Radio Drama · Old Time Radio · Variety & music · Comedy
Bergen & McCarthy
- Heard
- 1937–1944
- Episodes
- 48
(48 Episodes) Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy: BORN: Edgar John Berggren in Chicago, IL February 16, 1903 DIED: September 30, 1978 in Las Vegas, NV (Kidney Failure) KNOWN AS: Radio's Greatest Ventriloquist
More about it
Edgar John (Berggren) Bergen was an American actor & radio performer, born to Swedish family, in Decatur, Michigan. He lived there until he was 16 (when his father died), then went to Chicago, where he attended Lake View High School and worked n a silent movie house.
He taught himself ventriloquism from a pamphlet when he was 11 and a few years later, commissioned as a woodcarver to make a likeness of a rascally Irish newspaper boy he knew. The head went on a puppet named Charlie McCarthy, who became Bergen's lifelong sidekick.
In 1938, Bergen was presented an Honorary Oscar (in the form of a wooden Oscar stauette) for his creation of Charlie McCarthy. He attended Northwestern University, but did not graduate. Later the school gave him an honorary degree as Master of Innuendo and Snappy Comeback.
His first performances were in vaudeville and one-reel movie shorts, but his real success was on the radio. Bergen & Charlie were seen by Noel Coward, at a Hollywood party, and he recommended them for an appearance on Rudy Vallee's program. That appearance was so successful that the next year they were given their own show. Under various sponsors, they were on the air from December 17, 1937 to July 1, 1956.
Bergen’s popularity as a ventriloquist on the radio (when one could…
Episodes, in broadcast order
Where it comes from 2
The archive items its episodes are played from, best first, with each one’s rights as its archive states them. An episode two sets both hold is played from the first.
-
Bergen & McCarthy 48 Eps
Uploader’s mark: Public Domain Mark 1.0: Marked Public Domain Mark 1.0 by its uploader at the Internet Archive; the record gives no basis for it.
-
Bergen and McCarthy 41 11 23 Albert E. Wiggam
the Internet Archive states no licence or rights for it.
From the Old Time Radio collection at the Internet Archive, uploaded by the collector named.
More Variety & music
Jack Benny
CBS · 1932–1956
Fred Allen
1932–1966
You.Bet.Your.Life
1944–1959
Command Performance
1942–1950
The Bob Hope Program
NBC · 1938–1955
AFRS
1941–1968
Martin and Lewis
1948–1953
The Big Show
1950–1952
The Roy Rogers Show
Mutual · 1945–1955
Bing Crosby
1931–1962
My Word
1956
Information Please
1938–1945
Radio drama, old-time radio and historic broadcasts from the Internet Archive (its Old Time Radio collection with the Old Time Radio Researchers' sets, WWII Era Audio Recordings, the Pacifica Radio Archives, the Radio Haiti Archive, German radio plays and listeners' uploads), Wikimedia Commons (with the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision's broadcasts) and the Library of Congress. Every episode plays from its archive, which this site does not copy; rights are as each archive states them. Nothing here is called public domain on this site's say-so. In the United States, sound recordings first fixed before 15 February 1972 have federal protection under the Music Modernization Act of 2018, for most until 2067 at the latest, so most American radio of the 1930s to the 1950s is not in the public domain there. Each set shows the licence, mark or statement its archive gives, and says whose it is. Horror, crime, war and westerns are for teenage and adult profiles, racist caricature for adults only, and children’s profiles hear what was made for children. More about these archives.