Listen to a Charlie McCarthy Radio Show episode by clicking on a link below:
Guest: Tallulah Bankhead – November 17, 1946 – 25 Minutes
Edgar Bergen tries to get Charlie McCarthy to get more serious about his dancing lessons at a very exclusive school but Charlie hates them with a passion. Edgar compliments Mortimer Snerd for being dressed up in a brand new suit. Charlie has written a 3 act play for this week’s guest – Tallulah Bankhead.
The Charlie McCarthy Show was re-titled, “The New Edgar Bergen Hour” in October of 1954.
This radio show suffered the same fate as many other of its time period. It ended due to the fact that most people were watching television by the mid-1950s. Radios were being pushed into the corner of the living room or the basement in order to make room for TVs! Anyway, sponsors of course moved to television too and without an audience or a sponsor most radio programs faded away.
Edgar and Charlie got their big break in 1936 on “The Rudy Vallee Hour” for one season. Then they moved on to the “Chase and Sandborn Hour” in 1937 where they worked alongside W.C. Fields, Dorothy Lamour, Don Ameche and others who would become household names on the radio and then later on television! That series attracted nearly every star of its era as guests including Lucille Ball, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe and Orson Welles to name just a few!
Edgar Bergen’s success on the radio was truly amazing and many in the industry expected him to fail. After all, he was a ventriloquist! The big attraction of that type of act is to appreciate how someone can “throw” their voice to a “dummy” without moving their lips but audiences obviously couldn’t see Edgar on the radio! What made him so successful was that he transformed Charlie and Mortimer into “living” characters that the audience knew weren’t truly alive.
While Edgar never hit it big in the movies like many of his co-workers on the radio, he was a very popular guest star on television. He continued to make appearances until just a couple of years before his death in 1978. Another considerable contribution that Edgar made to the entertainment industry was when he fathered Candice Bergen who went on to become a movie star from the mid-1960s to the late 1980s and then moved into television where she starred for a whopping ten seasons on “Murphy Brown” and then later for 91 episodes on “Boston Legal”! Candice’s first public appearances were on this radio show as “Charlie’s Litte Sister”.
First Episode: October 1949
Last Episode: July 1, 1956
Number of Episodes: Approximately 250?
Network: CBS
Announcer: Bill Baldwin
Producer: Sam Pearce
Sponsor: Coca Cola to June 1952; Lanolin Plus cosmetics to October 1954; then Kraft Foods; then Miscellaneous
Broadcast Time: Sundays 8:00-8:30PM Eastern through May 1953; In October 1953 it moved to 9:30PM
Typical Episode Length: 30 Minutes
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