Today, June 28, is the day that ventriloquist Edgar Bergen married his lovely bride Frances, back in 1945.  Bergen, already a big star of stage, screen and radio, spotted the beautiful young model – nearly twenty years his junior – in the studio audience of his radio show and sparks flew.  They eventually had two children together – Candice and Kris – and were married until Bergen’s death in 1978.  In addition to his marriage, Edgar was also part of another famous relationship, one of the most celebrated, long-lived and downright hilarious ventriloquist acts ever, with his dapper wooden friend Charlie McCarthy. 

Although the subject of movie ventriloquism needs a long treatment one of these days – I promise to get right on it – for pure hilarity nothing beats the impeccable comic timing evidenced by Edgar Bergen and friend.  Or I should say friends, because his character Mortimer Snerd was also a big hit, but nowhere the star that Charlie was.  Charlie McCarthy even was awarded his own wooden Oscar for his cinematic contributions, he was that much of a phenomenon.  In addition to the myriad stage and hundreds of radio shows starring Bergen and McCarthy, they also became stars of the big screen, first in a series of short subjects and later in a string of motion pictures where audiences could clearly see that Bergen, while admittedly not the most technically perfect of ventriloquists, had a winning personality and comic timing second to none. 

They co-starred opposite W.C. Fields in You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man, and Charlie was above the title in Charlie McCarthy, Detective, both from 1939.  Of course at this time they were also one of the most famous and popular acts on radio, with their own radio series running continuously for nearly twenty years, ending in 1956. 

One of my favorite TV memories is of a wonderful episode of Jack Benny’s TV show, where Jack goes to the Bergen residence to ask Edgar to appear on his show, and meets Charlie and Mortimer, who are real, he discovers.  Jack also is serenaded by the lovely Frances Bergen, who sings “Them There Eyes” to the blushing Benny, and it is adorable.

While ventriloquist dummies sometimes get thrown into the same “they freak everybody out” category as clowns and mimes, in the hands of a master comedian like Edgar Bergen, there simply wasn’t anybody funnier than the sassy Charlie McCarthy as he matched wits with Bergen and any one else who’d have a go, including a famous radio incident with Mae West which had the censors up in arms. 

Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy’s last appearance was in The Muppet Movie (1979), and Edgar passed away a few months after filming his scenes in 1978.  Frances Bergen died in October of last year.  Charlie McCarthy is still enjoying a quiet retirement in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C..