, Oscar-winning debut as a grasping political aide de camp in ALL THE KING’S MEN (1949). From there, she sank her teeth into a series of scene-chewing villains, neurotics and opportunists, all with notorious intensity and flair. Off camera, Mercedes fought personal demons — chronic alcoholism and family tragedy — but survived and capped her strong, formidable career with one of cinema’s most demonic vocalizations in THE EXORCIST (1973).

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