LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Edgar Bergen: Ventriloquist Edgar Bergen
built 642 days ago
Candice Bergen was the first of two children born to celebrated ventriloquist Edgar Bergen. Her talent for comedy was apparent in her early years when she was a guest on her father's radio show. She was the first woman to host Saturday Night Live, but is perhaps best known for her role of a fictional telejournalist fresh out of Betty Ford in the comedy series Murphy Brown.
Source:
In his vaudeville days Bergen's most popular dummy, Charlie McCarthy, was a merry, impish Irish newsboy which he dressed in sweater and cap. The two had much success with vaudeville and tent show audiences. But only two years after Bergen played the Palace the Palace had closed and with the closing of the palace ... came the end of vaudeville. Bergen felt he had to recreate himself if he were to survive the end of vaudeville. He decided to take a classier more sophisticated approach to his act and tried to get nightclub bookings. It was a challenge because ventriloquists were not known for playing nightclubs at the time. Bergen would have to blaze new frontiers.
Source:
Bergen is the daughter of Edgar Bergen, a ventriloquist, and Frances Westerman, a model who posed for billboards advertising Chesterfield cigarettes. As a child, Bergen was jealous of her father's famous dummy, Charlie McCarthy -- the room where McCarthy and his props were stored was bigger than her bedroom. For a time, she and the dummy had matching pajamas, which, Bergen has said, "felt strange", and it stung when reporters mentioned her as "Charlie McCarthy's little sister".
Source:
Frances Bergen, the widow of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and mother of Boston Legal star Candice Bergen, died Monday at Los Angeles's Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after a prolonged illness, her daughter's rep tells the Los Angeles Times. She was 84.
Source:
Bergen would achieve the first big dream of his career in 1930 when he got the chance to play the Palace. The Palace, at the corner of 47th and Broadway, was the greatest variety theater in New York. It was the peak of achievement for a performer's career to play the Palace. No other ventriloquist had ever played the Palace before. Playing the Palace was such a thrill for Edgar Bergen he would relish his memories of it for the rest of his life.
Source:
It's hard to believe that a boy born in Chicago to Swedish immigrant parents who grew up on a dairy farm Edgar Bergen would, after fifteen years of vaudeville and nightclubs, become an overnight sensation on the radio as a ventriloquist. More amazing still, Charlie McCarthy was supposed to be a boy, yet he wore a tuxedo complete with top hat and monocle, and seemed to be from England. At least, that's the way it seemed. The whole thing was really wacky, but it worked. Why? Because any one who knows Bergen and McCarthy knew they were really funny, sometimes a little bit ribald, but always two lines away from another joke.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Ventriloquist Edgar Bergen