"Joan Crawford is a movie queen. I had never met one before. I know now what I don't want to be."
"I cannot sustain hate for longer than a couple of years."
"I have always had a lot more trouble with my truths than with my deceits."
"It is a remarkably beautiful piece of home furnishing, the Oscar. I used to keep it up in front of a mirror so that it looked like two."
"My name is real, which probably explains why I never became a superstar... how would that look in lights?"
Today's centenarian, the multi-talented (and impossible-to-deal-with, by repute) Mercedes McCambridge.
Facts:
- Orson Welles called her "the world's greatest living radio actress."
- For her very first Hollywood film All the King's Men, she won the 1949 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
- She gained a huge following as a "lesbian icon" after portraying the vindictive "Emma" in Johnny Guitar.
- Most surprisingly, Miss Mercedes provided the voice of the demon "Pazuzu" in The Exorcist .
- After years of recovery from alcohol abuse, she became president of Alcoholics Anonymous.
- She suffered tragedy when her son was exposed as an embezzler, then went on to murder his own family before killing himself.
Charlotte Mercedes Agnes McCambridge (16th March 1916 – 2nd March 2004)
Johnny Guitar is one of the oddest movies I love.
ReplyDeleteIt's camper than a camp thing - all that simmering lesbianism, and Miss Lee's marvellous title song [which we were gobsmacked to hear as part of the repertoire of the ululating "house band" in the Etap hotel in Luxor; but that'd a different story altogether] to boot! Jx
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