The Edgar Bergen / Charle McCarthy Show was an absolute winner of an Old Time Radio show, but it may come as a surprise to you as this show actually had a ventriloquist! Edgar Bergen was a successful comedian that capitalized on his popularity.
Bergen was born in 1903 and learned the art of ventriloquism at a young age. Edgar commissioned the creation of a dummy from a local craftsman and gave him the name Charlie McCarthy.
Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy became a duo that played at talent shows in the midwest while Bergen was in college at Northwestern. It was not long before he left school to chase his performing career.
By the 1930s he had already hit New York and even covered Europe and South America. It became apparant that vaudeville soon started losing out to the new media of film and radio.
In 1936 Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy were heard first on the Royal Gelatin Hour on NBC. While it may seem odd to have had a ventriloquist on the radio, it was the humor of Bergen that made him an instant hit on the airwaves.
In 1937 he worked on The Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy show on NBC, which became an instant hit. In fact, the show became incredibly popular that it kept going for another 19 years, until 1956, and stayed with NBC the whole time.
In the show’s first year, there was some controversy surrounding Bergen when he performed the Mae West “Adam and Eve” scene. By 1938 the FCC got involved, and this was due to the remarks that were made by him, which were generally accepted to have been unnecessary. However, the controversy passed and the old time radio shows gained even more popularity.
Many more dummy characters joined his act soon enough as the years passed by. Even though it may seem that ventriloquism would be heavily reliant on visuals and appearances, te show still managed to be very successful on the radio. As it happens, Edgar Bergen rarely performed on TV.
Bergen retired in 1978 and gave his showbiz companion Charlie to the Smithsonian Museum. He expired just a week after this, immediately after performing in a show featuring Andy Williams.
Today, Charlie along with two other puppets are on display at the Radio Hall of Fame and Museum in Chicago. By 1990 the show joined the Radio Hall of Fame.
