Illinois Hall of Fame: Edgar Bergen

By Mark Rhoads

W.C. Fields: "Is it true your father was a gate leg table?"

Charlie McCarthy: "If he was, your father was under him."

The most famous ventriloquist of the radio age was Edgar Bergen. Edgar was born in Chicago in 1903, moved to Michigan, came back to Chicago, and was an alumnus of Lane Tech, Lakeview High School, and Northwestern University.  He performed both magic and ventriloquism in small vaudeville theaters and for church groups in dozens of Illinois towns in the 1920s.

Along with his famous dummy Charlie McCarthy, Edgar Bergen made millions of listeners laugh every Sunday night on NBC from 1937 to 1956. The show was not without controversy even though it was a comedy. Censors of that era were so annoyed with Mae West and her sexual double entendres with Charlie McCarthy that Mae was banned from NBC for fifteen years. Marylin Monroe once pretended to get engaged to marry Charlie but the stunt ended when the wooden dummy could not submit to a blood test.

Charlie's personality seemed very real at times. So much so that Edgar's daughter Candace Bergen, later a famous actress in her own right, said that for a while when she was very little she thought of Charlie as her elder brother. Yes she knew he was made out of wood and lived in a special suitcase, but when he talked in Edgar's special voice he seemed to come alive. Candace described her relationship with Charlie as "just a little strange."

Edgar Bergen was born on Feb. 16, 1903 in Chicago. When he was a small boy, Bergen's father became ill and his family moved to a dairy farm near Decatur, Michigan where Edgar attended grade school.

When he was only 11, Edgar had to work to help his family.  He got a job stoking the basement furnace of a local movie theater. That same year, he invested 25 cents in a book that promised to teach him how to throw his voice. He made his first dummy from a paper-mache Halloween mask and called the dummy Rastus.

Edgar succeeded in learning some of the ventrioloquist craft but he was never very good at hiding the fact that his lips were moving. But on radio, that did not matter. People enjoyed his characters anyway and Edgar even had Charlie McCarthy poke fun at the fact that Bergen's lips moved. This defect for a ventrioloquist became a running gag in the act.

Bergen's father died when Edgar turned 14 and the family moved back to Chicago where Edgar attended Lane Tech at 2501 West Addison Street for his first two years of high school. Lane Tech then bordered the famous Riverview Amusement Park at Western and Belmont.  Edgar then transferred to Lakeview High School for his junior and senior years in the early 1920s.  Lakeview is located at the corner of North Ashland and West Irving Park Road about three blocks west of the famous Graceland Cemetery.

During his senior year at Lakeview High, Edgar noticed a young Irish kid by the name of Charlie selling newspapers in the neighborhood.  He drew his impression of Charlie's face and took the drawing to a carpenter, Theodore Mack, who quoted Edgar a price of $35 to carve a dummy out of pine that would have a face like the drawing. Edgar paid $17 down and the rest in installments over 12 weeks. He took Charlie the newsboy's first name and the Irish extension of the carpenter's last name to come up with the name of Charlie McCarthy for the dummy.

As the time for high school graduation approached, Miss Angel, Edgar's history teacher, told Edgar he was flunking her class and that he might not graduate with his class. Instead of doing homework, Edgar was always out practicing his comedy routine with the new dummy. At a spring recital, Edgar figured if he was going to flunk anyway, he would go out in style. His new dummy portrayed the role of a fellow Lakeview student who poked fun at both Miss Angel and the school principal, "Square Deal Brown." The routine was a big hit. Miss Angel was impressed with Edgar's talent and helped to tutor him after school in order to pass her class and get his diploma with his class in the spring of 1922.

Edgar and his dummy Charlie spent the summer entertaining audiences on the Chautauqua circuit. They performed on weekends in vaudeville houses and for church groups. Edgar dropped a magic routine from his act to concentrate all his time on developing the comedy routines with Charlie.

Edgar entered Northwestern University in Evanston in the fall of 1922 with a plan to eventually study medicine. But his ventriloquist act became more and more popular and that plus odd jobs helped him earn money for school. Edgar switched his major to speech.  Sources conflict on whether or not Edgar erarned a degree at Northwestern but most sources say that he did not because he was too busy with outside work in the middle 1920s.  Chicago remained his home base for several more years as he toured vaudeville circuits with his act.

Edgar Bergen broke into radio in the early 1930s with the Chase and Sandborn Hour and by 1937 he had a national network radio program of his own. The program lasted on radio for the next 19 years until 1956 making the transition from Depression to war to post-war to the television age. His other popular character and dummy was the farm boy Mortimer Snerd who was slow and knew that he was slow in contrast to the sassy and cosmopolitan girl-chasing bachelor Charlie McCarthy.

Bergen performed in many films just as an actor and not as a ventrioloquist with Charlie McCarthy. One performance in film that Bergen is often best remembered for was his role at Peter Thorkelson, the suitor for Ellen Corby, in the 1948 classic I Remember Mama with Irene Dunne and Barbara Bel Geddes. For a list of his films and TV shows both with and without dummies, click here for the Edgar Bergen page on IMDB.

Bergen and his actress wife Frances Bergen were the parents of two children. The older daughter was actress Candace Bergen who starred as Murphy Brown on TV and is currently in the Boston Legal TV series. Their son Kris Berger worked as a film edtior.

Edgar Bergen died on Sept. 30, 1978 after giving a performance. He was 75 years old. The next year in 1979, The Muppet Movie was dedicated in his honor.

The Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Radio Program was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in Chicago in 1990. One of the Charlie McCarthy dummies is located at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC and another will be on display in 2007 at the new Museum of Broadcast Communications at 400 N. State Street in Chicago.

Comments

[donald miller]

Just a note to correct an error in this article. In the ninth paragraph it is incorrectly stated that Edgar Bergan attended Lane Technical High Scool at 2501 West Addison Street; however, until 1934 Lane Tech was located at Sedgwick and Division. To verify this simply go to the Lane Tech official site at www.lanetech.org/ and click on "about Lane Tech" in the left column. The relevant statement will be in paragraph nine: "On June 24, 1930 groundbreaking ceremonies took place at Western and Addison."