Obituaries of note

MERCEDES McCAMBRIDGE, 85, who won an Oscar for her screen debut in 1949 and later provided the raspy voice of the demon-possessed girl in The Exorcist, died March 2, said the Rev. Joe Carroll, a friend. She had lived in the La Jolla area of San Diego since the 1980s. Her strong, radio-trained voice made her an ideal film portrayer of hard-driving women. She received the Academy Award as supporting actress in 1949's All the King's Men, playing a reporter who was the nemesis of the populist Southern governor, Willie Stark.

SIDNEY L. JAMES, 97, who served as the founding editor of Sports Illustrated during a 40-year career with Time Inc., died March 11 in Alameda, Calif. He was the assistant managing editor at Life magazine in 1953 when Henry R. Luce, Time Inc.'s co-founder, tapped him to launch a national publication devoted to sports. At the time, many in the publishing world doubted a periodical that relied on the affections of sports fans could compete against the emerging medium of television.

GENEVIEVE, 83, a French chanteuse whose mangled English was a running gag on Jack Paar's The Tonight Show for five years, beginning in 1957, died Sunday in the Venice area of Los Angeles.

JAMES NEARE GAMBLE, 81, whose family created the Procter & Gamble company, died Monday, in Pasadena, Calif., said his business partner, Chris Morphy. He briefly lived in the Gamble House, crafted for his grandfather by architects Charles and Henry Greene. The Gamble family donated it to the city and the University of Southern California School of Architecture in 1966.

JOAN CULLMAN, 72, a Tony Award-winning producer on Broadway, died Thursday in Tryall, Jamaica. She was a producer of at least nine Broadway shows, including Yasmina Reza's Art, which won the Tony and New York Drama Critics Circle awards for best play in 1998. She was also a producer of several Tony-nominated plays and musicals, including David Hare's Skylight in 1996, Sweet Smell of Success in 2002 and The Play What I Wrote last year.

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