Mercedes McCambridge Biography

Fast Facts

• Recipient of two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for television and another for film
• Once served as the on-site director of a non-profit rehabilitation facility for alcoholics based in Pennsylvania
• Her only son John killed himself along with his family in 1987 after being investigated for fraud and opening numerous faulty bank accounts in his mother's name
• After battling alcoholism for years, she would achieve sobriety in 1969 thanks in part to Alcoholics Anonymous
• Quote: "One of the most destructive things in my life was the kind of parts I played in pictures․․․I played the worst harridans, the most hard-bitten women, the absolute heavies, and it just about did me in․"
• Best known for portraying hard-lined and cruel characters, mostly due to the grizzly nature of her voice, as she suffered from chronic bronchitis
• While performing on Broadway during the earliest stages of her career, she began taking on small broadcast roles in radio to supplement her income before breaking into film full time by the late '40s
• Held a feud with "Johnny Guitar" co-star Joan Crawford, who eventually took all of her costumes for the film and scattered them along a rural highway, forcing the crew and costume department to go retrieve them before production could continue
• Once called co-star Joan Crawford 'a mean, tipsy, powerful, rotten egg lady' after growing to dislike her during the filming of "Johnny Guitar" in 1954
• Named 'the world's greatest living radio actress' by Orson Welles