Charlie Mccarthy
The wooden puppet known as Charlie McCarthy was a precocious adolescent sporting a monocle and top hat, loved by the public for being a flirt and a wise-guy, and a raffish brat who continually got the better of his "guardian," mild-mannered ventriloquist Edgar Bergen (1903-1978). The comedy duo got their start in vaudeville and gave their last performance on television, but—amazingly—they found their greatest fame and success in the most unlikely venue for any ventriloquist: radio. Since the need for illusion was completely obviated by radio, whose audiences wouldn't be able to tell whether or not Bergen's lips were moving, the strength of Bergen and McCarthy as a comedy team was the same as it was for Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello: they were funny. Bergen created and maintained in Charlie a comic persona so strong that audiences almost came to think of him as a real person. Eventually, "the woodpecker's pin-up boy" was joined by two other Bergen creations, hayseed Mortimer Snerd and spinster Effie Klinker, but neither surpassed Charlie in popularity. A broadcast sensation, Bergen and McCarthy also guest-starred in several films, including a couple that gave Charlie the chance to continue his radio rivalry with W. C. Fields. Not until the advent of television would such puppets as Howdy Doody and Kukla and Ollie gain such universal renown. But unlike these latter-day characters, Charlie was designed to appeal equally to adults as to children.
As a child growing up in Chicago, Edgar Bergen discovered that he had the talent to "throw his voice," and he put this gift to mischievous purposes, playing such pranks on his parents as making them think that an old man was at the door. When he reached high school age, young Edgar studied ventriloquism seriously and then commissioned the carving of his first puppet to his exacting specifications: thus was Charlie McCarthy born, full-grown from the head—and larynx—of Bergen. Although he began pre-med studies, Bergen quickly abandoned education for vaudeville. Before long, Bergen and McCarthy were a success, touring internationally. When vaudeville began to fade in the 1930s, Edgar and Charlie switched to posh nightclubs, which eventually led to a star-making appearance on Rudy Vallee's radio show. By 1937, Bergen and McCarthy had their own show, and its phenomenal success lasted for two decades.
As Jim Harmon has pointed out in The Great Radio Comedians, "The humor (of Bergen and McCarthy) sprang from (an) inevitable misunderstanding between a rather scholarly man and a high-school near-dropout with native wit and precocious romantic interests. What resulted was wildly comic verbal fencing, perfect for the sound-oriented medium…. Exasperating to some adults, but we who were children at the time loved it." Not unlike Groucho Marx, Charlie appealed to listeners of all ages because he could get away with saying something naughty or insulting to parental and authority figures. With such catch phrases as "Blow me down!," Charlie endeared himself to generations of listeners and viewers, and paved the way for many successful ventriloquism acts that followed. Bergen's skill as a comedy writer was such that he purposefully let Charlie have all the laughs. When asked once whether he ever felt any hostility toward Charlie, Bergen replied, "Only when he says something I don't expect him to say."
In 1978, ten days after announcing his retirement, Edgar Bergen died. In his will, the ventriloquist had donated Charlie to the Smithsonian. In addition to the memory of decades of laughter, Bergen also bequeathed to the world of show business his daughter, actress/writer/photographer Candice Bergen.
Further Reading:
Bergen, Candice. Knock Wood. Boston, G. K. Hall, 1984.
Bergen, Edgar. How to Become a Ventriloquist. New York, Grosset &Dunlap, 1938.
Harmon, Jim. The Great Radio Comedians. Garden City, N.Y.,Doubleday, 1970.
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