Candice Bergen: How her father Edgar Bergen’s ventriloquist dummy Charlie McCarthy stole her inheritance
Many of us can gripe about having a dummy brother, but for actress Candice Bergen it was a hard reality.
Bergen’s first photos in this world capture not just her mother Frances and father Edgar Bergen staring lovingly down at her, but also her star ventriloquist father’s famous dummy Charlie McCarthy, with the young girl growing up in his shadow as “Charlie’s sister”.
Her childhood was marked by photo ops and publicity stunts, with many of her childhood photos featuring her father’s prized doll standing alongside her on Christmas Day or while lounging with her family.
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Her first steps into show business were also overshadowed by Charlie, with the actress appearing on her father’s radio show along with Charlie from a young age.
Even in their private moments, Charlie was there. Bergen recalled some of her childhood memories spending time with her father in her 1985 memoir Knock Wood.
“When Charlie was there, my dad would sit him on one knee and me on the other … and when he squeezed my neck, I’d move my mouth, and when he squeezed Charlie’s neck, he’d move his,” she wrote.
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“As Charlie and I yammered away at each other across my father, mouths flapping soundlessly, behind us, smiling politely, sat my dad, happily speaking for both of us.”
But she never could have imagined that Charlie’s significance could outweigh hers in real terms until she and her mother sat down in their living room to hear her father’s will after his death in 1978, when she was 32.
“I … bequeath to the Actors Fund of America the sum of Ten Thousand Dollars [sic] to be held as a separate fund, to be known forever as ‘The Charlie McCarthy Fund’,” he has bequeathed, according to Bergen’s 2015 memoir, A Fine Romance.
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The donation honoured Charlie, who Edgar wrote had “been my constant companion and who has taken on the character of a real person and from whom I have never been separated even for a day.”
There was no mention of Bergen in her father’s will.
“Charlie McCarthy was included in the will,” she had written, “I was not. I’d chased my father’s approval all my life and here was proof I’d never get it.”
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Her father was buried alongside his parents in Inglewood Park Cemetery, California, while the original Charlie doll remains on display in a covered case at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.
Despite being overshadowed her entire life by a hunk of wood, Bergen managed to carve a career for herself in Hollywood. She began her career with critically acclaimed films such as The Group and The Sand Pebbles, which won several Academy Awards.
She is best known for her role in Murphy Brown, with Bergen taking on the titular character of a fiercely independent female news anchor, a role which was not seen on TV much in the 1980s and ’90s.
The show ran for 10 years, being nominated for an Emmy Award seven times and winning five. After her fifth win, she declined future nominations for the role.
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She also carved a niche as a frequent guest host of Saturday Night Live in the 1970s, becoming the first woman to host the show, the first host to do a second show, and the first woman to join the Five-Timers Club. She still makes regular appearances on the show to welcome other hosts to the club.
In 1980 she wed French film director Louis Malle, welcoming their daughter, Vogue.com editor, Chloe Malle five years later. They were together until Louis’ death from cancer in 1995.
She is also now known for her roles in Miss Congeniality, Sweet Home Alabama, Bride Wars, Boston Legal, and her short cameo in Sex and the City as Enid Frick, Carrie Bradshaw’s editor at Vogue.
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Her most recent roles include a return to the character in And Just Like That, as well as reprising her role as Murphy Brown in a 2018 reboot and starring alongside Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, and Mary Steenburgen in the sequel to their hit film Book Club.
Now at age 78, she has mostly reconciled her feelings towards her “wooden older brother”, even putting Charlie McCarthy memorabilia on display, with her daughter Chloe purchasing windup toys and salt and pepper shakers.
“The older I get, the more fierce I am about my pride in being a ventriloquist’s daughter,” Bergen told the New York Times, “I just think it’s the weirdest thing.”
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