Mobituaries with Mo RoccaWhen Candice Bergen describes her childhood as weird and eccentric, she isn’t exaggerating. She grew up with a world-famous sibling, who met presidents and movie stars. He was also a dummy – the kind made of wood. Charlie McCarthy was the creation of her ventriloquist father Edgar Bergen. Candice tells Mo what life was like sharing her father’s love and attention with a puppet.
How often does Charlie cross your mind?
Oh, not as often as you think, but probably once a week.
Have you ever dreamed about him?
Not?
Since I've been an adult. I think it's amazing that I'm a walking, talking person, frankly, and nobody gives me credit for that. The fact that I'm like a normal person is a miracle.
I'm speaking with actress Candice Bergen. You probably know her best as TV's Murphy Brown. It's a role that won her five Emmys.
Which one of you turkeys got their greasy fingerprints all over my emmy?
All right, too bad?
But her real life story could be its own TV series, more Twilight Zone than Sitcom, you see. Candace Sperking grew up with a rather unusual sibling, and he.
Was always called my brother since I was a little kid. It was like and your brother, Charlie. There was always such an aura around him in the house. He had his own room next to mine. It was a guest room, but it was called Charlie's room. And Charlie was in the closet. Oh did he sleep in the closet. He would hang in the closet and his different heads would hang in the closet. And he had a sleepy head and an old head and an angry head.
Yeah, for Charlie's different moods, exactly without your father manipulating him. He must have looked.
Dead, not dead enough, he was always living.
The Charlie we're talking about is Charlie McCarry. And if you haven't figured it out already, Charlie was a dummy, yes, a boy made of wood. And Candace's father, Edgar Bergen, was the ventriloquist who brought him to life.
Well, I believe in letting a boy work for his money, Yes, you approve. Man.
Listeners of a certain age will remember Charlie as the ultimate smart alec, usually dressed in a tuxedo with a top hat and monocle. And for a time, this dummy was one of this country's biggest stars.
Miss West.
This is the famous Charlie McCarthy.
Oh hello, shot up doctor handsome, how tall, blonde and terrific.
He was like a head of state, a minor state, you know, like Monaca.
Well he had his own coat of arms, right.
Yeah he did. He had a Charlie McCarthy crest an, a scepter and a crown. I thought this guy must really rate.
Charlie was kind of like God him. Well, he was to me from CBS Sunday Morning, and iHeart, I'm Morocca and this is mobituaries, this moment. Charlie McCarthy September thirtieth, nineteen seventy eight, death of a dummy.
I'm so proud of how weird and eccentric my childhood was. Nobody as a childhood as weird as me. I mean, I knew a lot of people whose parents were famous, and none of them did anything nearly as weird as my father.
Right, So, Nancy Sinatra, Liza Minelli, Jane Fonda all had famous parents, but they were normal. They weren't living with dummies.
Right.
We're going to continue with Kandisbergen's weird and eccentric childhood in Act two. But in this act, I'm going to tell you the story of her father's unlikely and spectacular rise to fame as a ventriloquest because there is no Charlie McCarthy without Edgar Bergen. Edgar Bergen was born in Chicago to Swedish immigrants in nineteen oh three. At age eleven, he began ventriloquism from a book he'd purchased for a quarter. At sixteen, he managed to impress a touring vaudeville performer known as the Great Leicster, enough so to get a few months of free one on one lessons in ventriloquism.
In my first year at high school, I discovered I was a ventriloquist, and I earned my first dishonest money answering roll calls.
From missing classmates.
In my senior year, I teamed up with Charlie.
We've been partners ever since.
Charlie was made to order. Edgar had paid Chicago woodcarver Theodore Mack thirty five dollars to carve Charlie's head.
Well. My father based the look of him on a newsboy in his neighborhood in Illinois.
This newsy An Irish kid named Charlie was around Edgar's age. He inspired not only the dummies first name, but also his appearance, short red hair, high rosy cheekbones, and big bright eyes. As for the ummy's personality, he.
Was cocky and smart and ambitious for a dummy, and very confident.
How many of those characteristics describe your father?
None.
Edgar tended to be taciturn uneasy, and withdrawn. Candice describes her father as stereotypically Swedish. Charlie gave Edgar a chance to break out of his shell.
I mean he could say anything through Charlie and he wouldn't have to take the blame.
That is pretty handy to have to have an id that you could just take with you.
Yeah.
Right, and these are the things I want to be able to say now. Edgar had not been raised to work with a dummy.
He was at Northwestern as a student. He was either going to go into medicine or be a ventriloquism. It was like.
Humph, it was no to medicine, yes to ventriloquism. And being a good ventriloquist meant learning to throw his voice. And for people who don't know, can you explain what does it mean to throw your voice? What does that mean?
It means that you squeeze it from your diaphragm and it gives the illusion that your voice is coming from across the room and that there's someone at the door, or that there's someone in the corner, and you go, who's in here. It's like a vocal illusion.
In its earliest ancient forms. Ventriloquism was associated with oracles who claimed to address spirits dwelling inside their stomachs. By the time Edgar Bergen was coming up, those so called belly prophets had become known as belly talkers, a not exactly prestigious form of entertain These were the days of vaudeville, and for a decade, Edgar and Charlie played theaters across the country. Luxurious this was not, and yet Edgar would later describe this as the happiest time in his career.
Yeah.
You would talk about vaudeville and you know how getting on the trains and sleeping on the trunks and just going from town to town and it would be freezing cold, and then it was baking hot. But he he loved it.
A typical vaudeville bill would include up to ten live stage acts, running the gamut from established singers and comedians to novelty acts like mind readers, jugglers, and trained lions. Edgar and Charlie steadily climbed the ranks and eventually arrived at the valhalla of vaudeville, performing at New York's Palace Theater. Wow. Yeah, Playing the Palace was the pinnacle, Alice.
It was the pinnacle we always used to come to New York and he would say, Candy, that is the theater where your father performed in Vaudeville. And I was so indifferent. I was just like, yeah, right, Edgar.
It turned out reached this peak just in time. Within a few years, Vaudeville had been overtaken by motion pictures and radio, and Vaudeville's over and your father had to remake himself.
That's when he started to make the break was when he played the supper clubs in Chicago. I mean it was very swanky.
The act was a hit in Chicago, and word made its way west to a very influential entertainer.
And Rudy Valley discovered my father, and then Rudy Valley brought my father to Hollywood.
Rudy Valley was a singer and bandleader with a popular radio show.
Just Imagine the Dummy, and take my word for it that both voices you will hear are owned and operated by just one man, Edgar Bergen.
Edgar and Charlie made their radio debut on Rudy Valley's program in December nineteen thirty six.
Why put a ventriloquist on the air. The answer is why not?
True?
Our ventriloquist, Edgar Bergan, is an unusual one, sort of Noel Coward or perhaps Fred Allen among ventriloquists, an extrous fellow who depends more upon the cleverness and wit of his material than upon the believe it or not nature of his delivery.
A ventriloquist act on the radio. This doesn't make a lot of sense to modern ears, so can you do explain it.
To any ears? But it gave him latitude. Charlie Kuitski, Charlie could ride horses, Charlie could climb mountains. There was nothing they couldn't do on the radio.
Wow, So ventriloquist act on the radio actually had more freedom, had more creative potential.
Yeah, it was more engaging for the radio audience because they were so un fettered.
Let's hear a bit of the act from that first radio broadcast.
Alcohol. It's nothing but slow poison, is la. It's slow poison?
Is that?
So?
Yes, slow poison, that's what it is. Slow poison is Well, I'm in no hurry.
Well, let me say.
That appearance was such a success they got their own show. Well, Charlie got his own show, The.
Makers of Jason Samblan Coffee Bring You The Johnny McCarthy Show, starring Edgar Bergen and Gnomy.
The Golden Age of radio was just getting started. Edgar and Charlie carroused with all the big stars of the day.
Charlie, why don't you walk out on Bergen?
What's holding you?
He is?
His on air banter with legendary vamp May West caused controversy.
Why don't you.
Come up home with me now, honey, I'll let you play.
In my woodpile. Charlie cracked wise with crooner Frank Sinatra.
Well tell me, Charlie, what makes you think you could make me a success?
Well look what I did for Bergen and Charlie fond over a young Marilyn Monroe.
My dear, we were made for each other.
Just yes, gladly, all right.
Charlie had particularly memorable exchanges with comedian W. C. Fields.
My only laugh you ever got was a sneer from a disgruntled termite.
Wow.
I read somewhere that WC. Fields genuinely hated Charlie. Yeah, he probably did, called him a flop house for termites.
Or all we only you're down to a coat hanger. That was one line.
Around this time, Edgar and Charlie began appearing in movies where the audience could see them at work. Here they are in the nineteen thirty eight Backstage drama Letter of introduction.
You're not so clever e than mister.
Oh I'm not well.
I can see your lips move. Oh that burns him up. You.
He was not meticulous about his technique, really, because people could always see him moving his lips.
Well, I was gonna say that. And why didn't that bother people?
Adienk because they were focused on the on Charlie and the material was so.
Smart, and so the fact that you could see Edgar Bergen's mouth moving a little bit, it's.
A lot, Okay, I think it was a lot.
It should be noted that Edgar Bergen created other characters, the sweet but slow witted Mortimer Snurd. You don't get around.
Very much, do your Mortimer?
No?
No, I live with Grandpa.
You live?
Yeah?
I mean some people loved Mortimer, and he had his own theme song, and.
And then there was Spitfire Spinster, Effie Clinker.
You're not mate, No, I'm not No, no, damn it.
No one, and Effie had no interest for me, Charli.
He was just not going to let these other characters shine. No, there was just no.
Way, no, and they weren't as equal.
In nineteen thirty seven, at the height of their fame, Edgar received an honorary oscar for the creation of Charlie. The statuette itself was wooden with a movable mouth. And then the next year another milestone of sorts, Edgar and Charlie's radio show was airing at the same time as Orson Wells's infamous War of the World's broadcast. You may remember that that program led some listeners to believe that Martians were invading rural New Jersey.
And things stopped in parts of the country. People were so panic stricken because they thought we were being invaded by aliens. It only didn't end life in America because many people were listening to my father's radio show, which was on at the same time.
Orson Wells later claimed that he received a telegram from drama critic Alexander Walcott saying, quote, this only goes to prove my beamish boy that all the intelligent people were listening to that dummy and that all the dummies were listening to you. Charlie even met to US Presidents FDR and Harry Truman.
Yeah, he met everybody. I have an invitation from Missus Roosevelt to Charles McCarthy to lunch at the White House. I don't know if my father was invited, but Charlie is definitely invited.
This has really been a wonderful day for us. Yet it has lunch at the White House, pot luck with Roosevelt. Yes.
By the time Candice Bergen was born in nineteen forty six, Charlie McCarthy was a megastar, coming up after the break. A sibling rivalry unlike any other.
Who Lizy, what is your father's name? Edgar Bergen?
In nineteen fifty eight, a young Candas Bergen appeared on the comedy quiz show You Bet Your Life with Groucho Marx.
Your father is Edgar began the Swedish Nightingale. Yeah, well then your brothers must be Charlie McCarthy and Motamus name.
It was not good for Charlie when I was born. Charlie was always competition for me, and he always won.
When Candasbergen was born in nineteen forty six, it was kind of big news. Papers featured a photo of baby Candace in her cradle, lovingly surrounded by father Edgar, mother Francis, and yes, Charlie. The photo caption in the Los Angeles Times actually read Charlie's new can.
I mean it was. It was an eccentric childhood when we used to have breakfast, the three of us, my father, Charlie, and I, and we would sit at the table and my father would put me on one knee and Charlie on the other, and he would have us talk to each other.
Were you actually talking in this scenario you were on I was talking, but my father was squeezing my neck to cue me when to move my mouth to start talking.
I find photographs sometimes of me when I was like seven or eight, and I am giving Charlie a look that's like as soon as my father leaves, I am going to put a knife in your rip. I mean, it's like I cannot wait to kill this thing.
Probably know him. She captures their relationship more than the Christmas photo that you took when Candace was just three. There's no other way to say it. It's pretty creepy. She and Charlie stand at the top of a dark staircase in matching footy pajamas. Candas is holding a lip candle while Charlie, wearing his monocle, just kind of hovers. Both glare straight ahead, just.
About to push him down the stairs, just on the cusp, and I'm looking so unhappy, I'm scowling.
So when you say that you wanted to push Charlie down the stairs or stab him, was it that you were annoyed? Was it that you were jealous?
Jealous? I was jealous.
Yeah, but killing Charlie didn't really make a lot of sense, and not just because you can't kill a puppet.
He was the head of the family. He wasn't just a member of the family.
What was that like for your mother?
Such a good question. My mother dealt with it with tremendous grace.
Francis Bergen was an actress and fashion model from Alabama. Her face graced billboards as both the Ipana Girl for Ipana toothpaste and the Chesterfield Girl for Chesterfield Cigarettes. She was only nineteen when she met Edgar.
She met my father at his radio show. She was in the front row, right, and she had very long legs and she was sitting in the front row wearing a skirt and heels, and my father saw her legs and went about meeting her afterwards.
Edgar, who had never married, was thirty nine and a major star, and there was a big age difference.
Yeah, about twenty years. He was a very good candidate for marriage, and she loved him.
They were married in Mexico in the summer of nineteen forty five. And do you think after the wedding, when they started home together, she thought there are three of us in this marriage.
Oh, very much so, and accepted it. I mean everybody accepted it. Yeah.
One of the crazy ways that the press participated. There's an LA Times headline after your parents get engaged, and it says will Charlie let Bergen wed. Oh gosh, everyone was all in on this.
It's just really weirdness beyond what should be allowed.
Before long, Candice began making appearances with her father and her sort of brother.
We go on my father's radio show together. Obviously, Charlie was regular, he was on every show since it was the Charlie Courthy Show. But I would go on and we would compete with each other for my father's attention.
Tonight, Charlly. Tonight, my little daughter Candy is going to be on this show. Yeah, and that's why I'm so happy, you know, she she's the apple of my eyes. Yes I know, but don't forget buster. I'm the cabbage of the bank book.
Yes, Candace was just nine years old in this radio show appearance, and it seems like her father is stoking the rivalry.
Candy, my my own little Candy. Oh Jesus, yes, tonight tonight, my heart is full of joy. Tonight my little girl steps out into the footlights of life down down ply Snoke. She's getting laughs too, watching Kidrin. There's only one star on this show. Just remember that.
Candice was living in Charlie's shadow, but so was her father.
But I want to be on the show, Charlie. I want to be just like daddy. Oh no, ambitionary.
I remember that dialogue. I guess he was a real smartness on some level.
Did you love Charlie?
No?
But I felt connected to him sometimes uncomfortably connected to him. There were moments when I liked him. It depended on my father, because you know, my father was the guy behind him.
Did Charlie make it more difficult for you to get close to your father, Did it seem that way.
I spent less time with my father when he was with Charlie because he was working with Charlie, and so Charlie always go with him in the car in his trunk. But I was just jealous of the time. I think the time and the importance he was so important.
Candice relished the one on one time with her father that she did get.
We'd go fishing, we'd go in his plane. He'd put phone books on the seat for me and I'd get to fly. We'd go to Palm Springs and we'd we'd just have like little trips together.
That was just the two of us without Charlie. Yeah, no Charlie, Charlie free zone.
Yeah, Charlie free zone and mother free zone.
Was just us.
That's pretty special. Can I ask you, do you remember the first time that you said I love you to your father.
I don't know that I ever did, because I never heard it from him. Think I think it was and my mother too. It was a big struggle for me because I had to, like because I wanted to hear it from my parents so much. I'm sure I probably forced my father to say it some way when I was older, like thirteen or fourteen when I got into that sticky age. But and I dimly remember him saying yes, well I love you to him, it's like, okay, can we move on now.
When Candace was fifteen, her brother Chris was born, and this was an actual flesh and blood brother. And you just loved your little brother.
I did. And we're still very very close. Yeah, except he's six ' three now, so he's not a little brother anymore.
By this time, Candace was becoming more and more comfortable in the spotlight. At eighteen, she appeared on the TV program The Hollywood Palace, hosted by Purl Lives Edgar.
I hope you won't mind if I tell the book something about the lovely young girl who appeared in your act. Ladies and gentlemen, That charming young lady and Edgar's act was his eighteen year old daughter Ken look out.
Ahire you gentlemen.
Isn't she beautiful?
Well?
Thank you, Charlie, just my love.
She has to be my sister.
Oh gosh, it was the family business, Yes, it was.
Very much so.
Do you think your father was ever resentful of Charlie?
Well, I think he created a monster everybody wanted Charlie and they didn't want my father.
Edgar's dream was to appear in movie musicals.
My father did a few things by himself, but really Charlie was the draw. My father had to fight to get billing above Charlie. On the radio show, it was always the Charlie McCarthy Show with Edgar Bergen.
There's a quote where your father said at one point, Charlie is famous and I am the forgotten man. Yeah, did he mean that seriously?
Yeah?
I don't think he would have admitted it, but yeah, Charlie just stole his thunder.
On the other side of the break, A father's star wanes as his daughter's star rises. Ladies and ten. In nineteen sixty five, ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his daughter Candice Bergen, then aged nineteen, appeared on the game show What's My Line. There's an ease and warmth between the two of them, but their careers were moving in different directions.
Look Magazine said it, and today The New York Daily News had a wonderful piece about Candy's is.
One of the great stars of the future in the American cinema.
Right in the.
Right but as the stars of the past, right, and your father says kind of under his breath, and I'm a star of the past.
Well it's true. Yeah.
Edgar and Charlie's hugely popular radio shows ran for nearly two decades until nineteen fifty six, but by the nineteen sixties the novelty of their act had long since faded. Was that period hard for your father when Charlie became less popular and people just didn't care?
Well, Charlie becoming less popular? Was my father also becoming less popular and he'd also he'd aged out. That happens to all of us.
Well, we're still getting a lot of work. But Kandasbergen has been a star for six decades. Her rise started back in the nineteen sixties.
Snobbish, fierce, contradictory, and controversial. I'm Kandisbergen, who portrays Lacky in The.
Group, That's Candice and the trailer for the nineteen sixty six movie The Group her screen debut. By that time, she'd had success as a fashion model. At twenty one, she landed on the cover of Vogue, Working both sides of the camera. She pursued a career as a photojournalist in tandem with acting, and in nineteen seventy one, she starred opposite Jack Nicholson in Carnal Knowledge.
Bo Are you really something? I don't feel like something. I feel like nothing.
Her performance in the movie Starting Over earned her an Academy Award nomination. On TV, she hosted Saturday Night Live in its inaugural season and made history.
I am very happy to be here tonight. I am also especially happy to be here and Saturday Night's first woman host. This may not make up for the era vote the other day, but at least did something.
While her father was a traditional Republican, Candace campaigned for Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern. She associated with and supported activists like Abbi Hoffman. She was arrested at an anti war sit in. By the early nineteen seventies, Candace was a lot more than the daughter of a ventriloquest What was that like? Do you think for your father when he went from being Edgar Bergen too being Candasan's father.
It was an adjustment for people in our house, for I mean for my mother, for my father, for I think he was proud of me, But at the same time, I'm sure he was very mixed about it.
Meanwhile, Charlie was spending most of his time in a trunk, pulled out only occasionally to play small stages or conventions. Edgar himself had aged into an emeritus figure. Johnny Carson, who'd gotten his start as a magician, was a longtime fan of Edgar Bergins and had him on his show. Watching Edgar on The Tonight Show in nineteen seventy seven without his scene partner is bittersweet. They always said.
The venture was basically, remember when they were talking about you, that you were a shy man, and you use Charlie and more just to sayings. But they feel more comfortable saying than you would if you said them.
Is there any truth to that?
I mean, you can be I guess.
I hate to admit it, but I guess it certainly is.
Because I wish I could walk into a room and be accepted as readily as Charlie and martinmer.
I've tried it and it doesn't work. I'm just no. In September nineteen seventy eight, nearly sixty years after the act was born, Edgar Bergen and his Wooden sidekick, convened a press conference in Los Angeles, to announce their retirement. Here's Charlie addressing reporters.
I just am not going to admit it my last performance.
I'm going to keep hoping you you.
Take your pills and we can do it through benefits anyway.
They would play one final two week engagement at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. Do you remember your father's farewell performances at Caesar's Palace?
What was that like? It was very emotional. In fact, I can't believe I'm getting emotional now thinking about it. He was dressed in his white tie and tails, which he never usually performed in.
Candace, her mother, Frances, and her brother Chris were all there on opening night.
We were in a bonkhead in front of him, and it was so emotional for us.
Edgar and Charlie snapped back into the old routines as if they'd never stopped doing them. Candace says that despite his recent hospitalization, her father's performance was flawless, and he wrote that you looked over and you saw your mother was mouthing the words.
Yeah, she'd heard them all so many times, and he used old material, but he made it fresh. And we went backstage afterward and I just talked him. I'm surprised at how much it's effectively.
Was he surprised at the turnout that that people wanted to see him off because he.
Had it had been it had been tough year for that lean years. Yeah, he'd been performing in really p dunk.
To me, what's so beautiful about it is somebody who does have these lean years and has been performing this act for almost sixty years, and then at the end in this big venue it's a big deal, and that you all were there for it.
It was great. It was a great goodbye for him to have. And then he died.
Just three nights into the run. Edgar Bergan died in his sleep in his Las Vegas hotel room.
He began his career with not much more than a block of wood and his native wit, which was plenty. But when Edgar Bergen died Saturday at age seventy five, more than the entertainment world took notice.
I remember his funeral. Carl Reiner was walking in and he said, I hope I can have a ending like that. This for a performer, that's what you want. The Muppet Movie was dedicated to his memory. Jim Henson just worshiped your father. Sounds like that was very nice. He spoke at the memorial and he brought hermit.
Is that right?
It wasn't your usual funeral? And Reagan spoke.
There was of course Edgar, the kindly and modest man. We all knew there was never any cruelty in the laughter that he brought to us. But there was an Edgar Bergen who in truth was the puckish, pixie like destroyer of the pampas Charlie.
Johnny Carson also spoke about Edgar's utter lack of pretension.
He was the most unpretentious man, the most modest, just again Swedish.
Was Charlie at the memorial?
No he was not, No, that would have been too weird. God.
Edgar Bergen left ten thousand dollars in his will for the Charlie McCarthy fund, but nothing for Candace.
That was a bitter pill.
What do you think that was about? Why did he do that?
Well? He knew I'd left home and was making money for many years before he died, and he knew I'd made a lot of money, so I didn't need it. Of course neither did Charlie. And he owed it all to Charlie. I mean it was Charlie's money. Charlie was the breadwinner.
Charlie, of course couldn't actually accept the funds. In fact, the money was designated to be used to fund Ventriloquist performances for children in orphanages and quote other such similar institutes for destitute and handicapped children. Charlie McCarthy relocated from Beverly Hills to a new home in Washington, d C. At the Smithsonian Institute. Candice and her family flew to DC to preview the exhibit.
We were thrilled that we had him out and taken care of, and because it was like, what do we do with him now? As Charlie without my father was like a thing.
Candicesbergn remembers staring at Charlie on display, waiting for a look of recognition or a wise crack, but it never came. Without her father, there was no magic, the illusion was gone.
Well, when we started way back in those days, you might say we were practically nobody. Yes, that's right. Why we've come a long way, haven't I?
Yeah, I hope you enjoyed this mobituary. May I ask you to please rate and review our podcast. You can also follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and you can follow me on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter at morocca. Hear all new episodes of Mobituaries every Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts, and check out Mobituaries Great Lives Worth Reliving, the New York Times best selling book, available in paperback and audiobook. This episode of Mobituaries was produced by Aaron Schrank. Our team of producers also includes Hazelbrian and me Moroka, with engineering by Josh Han. Our theme music is written by Daniel Hart. Our archival producer is Jamie Benson. Mobituary's production company is Neon Hummmedia. Indispensable support from Alan pang, Amy Cronenberg and everyone at CBS News Radio. Special thanks to Steve Razis, Rand Morrison and Alberto Robina. Executive producers for Mobituaries include Megan Marcus, Jonathan Hirsch, and Moroka. The series is created by Yours Truly
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