Mercedes McCambridge

She voiced the majority of dialogue for demon Pazuzu in The Exorcist (1973).

McCambridge was born in Joliet, Illinois, the daughter of Irish-American Catholic parents Marie (née Mahaffry) and John Patrick McCambridge, a farmer. She graduated from Mundelein College in Chicago.

McCambridge began her career as a radio actress in 1938 while also performing on Broadway. In 1941, she played Judy's friend in A Date with Judy. She had the title role in Defense Attorney, a crime drama broadcast on ABC in 1951–52. Her other work on radio included: episodes of Lights Out (including "It Happened", November 5, 1938; "Execution", April 27, 1943, and "The Word", September 14, 1943) episodes of Inner Sanctum (including "Blood of Cain", January 29, 1946, "Death's Old Sweet Song", April 11, 1946, "But the Dead Walk Alone" (December 2, 1946). and "'Til Death Do Us Part", October 27, 1947) episodes of the Bulldog Drummond radio series episodes of Gang Busters episodes of Murder at Midnight (including "The Man with the Black Beard", August 5, 1950) episodes of Studio One (including "Anthony Adverse", October 14, 1947; "Kitty Foyle", April 11, 1947, and "The Thirty-Nine Steps", March 28, 1948) episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents as Dr. Constance Petersen in Spellbound episodes of Screen Directors Playhouse (including "Spellbound", January 25, 1951, and "Only Yesterday", May 7, 1951) episodes of Ford Theater (including "The Horn Blows at Midnight", April 3, 1949) Rosemary Levy on Abie's Irish Rose Peggy King Martinson on This Is Nora Drake (1948) various characters on the radio series I Love A Mystery in both its West Coast and East Coast incarnations (including The Stewardess and Charity Martin in The Thing That Cries in the Night, Nasha and Laura in Bury Your Dead, Arizona, Sunny Richards in both The Million Dollar Curse and The Temple of Vampires and Jack "Jacqueline" Dempsey Ross in The Battle of the Century) She frequently performed feature roles on the CBS Radio Mystery Theater, and was an original cast member on Guiding Light (before the Bauers took over as the central characters). She also starred in her own show, Defense Attorney, on ABC 1951–52, as Martha Ellis Bryan. From June 22, 1953, to March 5, 1954, she starred in the soap opera Family Skeleton on CBS.

McCambridge played Katherine Wells in Wire Service, a drama series that aired on ABC during 1956–57, produced by Desilu Productions. The series starred McCambridge, George Brent, and Dane Clark as reporters for the fictional Trans Globe Wire Service. In the season one episode of the original Lost in Space series "The Space Croppers", aired on CBS in March 1966, McCambridge played Sybilla, the matriarch of a family of supernatural space farmers. In an episode of Bewitched titled "Darrin Gone! and Forgotten," which aired on ABC in October 1968, McCambridge played a powerful witch named Carlotta (McCambridge's real first name), a frenemy of Endora. Endora and Carlotta had made a pact "at the turn of the century" that their first-born children would one day marry. When, according to the pact terms, certain celestial phenomena signaled it was time for the marriage, Carlotta (McCambridge) disappeared Darrin and pushed for Samantha to marry her coddled son Juke (played by veteran character actor Steve Franken).

McCambridge married her first husband, William Fifield, a writer, in 1939. They had a son, John Lawrence Fifield, born in December 1941. The couple divorced in 1946 after seven years of marriage. In 1950, McCambridge married Canadian Fletcher Markle, an actor/producer/director who directed her in productions on Ford Theater and Studio One. Her son, John, later took Markle's name, thereafter being known as John Markle. During the marriage and afterward, McCambridge battled alcoholism, often being hospitalized after episodes of heavy drinking. She and Markle divorced in 1962, after twelve years of marriage. Although an admirer of Alcoholics Anonymous, she achieved sobriety without being a member because one of their core principles is anonymity. Dick Van Dyke, who also experienced alcoholism, credited McCambridge in 1974 for having "broke the ice for the rest of us" by speaking openly about her addiction, enabling other celebrities such as himself to be more publicly honest about their struggles. From 1975 to 1982, McCambridge devoted her time to the nonprofit Livengrin Foundation of Bensalem, Pennsylvania. She first served as a volunteer member of the Board of Directors, then as president and CEO, responsible for the day-to-day operations of the treatment center, which at the time was a 76-bed residential program for both male and female alcoholics. Livengrin still operates today, and has 129 beds and eight outpatient clinics throughout southeastern Pennsylvania, treating both alcoholism and drug addiction. McCambridge, through her celebrity and larger-than-life personality, helped bring public recognition to, and acceptance of the disease of addiction, as well as the benefits of seeking treatment for the disease. She freely shared her own story of addiction and recovery as a means of reaching others in need of help. She was an outspoken liberal Democrat who campaigned for Adlai Stevenson. McCambridge died on March 2, 2004, at age 87 in La Jolla in San Diego, California, of natural causes.

McCambridge's son John Markle, a UCLA graduate with a PhD in Economics, joined the Little Rock, Arkansas, investment firm Stephens Inc. in 1979, after working for Salomon Brothers in New York City. Markle was a successful futures trader, and quickly rose through the company's ranks. McCambridge gave Markle $604,000 ($2.1 million in 2024) to manage for her, but in the fall of 1987, the company discovered that Markle had opened a secret account in McCambridge's name. Soon the company found that Markle had been charging trading losses to the Stephens house account, while crediting profitable trades to McCambridge's account. Markle was later shown to have forged his mother's signature in opening the account. Markle was placed on medical leave, then fired from his position at Stephens. McCambridge refused to cooperate with Markle and the company in instituting a repayment scheme that would have kept the matter from becoming public, saying that she had done nothing wrong and that Stephens Inc. owed her money. Shortly thereafter, in November 1987, Markle killed his family—his wife Christine, 45, and daughters Amy, 13, and Suzanne, 9—and then himself. He left a note taking responsibility for his crimes and a long, bitter letter to his mother. The letter contained the following: "Initially you said, 'well, we can work it out' but NO, you refused… You called me a liar, a cheat, a criminal, a bum. You said I have ruined your life… You were never around much when I needed you, so now I and my whole family are dead—so you can have the money… 'Night, Mother." In 1986, McCambridge had played the mother of a child who plans to take their own life in an Arkansas Repertory Theatre production of 'night, Mother.