Word: bergen
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During the past seven years Edgar Bergen has made himself a national figure largely by talking to himself. He has done this with the aid of an apparatus called Charlie McCarthy, which has become an even more popular national figure, and probably more human to a larger number of people than any inanimate object in world history. It takes only the mildest indulgence in the world of fantasy to be persuaded that Charlie, a fellow of infinite and raucous wit, is actually alive...
Last week, as usual, millions of U.S. citizens gathered at their radios (NBC, 8 p.m., E.W.T.) to hear McCarthy confront and confound one of the nation's names. This time it was Orson Welles. McCarthy (who, of course, always has Scriptwriter Bergen on his side) blithely opened up: "Oh, Orson! .. . Oh, Wellesie! . . . Where is old fatso?" Welles came out of the wings at NBC's Manhattan studios, and McCarthy chirped: "Why don't you release a blimp for active service?" Once before, Welles had taken even worse abuse from his radio host. That time the actor...
Charlie gets away with a candid vein of comment which is unprecedented in radio. Via a small-boy character (which helps), Bergen manages a titillating form of malice-without-malice. To judge by his audiences, it is all hugely satisfying to the U.S. public. Charlie called Gossipist Louella Parsons an "old blabbermouth," while confiding in an aside that "everything will be all over town tomorrow." He referred to Emily Post as "a vulture for culture" and dismissed her with: "It's been a charming evening. By the way, Miss Emily, you don't have a toothpick...
...personality-saucy, lethally precocious and irreverent-that it is all but impossible for listeners to remember that he is a ventriloquist's dummy. The instinct to forget it is natural; no such coldly mechanical term could possibly describe the complex psychological relationship between Charlie McCarthy and Edgar John Bergen...
Rundstedt Retreat. Tilburg, 's Hertogenbosch, Breda, Roosendaal and Bergen op Zoom were the bolt positions in the German line from the Maas to the Scheldt estuary. All five had fallen this week without much of a fight. Allied airmen reported columns of German transports scuttling north to the rivers...