Word: bergen
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Charlie has supported Bergen most of his life. He began by putting Bergen through high school and almost through Northwestern University, and got him into Delta Upsilon. Charlie was whittled out 25 years ago by a Chicago barkeep named Mack (price: $35). He was modeled on a sketch Bergen made of a red headed Chicago newsboy. Bergen was then 16, the gawky, moody second son of a Swedish immigrant named Berggren who had run a retail dairy business in Chicago and a farm near Decatur, Mich...
...eleven, Edgar Bergen had found that he could throw his voice (his mother was forever answering the door in response to pleas of mysterious old men who begged to be let in). The boy was further in spired by Herrman's Wizards Manual, Secrets of Magic, Black Art, Mind Reading and Ventriloquism (including a chap ter on "how to cut a man's head off and put it into a platter a yard from his body"). Charlie McCarthy was just what Bergen needed. The little dummy was such a social success (unlike Bergen alone) that he lured Bergen...
...Down." The turn in their luck came in Chicago. Out of work and deeply discouraged, Charlie and Bergen got a week's tryout at the Chez Paree nightclub. At 3 o'clock one morning they came on for their final per formance. The club was almost empty...
...middle of their act, Charlie suddenly reared up, turned to Bergen and said: "Who the hell ever told you you were a good ventriloquist?" Bergen blushed, fidgeted, tried to put his hand over Charlie's mouth. "Don't shush me," Charlie continued. "I'll mow-w-w-w you down. You better go back to the farm and leave me alone. I'll get by, but you're all through, brother, all through." Charlie then turned on the customers and told them they were a disgrace to civilization. Bergen put him on a chair...
Backstage later Bergen was saying: "I just had to get that off my chest." But he was a hit and he stayed on, until Manhattan's lofty Rainbow Room bought Charlie's raillery. In keeping with this swank setting, McCarthy appeared in top hat & tails. Then Rudy Vallee put him on the air. Bergen had finally found his proper medium of communication: the microphone. Previously, many of Charlie's asides and much of their patter had been lost to the audience. Swift give-and-take (mostly give) is the essence of McCarthy's humor. Now everybody...