Ron Faber, the award-winning actor whose most famous role was in the 1973 horror classic The Exorcist, died of lung cancer on March 26. He was 90. It was only recently that his death was announced.
David Patrick Kelly, Faber’s longtime friend and colleague, remembered him in a Facebook post as a “great artist and gentleman with a wonderful voice and laugh,” reported Deadline. Director William Friedkin scouted Faber for the small role of Chuck in The Exorcist shortly after he won an Obie for his performance in the Off-Broadway play And They Put Handcuffs on Flowers in 1972.
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Faber’s small role was only the beginning of his involvement with The Exorcist. Faber added a few deeper, guttural vocal sounds to the soundtrack to suggest that more than one demon existed within Regan, even though actress Mercedes McCambridge provided the primary voice of the demon.
“Friedkin told me that there were three people doing the voice of the demon for the film,” Faber recalled in a 2016 interview with ComingSoon. “He was determined to make sure that the devil did not sound like just one person, he wanted it to sound like a legion of voices. So he had Mercedes McCambridge do the core part of the voice of the demon, and myself and someone else, and I never got any credit for it. That was my shock when I saw the movie – Mercedes McCambridge got the sole credit on the end film, so that pissed me off.”
Although McCambridge provided the primary demon voice in the final cut, Faber recognized some of his contributions. “[T]here were things from that recording that I was certain made it into the final film, and these were mostly sounds that I made – deep guttural moaning and groaning. The sound design people on the film played with the voices, mine included, and did the overlapping and so forth. Mercedes was the person responsible for all the wheezing! She was a well known asthmatic!”
Faber was born on Feb. 16, 1933, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was a big fan of jazz music and Disney movies, and he soon began working on a children’s radio show after enrolling at Marquette University and pursuing a business degree, according to Variety. Afterward, he joined the Marquette Players and the Van Buren Players, where Eva Le Gallienne discovered him. As a result of Le Gallienne’s help, Faber received a scholarship at Westport’s Lucille Lortel White Barn Theater to direct, which launched his theater career. During his career, the actor appeared in several off-Broadway productions. Faber is survived by his wife, Kathleen Moore Faber; his children, Hart, Raymond (Sadia), Elise Manuel (Alex), and Anthony; and his grandchildren and step-grandchildren. He was pre-deceased by his son, Eric.
