Audiolinks that can't tell if you move your lips or not

I can't decide what's more sublime: the idea of a ventriloquist becoming a smash hit as a radio performer, or that so many of his coworkers on his show recalled that, while he made plenty of flubs in reading the script, his main dummy never screwed up a line. I'm talking, of course, about Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. There's a gentleness in Bergen that I always loved -- it's rare to find a straight man who genuinely radiated affection for his partner the way Bergen loved McCarthy -- and yes, I know I'm talking about the puppet like it was real. Bergen clearly believed in his own internal magic so fervently that he could only see it as external to him, which gives his performances a dimension and unique quality that more than made up for the fact that, as his movie appearances reveal, he really wasn't that good as a ventriloquist. I guess, when it comes to pretending than some carved wood and fabric is a real living creature, it's better to have faith than skill.

Of particular note is the October 30, 1938 show: Bergen's show, THE CHASE AND SANBORN HOUR, aired on NBC opposite THE MERCURY THEATRE ON THE AIR, and practically annihilated it [and anything else CBS had put up against against it in that Sunday at 8PM timeslot] in the ratings. I don't have the numbers handy, but I remember the Orson Welles program got roughly a tenth of the audience that Bergen & McCarthy got.

This Halloween evening, however, after listeners enjoyed the first 12 or so minutes of Edgar and Charlie's banter before the team threw the mic over to a singer to warble a song, a lot of the audience flipped over to another station to listen to something better until the funny resumed. Listeners how jumped over to their CBS heard ... an invasion of New Jersey by Martians. Then, some people went apeshit, a lot of butthurt newspapers [radio was eating print's lunch for audience and advertising] trumped the stories up to try making radio look really bad, and for a few days it looked like the United States' lunatic fringe wasn't a fringe at all. The MERCURY program, which was a sustaining, sponsor-less show in some danger of cancellation, got a sponsor and was saved -- oh, and Welles was offered the greatest deal ever offered any writer/director/producer/actor in the history of Hollywood. Bergen & McCarthy continued to be the 800-pound gorillas on Sundays at 8PM for another decade. No moral. The End.

Edgar Bergen Show - 1937 - 1941
Edgar Bergen Show - 1942 - 1943
Edgar Bergen Show - 1944 - 1945
Edgar Bergen Show - 1946 - 1947
Edgar Bergen Show - 1948 - 1955

[See also: CHASE & SANBORN star Spike Jones.]