Happy Birthday, Mercedes McCambridge

Academy Award winning actress Mercedes McCambridge was born March 16, 1916. Hailed as the world’s greatest living radio actress by Orson Welles, McCambridge starred in shows ranging from soap operas to prestigious dramas. She had enjoyed early success on radio on soap operas as well as in supporting roles on Suspense and The Shadow.  She worked with Welles on his Mercury Theater broadcasts and later played a small role in his classic film Touch of Evil. McCambridge was an Oscar winner by the time she starred on radio in Defense Attorney, winning in 1949 for her performance in All the King’s Men.  She was at the height of her film career when she was cast by producer Don Sharpe in a new series he was developing about a female defense lawyer.  Defense Attorney began as an audition show called The Defense Rests, a script by a female writer, Cameron Blake, with a lead female character (neither was all that common in the Golden Age of Radio).  The lead character of Martha Ellis Bryant was a former district attorney who had entered private practice on the other side of the aisle.  Marty’s boyfriend and occasional legman was newspaper reporter Jud Barnes (played by Howard Culver, who we heard as Ellery Queen n Episode 21), but Marty often tracked down witnesses and did most of the heavy lifting on her cases herself, often at great risk to her life The series was initially sold to NBC as a summer replacement series, but NBC wanted the show to be produced in New York rather than on the West Coast as a cost-saving measure.  Neither McCambridge nor Culver wanted to make the cross-country trek for a summer gig.  The producers reworked the show as Defense Attorney and pitched it to ABC, who agreed to produce the show in Hollywood.  Defense Attorney premiered on July 6, 1951.  The reliable troupe of West Coast radio players filled out supporting roles, including Larry Dobkin, Harry Bartell, Jeanne Bates, and Bill Johnstone.  Tony Barrett played multiple characters but was most often heard as Lt. Ed Leebis of the police, who frequently encountered Marty and Jud during their investigations. The series was a hit with the public and especially with lawyers.  Mercedes McCambridge was invited to address the annual meeting of the American Bar Association in 1952, and she was honored by the National Association of Women Lawyers.  In the episode featured on the podcast this week, she receives the title of “Favorite Dramatic Actress” from the readers of Radio-TV Mirror magazine. The series came to an end in December 1952.  There were attempts to launch a television version, but the pilot episode did not sell.  After the series ended, Mercedes McCambridge focused on her film career, eventually picking up another Oscar nomination in 1956 for Giant   Throughout her life, she struggled with alcohol and drugs, and she had periods where she did not work at all.  She almost missed out on credit for one of her most famous performances voicing the demon in The Exorcist.  It took the intervention of the Screen Actors Guild for her to receive the credit.  She was an advocate for those fighting addiction in her final years, and she passed away in 2004.